Great Article on the Car

[pinkpanther008]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIvuqD476kI

[CraigMillwardCroft]

Good article

[sfh3l]

Hey,
That is me in my 3.0csl
I was asked to do the DVD and I said fine, so long as I get to drive the car (rumour had it back then that they had just knackered the clutch on a priceless C- Type Jag). The deal was to show how cars had improved in the 30 yrs between the 3.0 CSL and the E46 M3 CSL. JC said we would start together and he reckoned the new car would do 3 laps in the time it took me to do 2 in the old one.
We set off - blind for me with no sighted lap....... JC passed me on my 5 th lap. I was quite chuffed and I think he was quite surprised.

When they sent me the DVD through the post a few months later, it was edited so that he passed me on lap 3. I was very pissed off indeed. I had struggled to fit my rebuild gearbox overnight the night before the shoot as it had been done while I was on holiday and we didn't return home till the day before and after my previous appearance on a JC production (spending a whole day hanging around waiting for 10 minutes shooting and then a "cheers and piss off") I had asked fr expenses this time around. The producer asked me at the end of the day how much I wanted and I said that £100 sounded reasonable -a tank of fuel and additives and a day out of my life. He said all he had was £60 and gave me that!

To have all of that and then have them dis the old car was a bit of a piss take I thought.

I now have an M3 CSL as well as the old car and the difference is indeed chalk and cheese. I reckon if JC was half the driver he thought he was then he probably would have made it by on lap 3! Then again, I did have Barrie (Whizzo) Williams drive me round Donington in the old car many years ago when I was there doing the CSL Track Day and with him driving we flew!

After the JC experience though, I take all of those Top Gear chases and near finishes with a real pinch of salt. What happens in real life and what shows in the final cut are very different!

Mind you, JC is a very loud advocate of the CSL. You should check out his test on the isle of Mann too, done for TG and he basically says that the CSL is the best car BMW ever built, by far.

[shimmy]

Cool story.

I think we all take the TG stuff with a bit dollop of salt

[sfh3l]

The day I was there for the shoot they also had an awesome blue Zonda for a back to back with an XJ220. The Zonda arrived on a trailer and was thrashed mercilessly up and down the runway for a couple of hours. To stand by the sheds and listen to that was something else! Mind you, I am not sure if the owner kn anything about it at all, as the guy with the trailer was just a delivery bloke!

[shane@mbtech]

TG is an entertainment show, and not very factual.

In fact its full of complete and utter bullshit. You have to sift through this, and decipher the truth from it.

A bit like newspapers. Very sensationalised.

And I would never let them anywhere near my car, not in a million years.

I do like the show and the presenters and the format as I accept it for what it is.

[mattCSLnut]

Originally Posted by sfh3l

Hey,
That is me in my 3.0csl
I was asked to do the DVD and I said fine, so long as I get to drive the car (rumour had it back then that they had just knackered the clutch on a priceless C- Type Jag). The deal was to show how cars had improved in the 30 yrs between the 3.0 CSL and the E46 M3 CSL. JC said we would start together and he reckoned the new car would do 3 laps in the time it took me to do 2 in the old one.
We set off - blind for me with no sighted lap....... JC passed me on my 5 th lap. I was quite chuffed and I think he was quite surprised.

When they sent me the DVD through the post a few months later, it was edited so that he passed me on lap 3. I was very pissed off indeed. I had struggled to fit my rebuild gearbox overnight the night before the shoot as it had been done while I was on holiday and we didn't return home till the day before and after my previous appearance on a JC production (spending a whole day hanging around waiting for 10 minutes shooting and then a "cheers and piss off") I had asked fr expenses this time around. The producer asked me at the end of the day how much I wanted and I said that £100 sounded reasonable -a tank of fuel and additives and a day out of my life. He said all he had was £60 and gave me that!

To have all of that and then have them dis the old car was a bit of a piss take I thought.

After the JC experience though, I take all of those Top Gear chases and near finishes with a real pinch of salt. What happens in real life and what shows in the final cut are very different!

Mind you, JC is a very loud advocate of the CSL. You should check out his test on the isle of Mann too, done for TG and he basically says that the CSL is the best car BMW ever built, by far.

A good friend of mine had a very similar, poor experience with J.C. few years ago who nearly fried the clutch on my friends Porsche 928 GTS. J.C. forgot that the 928 has a Dog Leg manual 5 speed (similar pattern of the E30 M3) and started from standstill in 2nd gear, thinking it was 1st. D'oh
p.s. the clutch survived but they forgot to edit the clutch smoke coming out from under the 928 in the final cut of the DVD

[sfh3l]

What Yanto says below is so true though. These guys turn up in the middle of the morning (well after I was there), they smoke a load of fags and drink loads of coffee, crack a few jokes with each other and the stooges like me that they have in for the day and then go out and thrash the t1ts of someone else's car. What's not to like about that job I ask?!

Seriously, the Zonda I saw there was absoluetly gorgeous, and immaculate inside and out. It was wheeled off the trailer oh so carefully and pushed into place and then JC just got into it and thrashed it mercilessly, from cold, up the track! The M3 CSL used in this video was the same thing, delivered by BMW at the beginning of the day and driven very hard all day and then sent back home for someone else to pay for.

Most of us work hard, save hard and buy these cars once or twice in a lifetime and look after them as a result. JC gets to drive them all like he was on Blackbird Lees and all he has to pay for is the lardy SL he drives home every day. I suppose we need to be thankful that at least he likes the M3 CSL and said good things about it - imagine him borrowing someone's car, wragging it and handing it back knackered, only to say on live TV that he thought it was a miserable car.

I suppose I am only jealous really......

[Streetwise Hercules]

Originally Posted by sfh3l

You should check out his test on the isle of Mann too, done for TG and he basically says that the CSL is the best car BMW ever built, by far.

Also listen to his comments on the gearbox, not exactly what he said in this clip. Nor his comments on the acceleration.

The guy is an arse who's success has grossly exceeded his talent and, as has already been said, TG is entertainment (sometimes), nothing else.

[sfh3l]

Originally Posted by Streetwise Hercules

The guy is an arse who's success has grossly exceeded his talent .

Having met him, I couldn't agree more