Fifth Gear Test the VXR8
June 24, 2007 by George Skentzos
Short of the return season of Top Gear later this year, our latest insight into how Europe (or England at least) have reacted to our bargain bruiser – the HSV Clubsport R8 E Series – comes in the form of a Fifth Gear road test.
For the most part you may just want to hum quietly to yourself while she talks. On the bright side, she does seem to like power and pure driving pleasure offered by the Clubsport – amazing considering it was “based on the Holden HSV”. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding when they translated the brochure from Australian to English?
For the Ford fans out there, you will just have to wait until Top Gear get their hands on a Typhoon, which may just be sooner than you think.
Print it: 
The segment where she goes on about gaining momentum around the bend and flooring it on the straight is such a rip off of TopGears’ Bugatti run (with May).. never really liked this show with those goofy presenters. One of their presenters is an absolute tool, (in their season 11) he was trying to achive top speed in some mercedes on the autobahn and because of traffic he couldn’t, not professional at all in his presentation and would frequently curse lol.
Bring on TopGear season 11!
The show she’s in must be called “Bottom Gear”
Seems she can steer a bit, but you’d have to bag n gag her or you’d go insane within about, ah, 5 seconds…..
About Fifth Gear – Three of the presenters were in fact Top Gear presenters for years before the BBC pulled the show.
The producer, Richard Pearson offered to buy the name and take the show to Channel Five but the BBC said no. Clarkson had gone off to write books and other gigs.
Pearson took all three presenters (at the same time the BBC got scared and offered Clarkson a shed load of GBP to do another series) over to channel Five and kicked off Fifth Gear with a lot less budget than Top Gear (200K GBP per episode).
Fifth Gear still gets over 1.5 milion viewers per ep and is only available in 80% of British households.
and for the record, Fifth Gears Tiff Needell amd Vicki Butler Henderson can out-steer anyone from Top Gear on their worst day. Both of them have been successful race drivers – especially Tiff.
“and for the record, Fifth Gears Tiff Needell amd Vicki Butler Henderson can out-steer anyone from Top Gear on their worst day”
Yup, spot on. On the old top gear it worked a bit like a double act. Jeremy was there for the humour, and Tiff was there for the serious driving.
But I love to see JC take the VXR8 out for a spin. The only thing I could find that was remotely close was this with Stigs:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHVwt4d3AuI
But more importantly i’ll get my comment in now, because i’m guessing this thread will hit 0-100 comments in 4.9 days :)
HaHa a Vauxhall XR8 I cracked up when I saw the name.
I don’t think Holden had a part in naming this one… or did they?
I’m not a Holden/HSV fan, but it’s good to see the big Aussie hold it’s own overseas.
Strange that she gave credit at the end to Vauxhall for buidling the HSV R8 and not Holden or HSV.
It’s good to see they haven’t bastradized the front of the car as the Yanks did with Manaro.
LOL, I saw this video over the weekend on Ford Forum.
Hubby asked what I thought.Well I don’t mince words when it comes to my dislike on VE’s but I thought Vicki did a great job impressing me with that car. Hubby said he’s of to sell the GT ………RIGHT !
Loved the old 5th gear shows.
Looking forward to the new Top Gear episode season 8 on the 2.7.07 .
I cringe everytime I hear the word Vauxhall.
For gods sake couldnt HSV/Holden send it over badged as a Holden or HSV.
By the way, I should e-mail clarkson and tell him while the average Brit was driving their poxy Triumph Toledos and Hillmans around- we were driving our Aussie Premiers and Fairmonts. I’m sure as hell glad I wasn’t born and bought up around Pom cars like this garbage and what about their “panda (cop) cars”
from the same era? Garbage like Escort Populars and rotten 1100s.
while tiff and vicki might be better drivers, doesn’t naturally mean they are better presenters. Clarkson and his fellow presenters are the more creative ones, just the flow of TopGear, even though I’m sure its scripted but just the way its presented with that natural charisma and flow is brilliant. The races they have in TopGear, the stunts they do.
I go so much quarter of the way through an episode of fifith gear and it makes me wonder, why did I bother in the first place. Last I read online too, TopGear got the more better vote almost everywhere I could search on google :thumbsup:
I thought this was about how good the VXR8 was rated,bloody good by her ,……..I thought anyway, and I dont even like them. Vicki rocks!!
Not saying Top Gear is crap,but its marketed a lot better world wide. 5TH GEAR is the original though.
Fifth Gear’s budget is approx half that of Top Gear mention the bank vault the BBC is paying Clarkson to hang around.
I also enjoy Top Gear and yes I find both Clarkson and Hammond more entertaining than Tiff and his mates but Vicki is also entertaining.
Actually Bavarian Missile, Top Gear is the original. Top Gear was canceled after poor ratings which many credit to the loss of Jeremy Clarkson. When restarting the series, the BBC wouldn’t allow the use of the title ‘Top Gear’, hence 5th Gear was born.
QUOTE = I cringe everytime I hear the word Vauxhall.
For gods sake couldnt HSV/Holden send it over badged as a Holden or HSV.
Yeah Im sure the yanks would have also said the same thing when they came to Australia, couldnt they have just called it General Motors!!! Its called branding, fools people into thinking the car is a local.
As for the review, I dont watch much of Fifth Gear mainly Top Gear… nice car though that General Motors R8.
What is it with the “Australian == crude” nonsense? Lost me right there, and I’m hardly a F/H bigot.
the britsh better be ready for 6.2 liters of v8 muscle.
bye bye bmw there is new kids on the block
Wanna see the F6 go over there and see what they think of that!! No longer will they say how little hp/litre we produce. To be honest I gotta wonder why HSV cant consider making their own V8 engine that focuses more on revs than torque. Surely a good 4.5L HSV V8 with a modern overhead cam set-up could torque the chassis along whilst providing plenty of high-rev entertainment. Even a modern road- version of the 5.0L V8 supercar engine might fit the bill. This will also give Australia a chance to veer away from the outdated and nonsense Americans who haven’t seemed to grasp the fact that not everything is about saving the most dollars. Holden with their belief of building good cars cheaply does seem to work well and of course keeps the price down but surely there can be some more impressive sophisticated engineering involved that can leave the Americans begging for our technology.