coldel

Of course it does, on that basis how was anyone in the TG team supposed to recognise it on that assumption? Clarkson gave his reasons for taking the Porsche, heartfelt reasons i might add! If your honestly saying you would have made the assumption re the plate if you had not been told beforehand, i apologise reservedly, but as said elsewhere, what were the plates on the Mustang & Lotus? What were the plates on any of the other TG xmas cars? From what i can gather they were only made aware once filming (because someone linked the plate), they had a set of plates made to avert the possibility of some action, even that backfired as mentioned elsewhere as some associated that with the sinking of the Bellgrano rather than reading it as pretty much everyone else would!!!!! What they were supposed to do, cancel the whole show, run illegal plates?? Buy something else whilst there, if they took the issue seriously enough, a multi-million pound TV show can afford a £10k replacement car. Its so simple a solution. The just smash the cars up anyway so its not like they are looking to retain any value in the cars. They could have actually created a really good promotional thing out of it by being considerate to a countries history, clearly though thats not what Top Gear are about - given their track record.

Thats the issue though, at no point were Argentina or the UK at war during the Falklands conflict - it was a conflict not a war, so there were legal agreements in place as to the total exclusion zone around the islands which is where the conflict could only take place - the belgrano was 200km outside that zone and was attacked as it was perceived as a threat. There is evidence to show that the UK extended that zone before the attack but it was not disclosed to Argentina. The UK countered with some intel that showed the belgrano was about to attack so they took pre-emptive action. Its not a clear cut 'we took em on and beat em yeah go us' issue and is the basis for the amount of hatred that still exists in Argentina over it, to a level I am sure none of us can grasp.

I dont hate Clarkson...there thats that out the way clearly this is nothing to do whether you hate Clarkson or not. What I do hate are TV shows that go abroad and don't respect other countries culture and beliefs and then come home bleating about it as if they were really hard done by. I don't agree the crew deserved to be pelted by rocks and attacked but they had plenty warning and common bleedin' sense says that they were driving into a hotbed of potential hatred - there would have been numerous chances to avoid it from the set-up i.e. finishing at the port where the Belgrano was built, through the researchers who should be planning the whole thing right up to arrival when bloggers were mailing them telling them that they would end up in trouble - so much time to avoid it but they plowed on regardless, who knows why. Mind you it was summed up by the intelligence of the guy who was entitled 'security' at the end in the hotel when giving out advice on what to do next "erm, I think we should, erm, stay in our rooms" - well glad they had him along.

I also wonder if there was a car swap between presenters - seemed odd to me that Clarkson got the 'boring' Porsche, would have had May in that and Clarkson in the unreliable Lotus - I wonder if he decided he would take the responsibility for driving it?

It doesnt matter if anyone here could remember the date of the Falklands, its that the Argentinians did. And is it vague to them? Given the current attitude of Kirchner and her very public proposals around the Falklands and references to the war the majority of Argentinians would know the date of course. James May was right, that the majority of the trip was very pleasant and no problems arose. The point is, they antagonised a specific group of people, ie those living in a particular area where the Belgrano was built, by driving a car, which was already widely spoken about on the internet, which had the Falklands war date written on it driven by someone who has courted plenty of controversy with quite racist remarks in the past, straight to that place. It was idiotic, bordering on reckless as we saw.

That black MK2 looks really nice, I think of the MX5 range they have visually the least appealing look, but that looks very nice

Argentina/Chile do sell cars, would have been able to buy a replacement within a day no problem, for the money that show makes the cost would have been negligable. Clearly they just didnt take any warnings that they might inflame tensions in that part of Argentina seriously enough to consider it. It was all very avoidable. Like I say, lesson learnt with any luck that they take the security and safety of their crew a bit more seriously.

Scary stuff indeed, like I say, if they had paid a little bit of respect when warned at the start this event (which was almost inevitable!) wouldnt have happened. The crew wouldn't have been in danger and so on. Lessons learn't one would hope.

TBH there is enough You Tube content to search for what you want to watch - star in a car, the news section, pretty pointless in my opinion and usually skip through it which leaves the test drives, which I can watch anytime on You Tube.

