THE ENTIRETY OF THE S1E1 SCRIPT OF TOP GEAR INTO THE BIO OF THIS PROFILE
This...

is a car program.

There will be no cushions.

There will be no rag rolling.

No one will sing

and at the end of the series, no
one will have a recording contract.

This, is our new base.

And this is our purpose built test track.

There are no traffic jams here, well, apart
from this one, and no bus lanes either.

This... is Top Gear

And in the show tonight



I put two supercars head to head,

Jason Dawe on what to do when car dealers attack,

Richard Hammond will try to beat a speed camera,

And a star, in a reasonably priced car.

Hello.

Now, two family hatchbacks,

the Ford Focus and the Volkswagen Golf.

Both have five doors...

both have 1.6 liter engines
and both cost around 12,000 pounds.

That's how much family hatchbacks cost.

Or do they?

You see on Top Gear, we found one that you
can buy, in Britain, no tricks, brand new...

for less than 9,000 pounds.

This is it.



It's the Citroen Berlingo Multispace and I admit...

it's a curious looking thing.

That's because it started out in life, as a van.

All they've done is add some windows here, sliding
doors and snazzy seats where the cement used to go...

and hey presto.

Garnish it with some metallic
paint, some allow wheels,

and you can even have a diesel
version for 8,995 pounds.

Thing is though, are you
getting what you paid for?

Is it like cheap wine?

Will you wake up, with a headache?

Well, to find out, i took it
down the M20, to the Booze Borough.

For a trip to those... supermarkets of Calais.

First impressions are that i'm driving...

a van.

It's quite echoey in here and not terribly refined, erm...

most central locking systems, for
instance, these days they go...

*bzzz* or *kheew*...

but listen to this.

It's very uncouth.

In essence then, the Berlingo is...

very loud.

Very, Van Halen.

But, there is a softer...

Van Morisson option.

For the same money, you can have a 1.6
liter petrol engine which develops

the same power, as a Mk1 Golf GTI.

With that under the bonnet, this would
feel much more like a normal car.

But,

how many normal cars have you ever come
across that have got green dashboards with

green dials.

And,

how many normal cars are their with
five glass panels in the roof

and these roof bars which, swivel sideways

so you can carry a bicycle.

Whatever a bicycle is.

No doubt about it, the Berlingo is turning
out to be astonishing value for money

It is possible to buy... a number
of other cars for Berlingo money

But none of them will be this size.

None of them will be this well equipped.

And none of them will have something,

that we're really looking for
on this new series of Top Gear.

It's an X factor.

See, this, this is a perfectly acceptable car but this

I dunno, it's more than a car somehow.

You want to bring it in at
night, let it sit by the fire.

Give it a saucer of warm milk and
a little wheel to run around in.

It's got the most important
thing that a car can have...

character.

And now the coal is back in Newcastle.

The Berlingo is back...

where it came from.

And I still can't find anything, really wrong with it.

The turning circle's not much cop
and there's a fair bit of road noise.

It's not terribly sporty either.

But it is very comfortable.

Hand on heart...

it rides like a Jaguar.

I could go on all day giving you swings and
roundabouts but the fact of the matter is, basically...

I like it.

Right, here we are at one of those...

Calais hypermarket, cash-and-carry, booze warehouse jobs

and boy!

Have I got the car for the job.