May 24, 2004
Clarkson's £100 Transport Challenge
Further to Clarkson's Great Race, Top Gear last night featured another (supposed) blow to public transport, using the almighty car as its weapon of choice. But it was really much more than that: It was a ringing endorsement of the free market.
Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear co-presenters, James May and Richard Hammond, were each given £100 with which to buy a car. It had to be taxed and tested, but otherwise they were free to purchase what they liked. Clarkson opted for an ugly Volvo, May for an Audi, and Hammond for a GTI...a Rover GTI, which was greeted with much derision by Clarkson and May. ("Ha ha ha! A Rover! Ha ha ha! A bleedin' Rover!" -- repeat ad nauseam.) Apart from being unattractive in the extreme, the cars really were in surprisingly good nick -- especially considering that they each cost less than £100.
Of course, Clarkson and co used this as an opportunity to rubbish trains. They calculated that a return train ticket from London to Manchester costs £182, a number to which we might all take exception. That's the price of a standard open return, whereas a saver return for off-peak travel would be £52.10. But I'm willing to let that slide, because if you compare the cost of deciding on the spur-of-the-moment to drive to Manchester with the cost of deciding on the spur-of-the-moment to catch the train to Manchester, and figure in the convenience that driving allows...Well, let's not get hung up on those numbers.
The fact is, for under £100 they got three cars, fully tested and taxed, that got them to Manchester and back. I believe that it was at one point stated that, even with fuel and the cost of the M6 toll road (oh, that glorious M6 toll road -- another post altogether), it still worked out at under £100 for each car and its journey northward and back. That strikes me as pretty good going and, leaving aside the question of the value of public transport, should please any supporter of the free market, in transport or otherwise.
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Yes, it was a remarkable vindication of the motor car.
Having said that, Clarkson did point out that the reason his Volvo was so cheap (£1) (or was it Hammond?) was because of the EU's recycling laws. In the past the scrap dealer paid you. Now, you pay him.
Do you really think the Volvo 700s and the Audi 80s are ugly? Looks wise they are two of my favorite cars ever.
Patrick, I only watched the first 20 minutes or so of the show, so I must have missed that bit about the EU thingy. Bloody figures.
And yes, I really think they are hideous things, especially the Volvo. I am somewhat picky, though. I don't even rate the Charger, looks-wise. At all.
"Ha ha ha! A Rover! Ha ha ha! A bleedin' Rover!"
I have a Rover.
C***s.
It hurts because it's true, Andy. (Not that my opinion counts for anything -- see above re the Charger.)
Some points, if I may:
- Rover-bashing is a tiresome habit.
- The Volvo was not roadworthy in the first place as its speedometer was not working.
- This is a false comparison as you cannot make a spur-of-the-moment decision to drive if you have to spend time and effort to buy a car first, whereas you can simply go to your nearest staffed station, by a ticket and catch the next available train.
This is a false comparison as you cannot make a spur-of-the-moment decision to drive if you have to spend time and effort to buy a car first, whereas you can simply go to your nearest staffed station, by a ticket and catch the next available train.
Don't be silly. You only have to go out and buy a car once, not every time you wish to travel.
As for the Volvo's speedometer, I missed that part, but it doesn't affect the Audi or the Rover.
And Rover-bashing may be tiresome, but gosh, it's still amusing, not least because it still gets a reaction out of some people. All in good fun.
Rover-bashing was never that amusing and the joke (which was so weak anyway) has long since worn thin.
The Top Gear test was to buy and run a car for under £100 for their trip to Manchester and back. Therefore all comparisons with other forms of transport should be on a like-for-like basis - which in this case means including the costs of the extra time required to buy the cars in question. Also, don't forget the cars were crashed afterwards, so they couldn't exactly be reused.
yes, let's hear it for spurious back of the fag packet economics by petrol heads...
now, if you would like to add in the social and environmental externalities, then we might get a sensible discussion going.
Well the cars would have gone to the scrapheap anyway so, infact, they *were* reused. They did 500miles more than they otherwise would have.
Which brings us to "social and environmental externalities".
I'm not much of a people person so, for me anyway, sitting in my own company, in a car, with a radio (provided it's got one), and, therefore, avoiding social externalities is a plus point.
Environmentally, well a phenomenal percentage of the energy used in a car's life time is during its manufacture. Getting another 500miles out of the beast raises its energy efficiency upwards a smidgen if anything.
It sounds about face at first but the most environmentally friendly make of car ever is Rolls Royce. Even those big gas guzzlers. The reason is because something like three-quarters of Rolls Royces ever made are still drivable on the road.
