Previously the only decent quality rips of the current edition of Top Gear season 1 were from a channel called BBC Prime. They weren’t the best quality and were shorter than a normal episode due to the removal of some content.

However the season just finished re-airing yesterday on the SBS network in Australia and we are glad to announce that much better quality rips are now available.

So go download them and see how the show restarted in it’s new format. You’ll surely enjoy them and it should help with the wait until the next new season of Top Gear starts sometime this summer.

Richard was having stomach pains earlier this week and it was discovered that he had appendicitis and needed surgery. However, rather than skip a prior commitment to meet some fans who had won a lunch with him, he pushed back the surgery by two hours.

The surgery went smoothly thankfully, but surgeons discovered Richard also had kidney stones and a hernia. He’ll be having the stones removed sometime next week.

He’s now at home recovering meanwhile with his wife and kids. He should be fully recovered soon.

[Sources: The Sun and The Mirror]

The following video is from SPEED’s video podcast and features a little bit of Adam Carolla behind the wheel of the new Pontiac G8. It’s rather short and features horrible music, but it’s a decent look at what Adam might be like on Gear and his skills at being funny on the fly.

Thanks to Christian for the tip.

UPDATE: Someone uploaded some of the actual show to YouTube. It’s really poor quality (cam of a TV it looks like), but it has a lot more of Adam.

After the huge success of the first Melbourne meet, our Australian forum members have decided to have another one. It will on May 4th and will take place in Gippsland. Anyone and everyone are welcome to come and details can be found on our forums.

After a 3 week break, Clarkson’s column is back. This latest one is about his trip to America and El Toro (presumably since he’s a consultant for “Gear”) and the Callaway Corvette C6 he drove while he was here.

Top Gear is screened all over the world, from remote Himalayan villages to the bullet-ridden boulevards of Lebanon. It is a genuine, bona fide export success. But in the US it is watched only by half a handful of expats who diligently follow BBC America, and a few torrentists on the interweb.

A great read as usual.

As you may know, Top Gear is currently only shot in SD (standard definition) except for the Polar Special which was a one-off. The UK is only now starting to really make the switch to HD and existing shows are always the last to switch.

Richard revealed in his Mirror.co.uk column though that the “next” season of Top Gear will be shot in HD. Now I’m not sure if by “next” he means the one they are filming now I assume (season 11) or the one that will air this fall (season 12), but either way, this is totally awesome.

We’ll be doing our best to get HD rips out alongside the 700MB SD rips.

The American Top Gear already has two presenters — Adam Carolla and Tanner Foust. However, they still don’t have (or at least have announced) the third presenter.

So, for fun and maybe more (we already know Andy Wilman, the executive producer of Top Gear, reads our forums so I wouldn’t be surprised if some people at NBC are too), let’s speculate and suggest who should fill that third slot on the show.

If you’re interested, we have a thread going on our forums. So please, post your thoughts!

Plans to turn Dunsfold Park and it’s runways into a housing development have been proposed before, but squashed by locals concerned about increased traffic. Or so we thought.

Seems the plans aren’t dead as they, or similar ones, have recently been submitted to borough council. The plans include 2,600 houses and other amenities.

If the houses were to be built, this would obviously mean that Top Gear would have to move as they need their hangar and runways.

Luckily, the general consensus on our forums is that like in previous years, any plans for building there will fail because the residents won’t want the extra traffic.

We can all sigh in relief.

As you may know, the BBC posts some Top Gear segments on YouTube. They are a great way to easily get people who had never heard of the show hooked on it. Sadly though, they usually had embedding disabled (a handy feature).

Today though they posted 11 more clips, all with embedding enabled. A great sign that they’ll hopefully continue doing so.

However, if you’re a true fan of the show living outside of the UK, you know there’s only one real way to watch Top Gear and I’m not talking about YouTube or BBC America (which cuts out parts to make room for commercials). ;)

The Truth About Cars is saying that rally racer, drifter, and stunt driver Tanner Foust will be one of the hosts of the American Top Gear. If you were like me and had never heard of him before, watch this video of him hosting a show on SPEED.

They also are reporting that Dan Neil will no longer be involved with the American Top Gear.

But the big news here is that NBC execs pulled L.A. Times auto writer Dan Neil from the U.S. show after a viewing his audition tape — despite a signed contract with the Pulitzer prize-winning critic. Neil says he’s “very disappointed” with the network’s decision, but understands their motivation. “They couldn’t handle my heat,” he joked. “Seriously. It’s probably because I’m not very good on TV.”

In addition, the article addresses some of the concerns we’ve been having about advertisers.

Neil also reveals that NBC and the BBC are aware that aping the original Top Gear’s no-holds-barred reviewing style could piss off the media company’s automotive advertisers — and devised a solution. “They’re writing around the problem, by not doing car reviews unless they really love the car.”

I seriously hope that’s a joke because making fun of cars is one of the things that makes Top Gear great. Then again, we have to face the reality that the whole reason NBC exists is due to advertisers, so they aren’t exactly going to want to piss them off. So, I guess not reviewing the crap cars is better than no show at all.

Thanks to jnelcar for the tip.