TG SUMMER GAMES
Welcome, readers, to the big one. After all, 350 editions of TopGear magazine calls for a celebration like no other. as much as the budget will allow. Which means four cars for Or the princely sum of £350 each. This is the TG Summer Games
Forget the Euros, forget Wimbledon, forget the Olympics... the biggest sporting event of the year is here
Welcome to the most prestigious and hotly anticipated sporting event of 2021. You can forget the Euros, the Olympics, Wimbledon, the Gold Cup, the Tour de France and the Open Championship, because here, in a small ex-quarry in Lincolnshire, UK, true sporting endeavour is about to be manifest. Reputations will be forged in the crucible of competition, egos tempered in the heat of sudden and violent head gasket failure.
Briefly, the TopGear Summer Games features a full pentathletic programme of woefully ill-defined contests recognisable to any sports fan, and involves completing each one in a secondhand vehicle bought and modified for just £350. The teams will represent their favourite nations and consist of a broad spread of global superpowers: Britain, Germany, Japan and the USA.
Now, you’d think that the idea would be obvious: the knack being to purchase an all-rounder capable of scoring points in as many events as possible. A theory ignored by the British team, who turned up in a black cab that was sporting dual rear wheels and an automatic gearbox with a torque converter made of phlegm. Germany arrived in a respectable looking Audi A6 on studded tyres, which caused apprehension, until everyone realised that it was devoid of Audi’s quattro drivetrain and appeared to be vomiting the ghosts of dead catalytic converters from its exhaust pipe.
Japan, on paper, looked to be in the best shape, having acquired a Mazda MX-5 – the most obviously athletic car here. A car that officials noted to be suspiciously cheap, bought from a ‘mate’, and whose ‘receipt’ appeared to a) be in the team captain’s handwriting and b) not a receipt. But it was the American team who seemed to have interpreted the rules most creatively, presenting a Ford Ka supermini on off-road tyres, on the premise that Ford is an American company and ‘AmeriKa’ was a viable pun. Still, it’s hard to break rules when there aren’t any.
But as the opening ceremony drew to a close with the words “Why is the editor wearing a spandex full-body condom?” ringing out across the amphitheatre of dreams, it was time to begin. And so, with the stage set, in the words of that man that does the introductions at WWE... Let’s get ready to rumble*.
*And then clatter. And then quite possibly catch fire.