Permalink
IN BRIEF
November 23, 2004
'Captain commuter' wins Sydney a free day on the trains
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Darling's saver ticket for slow-train Britain
- he's going to do everything but close them
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November 21, 2004
Tollroads Jamaican style
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November 20, 2004
Postive externalities come to DC
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Railways safer than ever
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Is graffiti art?
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Book review
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One airline, 4 crashes, 8 dead: the real price of sugar snap peas in November
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November 17, 2004
British Transport Films Collection DVD Volume One
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- Elizabethan Express (1954)
- Train Time (1952)
- Rail 150 (1975)
- Diesel Train Driver (1959)
- On Track for the 80's (1980)
- Cybernetica (1972)
- Disc 2 - Off The Rails
- Under the River (1959)
- Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (1955)
- This Year - London (1951)
- This is York (1953)
- The Great Highway (1966)
- A Day of One's Own (1955)
- John Betjeman Goes By Train (1962)
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November 15, 2004
Crossrail website
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November 11, 2004
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November 08, 2004
TV Alert
"When trains crash", 1930 Channel 5 tonight. Talk about timing
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November 07, 2004
Ufton Nervet crash
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November 06, 2004
One person dead as train derails
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November 04, 2004
FirstGroup wants to add the tracks to its trains
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November 02, 2004
Car charge to rise to £6
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October 30, 2004
Psst wanna buy a railway station?
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October 26, 2004
'Kart Vader'
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Spotted by Jay Jardine.
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October 24, 2004
The downside of auto-mobile bans
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Councils ban shrines to road crash victims
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October 20, 2004
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Wikipedia accuracy under fire
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Glossary?
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October 19, 2004
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October 14, 2004
New comment on old posting
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Out now: DVD version of leaves on the line
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October 13, 2004
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October 11, 2004
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October 05, 2004
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October 04, 2004
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October 03, 2004
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Omedetō gozaimasu!
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October 02, 2004
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October 01, 2004
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All for sprawl
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Underground maps as art
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September 30, 2004
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Europe by train
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Carpool lanes = communist gulags
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September 29, 2004
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September 27, 2004
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September 26, 2004
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those EU bastards, I tell you
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Tilting trains are rubbish
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Delays plummet by 28%
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September 25, 2004
New glossary item
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Scant improvement in train times
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September 22, 2004
EU plan will hit safe women drivers
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Unions gang up to demand railway renationalisation
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September 21, 2004
Top car makers support road-jam charging
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Journey times cut as 125mph tilting train sets record
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September 18, 2004
ABD calls for environmental audit of public transport
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Camera Partnerships must come clean on real causes of accidents
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September 16, 2004
The Green Quadratic
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September 14, 2004
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Speeding Britons fined in car race to Spain
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MPs to lose free airport parking
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The case against driving licences
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September 10, 2004
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September 08, 2004
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Privatize the roads! Liberate the streets! All we have to lose are our parking tickets!
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M6 Toll hits 10m journey mark
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September 07, 2004
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September 06, 2004
Swedish farmer fined 1,211 kronor for illegally parking a snowmobile in Warwick
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September 03, 2004
Hidden costs do not justify the level of tax on petrol in Britain
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Shovelling cash
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Alistair Morton, builder of the Channel Tunnel, is dead
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Government 'willed' Railtrack to fail
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Historic Amsterdam tram photos
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September 02, 2004
London Underground Map
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Electric v steam
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Freight or passenger in the US?
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September 01, 2004
Fares and charge up in London
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'Fair fines' planned for speeding drivers
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Railtrack is cleared over Hatfield crash
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August 31, 2004
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Prague trams
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97% of accidents within speed limit
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August 22, 2004
Prosecute motorway lane hogs
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August 20, 2004
Radio tags for congestion charge?
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World's longest road opens
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Sprawl is cheap
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August 19, 2004
Strike threat to BA and Eurostar
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Toll roads are safer
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Peking metro to hit 1000km mark
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August 15, 2004
Squander Two calmly talks about speed cameras
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Parking anarchy in St Albans
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The future of transport
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Trains less efficient than cars
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Ferry solution, please
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August 14, 2004
Drink less, speed less, save on insurance
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...
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Yes, it was a remarkable vindication of the motor car.
Having said that, Clarkson did point out that the reason his Volvo was so cheap (£1) (or was it Hammond?) was because of the EU's recycling laws. In the past the scrap dealer paid you. Now, you pay him.
Do you really think the Volvo 700s and the Audi 80s are ugly? Looks wise they are two of my favorite cars ever.
Posted by Patrick Crozier on May 24, 2004