The seventh episode of the third series of Top Gear aired on the 14th of December, 2003. It was presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The White Stig. Rory Bremner was the guest star. It was the 27th episode overall.
Synopsis[]
This episode has a bit of a 'German theme', Clarkson notes, with him going on to reference Kraftwerk and Grundig in the opening studio shot.
Tonight...[]
- Richard drives the new McLaren Mercedes...
- [Jeremy] tr[ies] Birmingham's latest head banger...
- And we stage the first ever Top Gear Boffin Burnout.
In later broadcasts and on streaming services, the Tonight sequence comments are replaced with new comments (the McLaren Mercedes comment is repeated), including Jeremy most notably mentioning that Today... the new lines are as follows;
- [Jeremy] go[es] offroad in Porsche's new 4x4...
- Richard drives the new McLaren Mercedes...
- And we find the best of British.
Airing History[]
Series 3, Episode 7 originally aired on the 14th of December, 2003, on BBC 2 and at the unusual timeslot of 7:00 PM, which caused the presenters to miss the episode. It was then regularly reshown on channels such as BBC Prime and UKTV People throughout the mid '00s, along with the rest of Series 3, before indefinitely ending up as a permanent fixture on Dave from the channel's 2007 debut onwards, albeit in a cut 45-minute version. It would later appear on streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and IPlayer.
Episode Names[]
Though never given a name upon its original airing, much like every other episode of Top Gear, two slightly different names were retrospectively applied to the episode by the BBC years later:
- Top Gear's section on BBC's website calls it "The Big Boffin Burnout".
- Top Gear's own website calls it "The one with the Big Boffin Burn-Out".
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