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The Best Top Gear Infographic... In the World – Photo Gallery

Spanning over 13 years, Top Gear as we know it today was broadcast from December 29th, 2002 to the farewell episode slated to air on June 28th, 2015. In this timeframe, six blokes rewrote the rules of what a motoring show is all about. Top Gear pushed the envelope, and the adjacent infographic is a testament to the appeal of the BBC's proverbial golden goose. Put simply, Top Gear is automotive pop culture.
Top Gear infographic of destruction 9 photos
Photo: DefensiveDriving.com
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By six blokes, we refer first and foremost to Jeremy Clarkson and executive producer Andy Wilman. They're the guys that reinvented a dreary old car show that was born in 1977 as an experiment of the BBC. Anyone remember Jason Dawe from Series 1? He's the third, but he was too old school to continue presenting Top Gear. Then there's the Stig, James May and Richard Hammond, the rest of the pivotal ingredients to Top Gear's grand success on a worldwide scale.

Implying that Top Gear is the BBC's golden goose is not just a fancy orthographic creation. The Golden Goose is a story collected by the Brothers Grim, a legendary goose that laid one golden egg a day. Unfortunately, it was killed by its impatient owner, who wanted a helluva lot of gold immediately.

Top Gear is similar to that golden goose

The tens of millions of pounds this factual progra... motoring show poured into the BBC's coffer are mind-boggling. One episode at a time, the ratings made BBC higher-ups tingle with excitement. Then they became afraid, as in afraid of what Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May, Andy Wilman, and The Stig can do when they're not following the strict guidelines of an antiquated public-service broadcaster.

The Clarkson vs. producer fracas scandal was when the BBC executives decided to kill that golden goose. It was a delicate situation, and the BBC didn't know how to manage it. If it weren't for the Jimmy Saville paedophilia allusion, Jeremy would've returned with a cheerful "I'm sorry."

Fast-forward to the present day and here we are, 175 episodes later excluding Top Gear of the Pops, Top Ground Gear Force, as well as the hilarious Top Gear Ashes to Ashes parody. It was a wild ride for three middle-aged blokes with a love for cars you rarely see in an automotive journalist in this day and age. This being Top Gear, the love for cars isn't nurtured exclusively on passion for four wheels and an engine, but on an abundance of destruction and oodles of mayhem as well.

Put together by the peeps from DefensiveDriving.com, the infographic you can go through in the gallery below covers the symphony of destruction from Top Gear Series 1 to Series 21. We guess that Series 22 was left out because if hasn't finished airing, with the 75-minute last hurrah to be broadcast next Sunday.

From the infographic, this editor is much obliged to highlight three details. Just three because more would spoil the fun of discovering for yourself how mad the world of Top Gear truly is. First of all, 166 vehicles have been destroyed over 21 seasons. The total cost of this automotive carnage? £934,635 or $1,404,999.

Have a wild stab in the dark regarding which is the most common vehicle make destroyed by the three amigos? Nope, nope, and nope – it's Ford. Best of luck to Chris Evans and his future crew, but we have this pessimistic gut feeling the era of excess for Top Gear will come to an end with Series 22 Episode 8.

And on that bombshell, here's a bit of good news.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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