No, I think if some Islamic presenters of a middle eastern TV show with a history of broadcasting offensive racial slurs against the US drove a car with aforementioned number plates across the US to end up at the site of the towers then I would think that we might see a US version of the 'animals' that live in Argentina. Similarly if we saw a UK version I am pretty sure we would have UKIP up in arms and the far right looking for a punch up. Thats the difference I don't think some people get, its the intent, it was avoidable. On the actual show, I agree with Will it is getting so tiresome, it so needs a revamp but I dont think the lads know how to do that neither clearly do the writers or producers.

Yeah it did escalate very quickly, and they seemed really concerned, shame they didnt heed the warning when they first started. I still think they were on the wind up, they have form for it. My theory is it went something like - pick a nice place we havent been to, Chile/Argentina, tick - check the route, and choose the car least capable for the journey to make it fun, sports cars, tick - lets add a theme, V8s, tick - go hunting on classifieds for V8s and see the number plate, a big Clarkson tick. Having lived abroad a number of times, and visited outside the main cities, I think you have to really respect that you are a visitor in their country. I would imagine anyone wandering through the outskirts of Manchester waving a flag celebrating the Munich air crash would get a very similar reception!

I always wonder about the claim that flying is safer than driving, when I looked into it there is some measure that is about 'passenger miles' of planes vs cars - given how many miles you get in a round trip to Oz for instance, you have to do a heck of a lot of driving to get even near that. They dont measure it in trips which it should, shouldnt it?

Love the colour, as mentioned previously not a fan of it in silver, but that looks very nice.

Happy birthday mate!

I think they were ebaying for any V8 sports car, of which there are many, and saw the plate, and that was the deciding factor in buying it.

I did too! V8 Esprit v nice!

I struggle to believe the claim about only 2 for sale, loads for sale right now, and have been for some time. There also seems to be some antagonstic reasoning for having that plate and going to the place the Belgrano was built...just too many coincidences for my liking. I guess they just didnt appreciate how much the Falklands mean to some people in certain parts of Argentina. Still, they basically got attacked just like you would over here if you wandered through a BNP conference wearing a bhurka. Nutters, but still didn't help themselves antagonising it.

So what did you guys make of it? Clearly they knew from the start that online there were stirrers upset about the plate, the excuse that they couldnt take the plate off was a poor one, I mean just buy another old V8 car they easily have the budget. No way can any of that 31 man crew not have noticed the number plate without it being pointed out to them, if they think thats true then they are 31 of the dumbest people in Britain. But the organised rioting and brick throwing was not on. Although from the commentary I presume that the 3 stooges were not in the convoy that was attacked...so avoided the biggest scare moments. I just hope a lesson has been learned...although doubt it.

Well it must be at least a 3.6 litre engine as it has an extra MR2 badge on the bonnet as well as on the back, so must have double the engine size of normal MR2s

The much sought after Type R Not only that, but it must have lots of extra bhp due to the presence of an eBay SPORT badge on the back.

Meh Christmas all!

Yeah, not bad...okish....alright.... ...bah, looks awesome mate nice work!

I agree its sad that people are collecting at food banks, it is all linked to the economy though as far as I can see as you might expect, that poverty levels in the UK decreased for quite some time before something like 2008 when they started going up again.

I am not denying there are investors but they are not the majority (something like 20% of homes in the UK are investor owned) but that is still 'demand' - regardless of who is demanding it, that drives house prices. If there are buyers, be them investors or people wanting to live in the houses as long as people continue to pay the money that's what drives the price - until market conditions change that is the market that people have to play in. It is tough on people at the moment to get on the ladder, although we are very much in a mini cycle of turbulence, a quick Google shows that over the last 50 years the average yearly increase in house prices has been just under 3% vs a salary increase on average of 2% - so yes house prices are out stripping salaries but its not always going to be the levels seen in the last couple of years. Its easy to sling up house price changes over a course of a few years as being huge but what does that mean? Historically, it has shown this has always happened even way back in the 50's, this is not a new issue for people today yet people still got on the ladder somehow - interestingly the data shows that house prices tend to fall rapidly after such price hike.