Top Gear Releases Teaser for Season 24

This teaser for Top Gear Season 24 sheds some light onto what Top Gear has become. Now that Chris Evans returned to presenting the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, Top Gear’s de facto figurehead on the small screen is Joey from Friends. I mean Matt LeBlanc. His aides are, as expected, newcomer Rory Reid and auto journo Chris Harris. A pretty neat trio, if I may add.

The 20-second teaser also reveals that the boys are up to something big, in the middle of nowhere, at below-zero temperatures. The cars they drive are, in a way, as different in nature as the three presenters are in terms of background. LeBlanc went for a W210-gen Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Reid opted for a hackney carriage (a.k.a. London black cab), whereas Harris appears to be driving an old Volvo station wagon from the early 2000s.

For some reason I don’t quite comprehend, the boys then proceed to do a handless drag race. Yup, the rule appears to be simple: don’t put your hands on the steering wheel, even if you hit another car. And that, in essence, is all there is to what the all-new season has in store for us: nothing new.

On the upside, three passionate men living in the shadows of what was once a great car show is better than no Top Gear at all. For the diehard fans, there’s The Grand Tour. The point is, Top Gear Season 24 will be marginally better than Season 23 now that Evans is gone, but there’s no denying the current hosts lack the chemistry Jeremy, Richard, and James have.

And on that bombshell, the Top Gear test track in Dunsfold will have to go. On that note, a rebranding of the show would be much appreciated.