Cape Town - Not all women are uninterested in cars. Not all men are interested in cars.
But generally, there is a gender divide. My son Jak, seemingly by osmosis, can identify any car on the road as it whizzes past. My husband knows exactly which model of ancient British motorbike he would buy if he could. I care about only one thing: I want my car to start every time I turn the key. And then I want it to proceed along the road until I reach my destination.
Which is why I love my 20-year-old Honda Ballade.
And that is where I would part company with former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson. He has only contempt for safe, boring and reliable Hondas.
I know this because I have sat through many, many episodes of Top Gear, which is watched endlessly by the dudes in my house. I never had much time for long and loving reviews of supercars but I loved the sillier sketches (putting dogs in boots, for instance, or dropping caravans from dizzy heights). I liked the star in a reasonably priced car. I liked the long and ridiculous road trips. And I liked all those things because I found Clarkson, Hammond and May endearing. They were possibly the best examples of “guyness” ever seen on television.
The definition of guyness in our house comes from the book Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys. In Barry's world, most people with male genitalia are not in fact men. They are guys. Who like neat stuff, really pointless challenges, and who are not good at communicating their feelings, assuming they have any.
Guys also don't grasp the the Basic Human Moral Code, says Barry. This code “was invented by women millions of years ago when all the guys were out engaging in some other activity, such as seeing who could burp the loudest. When they came back, there were certain rules that they were expected to follow unless they wanted to get into Big Trouble, and they have been trying to follow these rules ever since, with extremely irregular results.”
I am fond of guys, as you can probably tell, and that made me fond of Clarkson, May and Hammond. I have also always admired Clarkson's cleverness, even if his temper could clearly do with some reining in.
The new incarnation of Top Gear, fronted by British TV presenter Chris Evans and American actor Matt Matt LeBlanc, hit DStv channel BBC Brit on Wednesday night and I was on the couch to suss it out.
The big challenge
The challenge for Evans and Le Blanc is twofold - to be as entertaining as the previous trio (who had years to hone their characters and their delivery of the script, so that they appeared to be completely natural in their relationships - and in fact were ad libbing a lot of the time, I feel sure) and also to satisfy people who really are interested in cars.
I can't speak to the latter - I have no idea what torque is - but I have some thoughts about their entertainment quotient.
Le Blanc was smoother than Evans, as he should be, being an actor rather than someone who originally started in radio. Their banter was sometimes stilted, and often it didn't feel as though they genuinely had a relationship.
They have the general idea though: the sketch in which Le Blanc outruns paparazzi in a little orange offroad car was really amusing, and the sight of a drag queen leaping into a Jeep on a beach in Blackpool was in the best traditions of the show.
There were some changes to traditions - the reasonably priced car has now become a rally Mini Cooper, and the lap involves mud puddles. These changes I could live with, though at first it did feel as if imposters were playing with the Top Gear toys.
Where it went wrong
One moment was jarring though. In the US vs UK race to the top of a boggy mountain, in which a three-wheeled Reliant has to be towed to the summit, Evans cheats by pulling a door off and winning without actually towing the car to the top. So far, so good. This is exactly the sort of disregard of the Basic Human Moral Code that makes Top Gear so subversive and attractive.
But then he and his team help Le Blanc push his failing vehicle to the top, and everybody cheers. This is simply not what a guy would do. Perhaps Evans and Le Blanc are changing the formula, or perhaps they don't understand that Top Gear was fuelled by a healthy contempt for social proprieties. Either way, that moment felt plain wrong.
The new show sticks to the formula of the old without really understanding the dynamics that drove it. If Evans and Le Blanc are feeling their way to their own formula, I'm prepared to give them some time. But if that dynamic involves them being nice to each other, I'm not sure the show will survive.
I will keep watching to see the show it evolve, if only to marvel at Evans's outfits. Here, the new show outdoes the old by far: it did not seem possible that anyone could dress worse than Jeremy Clarkson. But he does.
IOL
@reneemoodie