Season 14
In the fourteenth season of the hugely popular motoring show, the challenges get even more clever, the celebrities have even more fun, Jeremy, Richard and James become even more daring, and the Stig is just as mysterious.
The season kicks off with a driver's idea of heaven when Richard and James take an Aston DBS Vola nte, a Ferrari California and a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder to Romania in search of an obscure stretch of tarmac that some driving enthusiasts claim is nothing less than the greatest road in the world.
Meanwhile, James makes a rare appearance on the track as he compares two absurdly powerful limos, the BMW 760i and Mercedes S63 AMG, and gets into a strange card game with the Stig.
Elsewhere, Jeremy and Richard settle the thorny issue of which company has made the greatest number of truly brilliant cars, James has a novel solution for getting caravans to campsites without clogging up the roads, Jeremy hits the track in a replica of a legendary rally car, and Richard invents the brand new sport of airport vehicle racing.
Celebrities taking a turn in the Star in the Reasonably Priced Car in this season include Troy and Hulk actor Eric Bana, Frost/Nixon and The Damned United star Michael Sheen, and film director Guy Ritchie, who seems to have a little trouble with the gearstick...
Format
The show often features the following segments, amongst others:
Races
The show has featured a number of races where Jeremy Clarkson races a car against other forms of transport, usually involving Richard Hammond and James May taking the same journey by any combinations of plane, train, ferry or bus.
Reviews
Top Gear normally reviews one new car, or group of cars, each week. It's became hugely influential with motor manufacturers, since a critical word from the Top Gear team could have a severely negative effect on sales.
The Top Gear reports are not based on facts or figures, but the opinions of the presenters. Group tests normally involve the three presenters debating the merits and weaknesses of each car.
Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car
In each programme, a celebrity is interviewed by Jeremy Clarkson, and focuses usually on car-related topics and often on cars owned by the celebs themselves.
The guest is whisked off to the Top Gear race track where he/she tries to get the fastest lap time in a Chevrolet.
The fastest lap time is held by The Stig, and guests who have attempted to beat his time have included Simon Cowell, Jamie Oliver and Sanjeev Bhaskar.
Power Laps
In the Power Laps segment, The Stig completes a lap around the Top Gear test track to determine the performance of various cars. The car tested is usually the car that's been reviewed in that episode, but occasionally it can be a car from a previous episode.
The Cool Wall
The Cool Wall is a board where Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond decide which cars are cool, and which aren't, and has nothing to do with how good or bad a car is. The categories are Sub Zero, Cool, Uncool and Seriously Uncool.
Initially, part of that "coolness" factor rested on the extent to which the presenters believed each car would impress English actress Kristin Scott Thomas.
BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce replaced Kristin as their notional judge, after Kristin stated in an interview that she owned a Honda, which was deemed to be "Uncool".