Andy Wilman, the executive producer of Top Gear, has blogged about this past year, FinalGear.com, and the budget cut facing them for 2009 and what they’re going to do about it.

[...] personally I think the Summer run was patchy – didn’t find its feet until the Shit Alfas film in show 3, but rocked from then on – I mean Japan, TG versus the Germans – quality stuff there. As for this just finished Autumn run, I was crapping myself going into it cos we only had eight weeks to prepare, but in the end I’m very happy with it.

I think Star in a Car found its feet again after the less than successful “Two at a Time” experiment. All it takes is good guests really, and people of Boris’s calibre are just that. So we’ll continue SIARPC in this vein for a while (probably should change the car though) and I know that will annoy some of the Final Gearheads, but lads, we can’t make all of this show for you, and whilst I am genuinely interested to know what a 19 year old Skyline fanatic in Oregon thinks of the Japan race, at the end of the day I’m not that bothered about his opinion on Harry Enfield.

Make sure to read the full article for the rest.

A little late, but that’s alright. Go grab it right here (make sure to refresh the page at Mininova if you’re getting an invalid ID error). Note this is the last episode of the season and the show will be back sometime next year, probably sometime around June.

Just a quick reminder to make sure to come back here later today to snag a copy of the 75 minute Top Gear special from Vietnam. Word on the street is it’ll be very good.

Fifth Gear will be back earlier than expected on January 12th 5th. Details of the episode can be found on our forums.

UPDATE: Fifth Gear will be back the 5th, not the 12th.

Andy Wilman, the executive producer of Top Gear, has written a blog post about the upcoming 75-minute Vietnam special airing this Sunday. No major spoilers or anything and it’s well worth the read. He talks about why it has an extra 15 minutes and what kind of show to look forward to.

Oh, and don’t worry, we’ll be having plenty of “bits and torrents” this Sunday.

Just a reminder that no Top Gear episode is airing today. They’re off for the holidays as of last week. However a 75 minute Vietnam special will air on December 28th, so make sure to come back here next Sunday for that episode.

The pilot episode of Top Gear Russia has been filmed and photos have leaked. According to myTopGear.ru, the site who has been breaking all of this Top Gear Russia news, it will air on February 22nd.

Those TopGear.com videos didn’t stay region free for too long — they’re blocked once again. However, there is a little trick you can use to get around the UK-only limiter.

CarAdvice.com.au has the very 1990’s-style “Behind The Wheel” pilot, an Australian automotive TV show hosted by the new Top Gear Australia host, James Morrison. This was long before Top Gear came to Australia (I assume) and long before the current format of Top Gear.

Here’s the first part, the other 2 parts are at their site.

If you ignore the 90’s-ness of it, he’s actually not half bad.

If you have BBC America, you may have been watching season 11 of Top Gear on Monday nights at 8PM. What you may have not realized though is that about 24 hours after it airs on BBC America, the episode is available on iTunes. The episodes are $1.99 a piece, or $9.99 for all 6 episodes (buy 5, get one free). Not bad.