British motoring show Top Gear's Tesla review seemed rather positive, commending the car's speed and design. Not surprisingly, Jeremy Clarkson found the car's charging requirements onerous and the review featured a clip of Top Gear staff having to push the car into a building because, the viewer assumed, it ran out of power. He also complained of the brakes randomly failing.

Tesla quickly responded, claiming the two cars they provided never lost more than 20% of their power and the brake issue was merely the result of a fuse a technician quickly replaced. The video of the car being pushed into the shed, therefore, was faked.

The BBC offered an even quicker response, saying their premier show was merely trying to indicate what someone would have to do if the car was out of juice with the now infamous push. They stood by the statements made in the review, namely the claim the car would run out of juice after 53 miles of track driving.

Clarkson, speaking to The Telegraph, offers a slightly different and more colorful explanation:

We never said once that the car had run out of power. The car had to be pushed into the warehouse because you are not allowed to drive cars into a building. We calculated that it would have run out of power after 53 miles but they can't argue with that because that is a fact."

This seems like a fair point, but the statement appears to differ from the BBC's claim about why the car was pushed into the shed.

His statement about the brake failure, however, is classic Clarkson:

"Nobody gives a flying **** how the brakes failed. Whether it was a blown fuse or not, they were still not working."

Clearly, it's impossible to imagine the Tesla Roadsters having any build-quality issues given CEO Elon Musk's recent statements. Maybe an evil genius Tesla engineer went back in time and cut the brakes, hoping to kill off Clarkson before the review could run.

[The Telegraph]

You remember last week's episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson drove the Tesla Roadster around the Top Gear track? Remember how in that episode, a silver Tesla being tested was shown taking a dump on the track after a mere 55 miles? You also remember Tesla's Rachel Konrad claiming Top Gear was the only entity taking a dump on the track, saying "They never had to push a car off the track because of lack of charge or a fault...It’s unclear why they were pushing one into a garage in the video; I’ll refrain from speculating about their motives."? Well, now the UK Register Hardware's found out what happened. Here's what they have to say:

According to the Top Gear spokeswoman, the tested Tesla was filmed being pushed into the shed in order to show what would happen if the Roadster had run out of charge.

"Top Gear stands by the findings in this film and is content that it offers a fair representation of the Tesla's performance on the day it was tested," the BBC said in statement."

Hmm, sounds like some motoring show won't be on this year's Tesla holiday card list. [via The Reigster]

In addition to the vanilla drive, Jay Leno makes a short cameo in this clip from last Sunday's episode of Top Gear. Watch as silent blandosity saves us from the evils of global warming while reserving the dino-juice for the fast cars.

I spent most of my time in America this time in a new Corvette ZR1. It is a fabulous car. Mesmerisingly fast, good looking and amazing value. But after three days the damn thing was beginning to disintegrate. It made me growl with annoyance and despair.

The thing about the ZR1 is that it’s not just mesmerizingly fast, good-looking and an amazing value (at least here. In England it costs $200k), it’s built extremely well too. The aluminum chassis is as basic and as strong as it gets, every piece of running gear is of the highest specification available and the carbon fiber bodywork is some of the most well-laid, best-fitting we’ve ever seen.

Then there’s the interior, which we think is what Clarkson is talking about. It’s cheap...really cheap. Wonky plastic buttons abound, the 3ZR package brings ugly, atrociously stitched leather in poorly chosen color combinations and the steering wheel belongs in a Cobalt, not a 205 MPH supercar. But despite all that, it should fundamentally be capable of holding itself together. We just don’t know what Clarkson is on about. Do you? [via the Sunday Times]