Even though Top Gear is currently off the air, there’s still some good stuff on television.

If you’re downloading any of the season packs and are getting slow speeds, then here’s who to blame: the people the download it (100%) and then stop the torrent in their client.

Take the season 4 pack for example — there are currently 76 seeders and 715 peers. However, at least 348 people have completed the torrent. That means nearly 275 people have downloaded it and then not returned the favor by seeding for a while. Even if it’s a slow upload, every bit helps.

So if you’re one of those hit and runners, please be nice the community and continue uploading for a few days rather than being a dick. Thanks.

High quality rips made from the original airings are now available for season 4 of Top Gear.

These are 700MB rips and are of comparable quality to rips from this last season (i.e. very good). Since they were ripped from the original airings, they also feature the original music rather than generic synthesized replacement music which is usually added to reairings due to licensing issues. If you’re a collector of Top Gear, then these rips are a must have.

Season 3 of Top Gear is now available as one torrent. The source of these rips are BBC Prime which means unfortunately the rips feature replaced music, but the quality of video and audio are better than the original rips from back in the day by Vuk (when filesizes needed to be smaller). For most people, this is a worthy tradeoff.

The site may not look that different initially, but the entire backend of the non-news parts of the site have been recoded from scratch. The season listings and episode listings have been completely redesigned and now many feature screenshots from the episodes.

I still have some tweaking left to do over the next 24 hours or so such as displaying the ratings for each episode, but the main things should be up and running now (done!). Any bugs though should be reported via this thread on our forums. That’s also the place for any feedback.

I hope you enjoy the new features!

Oh, and thanks to everyone that helped out making screenshots of the episodes for the wiki as well as Blayde for making the season banners!

Within the past day or so, Top Gear episodes have started popping up in the Gran Turismo TV area of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on the Playstation 3. I currently only see 6×01, 6×02, and 6×04, but there are reports of there being more.

The episodes are currently available for US$0.99 a piece and after you buy them, they are available to watch for a period of 2 weeks before being automatically deleted. Prices are rumored to go up after this initial promotional period. It is unknown what the new prices will be.

It is also unknown whether these episodes feature the original music and no cut content, but my guess is that they’re similar to the BBC World rips and have replaced music and some cut content such as the news. Please let me know if you buy one and figure out what music and content is in the episodes and what kinda quality they are.

While this is great in that it will hopefully further the awareness of Top Gear, I personally find it a bit of a shame that they expire after two weeks. It would have been much cooler if they didn’t, even if the cost was a bit more.

Yep, that’s right. Our last small batch of T-shirts was so popular that we’re doing a second batch. For those that haven’t seen it, here’s the design of the shirt (note that the shirt is red even though the image is slightly pink):

If you’d like one (or more), please visit this thread on our forums. The more shirts that get ordered, the cheaper they get for everyone. The target price is $16/shirt. Shipping is $5 to the United States ($8 for 2, $11 for 3), $10 to Canada, and $12 internationally. You only have until August 8th to order, so don’t wait!

TopGear.com has posted quite a bit more content that didn’t make it to air.

• 11×06 News Uncut
• Jeremy and Jay Kay talk cars

Thanks to Laba and narf for the tips!

For those that are interested, here’s some footage from the 24 Hours of LeMons race over the weekend in South Carolina. This footage, shot by Quiky, is of Team Salazar Racing’s E30 BMW 3-Series being crushed after being elected “The People’s Curse”.

This video is also available in 720p HD WMV format. More videos coming soon.