Some say he’s the Loch Ness monster, all I know is he’s called the Stig.

UPDATE #2: The section of road that the Stig was standing next to has been completely removed from Google Map’s Street View feature. You can’t even see the blurred out version of him now.

UPDATE: Google has blurred out the Stig. At first I thought it was because perhaps this was viral marketing and Google didn’t want to promote Top Gear, but then I noticed that the photo car pulled over just before the Stig. The Stig was already standing there pre-pullover, but perhaps the driver was still in on it? Hard to know for sure…

Here’s two pre-blur pictures though thanks to the Daily Mail:

A pilot for Top Gear America was filmed, but never released. Jalopnik.com is looking to change that. They’ve put up a $5000 bounty to the first person to provide them with with a copy of the episode.

Here’s hoping they succeed!

EDIT: Some pretty interesting comments on that post over at Jalopnik from a few people behind the scenes. Worth checking out if you’re bored at work.

The Daily Mail has a reputation for totally making stuff up, so be warned. However they also are often very right and the first to break things when it comes to Top Gear, so who knows.

They are reporting that a future challenge could involve attempting to drive around the world in the the oldest, most unreliable cars they can find. Being dubbed “Around The World in 80 Cars”, it would be going up on the big screen and be a long as a feature film.

However as a BBC spokesman pointed out, who would neither confirm nor deny this rumor, that finding enough time to film such a monstrous challenge could prove difficult as the boys are already incredible busy as it is.

Who knows if it’ll actually happen or not, but it certainly would be interesting if it did.

UPDATE: The Daily “Fail” has pulled the article from their site and one of our forum members has found this thread on another forum. Looks like the rumors were really old and false (not a huge surprise really).

It looks like rumors of Fifth Gear’s demise were false, or at least not 100% for sure.

Jonny Smith just tweeted the following:

Breaking news: Fifth Gear IS coming back. When more factual gossip emerges I will let you know.

Wow, such quick responses! Basically, we all know there’s room for 2 car TV shows. FG will simply be a reviews based visual car magazine.

No Top Gear chasing – just straight to business with grassroots reviewing/comparing/buying/giving away cars.

An unconfirmed account called @tiff_tv which may or may not be Tiff Needell also tweeted this:

Home to the news that, after much negotiatiing Fifth Gear looks like it will after all be returning to your screens sometime in the Spring!

If that’s true, then it looks like it was a matter of the show’s cost versus the show’s profits. Glad they got it all sorted out though as while I think most people will of course agree that Top Gear is more entertaining to watch, Fifth Gear fills it’s niche nicely by providing factual and relevant reviews, something that frankly Top Gear doesn’t do so much anymore. Great news.

If you’re one of the people who prefer watching Top Gear on the TV but can’t figure out how to get your computer hooked up to your TV, you’ll be happy to know that Top Gear season 13 will be premiering on BBC America on Monday, January 25 at 8 PM PST/EST. 24 hours after airing, the episode will be available for purchase on iTunes for just $2.

Even better, once season 13 is done airing, season 14 (the one that just finished airing last Sunday) will start airing immediately — no time off. That will be on March 15th, three months behind the UK airings (which isn’t that bad).

In other American Top Gear news, season 11 and season 12 of Top Gear will able for purchase on DVD starting this Tuesday, the 12th. Both of the previous links will take you directly to Amazon where you can pre-order them (doing so will also support this site).

Last Sunday’s Top Gear is now available in HD 1080i if you’re interested.

Seasick Steve, a blues player who is apparently rather big in the UK, was this week’s Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. TopGear.com has a video up of behind the scenes of his lap if you’re interested.

UPDATE: They’ve added two more videos.

A 550 megabyte standard definition rip was released by the Scene not long after we torrented their 720p rip, however I held off in the unlikely even that they’d also release a 700MB rip. Still no sign of one, so I’ve torrented up the 550MB rip and you can find it right here.

As for the odd size, 550 megabytes for a 60 minute show works out to about the same bitrate as 350 megabytes for a 42 minute show (one hour with commercials). Since I assume mostly people on slow Internet will be the ones downloading this SD rip, the smaller size is also an advantage. If you aren’t on slow Internet, I highly recommend the HD rip (it’s much, much better quality).

And a reminder — this is the last episode of the current season. They’ll be back sometime this summer (late June based on previous seasons). We invite you to participate in our forums meanwhile — there’s more than just Top Gear discussion there.

There’s no sign of a normal resolution rip yet, so we’re releasing the 720p rip meanwhile.

If you’re new to high definition rips and need help with playback, check out our handy guide.

I won’t bore you with excuses on why this release is so much later than I had wanted it to be, instead I’ll just provide you with a download link.