Today, the hosts of Top Gear UK were only a block away from Jalopnik's NYC headquarters on 58th St. While I missed them, we did help provide some readers the opportunity to meet the auto world's trio of biggest stars.
Two Jalopnik readers, Powr2dex and vvaffle, decided, after reading my post last night that the Top Gear threesome was here in New York City today, to make the trek to New York. Vanja Pejovic's (vvaffle) managed to snag video of him asking a very hung-over Clarkson whether he hated Jalopnik (I don't know why the idea of having Clarkson say "I hate Jalopnik" felt inspired last night when I wrote it). While Clarkson didn't say "I hate Jalopnik" — he did manage to get him to say "Jalopnik? Oh, I know of them" and then roll his eyes.
Frankly, that's good enough for me to award at least a good chunk of the bounty to our two intrepid readers. Especially when you read the full story of their triumphs and tribulations below:
After deciding that we should definitely do this, my friend (Powr2dex at jalopnik) and I (vvaffle at jalopnik).made a list of all 4 star or better hotels in downtown NYC.
Then we used street view to narrow it down to the ones that could look like that picture. After a short drive up the turnpike, and a little bit of driving through the city we found the cars at the second hotel on our list, the Millennium Hilton hotel. We got there around 3:30 AM, hoping that they would start filming around dawn, so around 6 AM. We were about to give up and leave around 7 AM but decided to wait a bit longer and soon the crew started bringing their stuff and camera equipment outside. Soon after that, construction people blocked off the street that the hotel garage exits onto, and started ripping up the pavement. Worst possible timing, the height of the curb that the cars had to go down doubled in size. We waited a bit more and then the guys came out. We got the video and a picture with them. Then we hung out for a while but didn't have the energy to try to follow them around for the rest of the day. Either way, they had to wait until the road crew finished whatever they were doing. I'm not sure how they ended up getting the cars out.
Thanks for giving us the little bit of information that allowed us to meet them. It was definitely worth the 6 hours of standing.
And here's the video:
I want to personally thank Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May for being so welcoming and friendly with the dozens of our readers who got pictures with them and talked to them today. It's much appreciated.
Now call me next time you're in town, OK?