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Clarkson Loses Mind: Calls ZR1 "a Masterpiece"
Clarkson Loses Mind: Calls ZR1
November 14 2008 06:18:20 PM EST
Just as we thought it would, the ZR1 made an appearance on Top Gear last weekend when Clarkson and Co. drove from San Francisco to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

If you've ever heard Jeremy Clarkson review a Corvette (especially the Z06,) you'll know that while he does respect it for its abilities on a track, he's too tender to live with one every day - just fast forward to 4:00 in this review to see what we mean. So when the 3 Top Gear presenters decided to review 3 American "Muscle" Cars by driving them over 600 miles in the American desert, we were disappointed to see Jeremy leaning on the hood of the ZR1 - Richard Hammond generally has more of an open mind towards American muscle.

It's not that we really care what Jeremy Clarkson himself thinks of Corvette, but his opinion represents a biased Europinion and when he doesn't like a car it's for the same reason as others.

24 minutes and 7 seconds into the show however, something amazing happened... Now, his hand was over his mouth so we weren't entirely sure if he actually said this but "I'm starting to like this Corvette" sounded like it came out of Jeremy's mouth.

Then, later in the program, while driving up a winding mountain road Jeremy Clarkson commended the car for its simple traction control: On or Off, and "proper manual gearbox, none of those stupid flappy paddles." "Well done fat men from Kentucky, this is a masterpiece!" said the fat man from Britain.

...So it sounds like he was impressed. He also made a comment about the car being surprisingly docile until you put your foot down - an improvement to his issue with the Z06.

Unfortunately there was no specific review of the Corvette, and since they were in America for their test, no hot lap by the Stig. Hopefully later in the season they'll get to try it out on their own track to see what it can really do like they did with the Nissan GTR last season after driving it in Japan.

While new episodes of Top Gear aren't shown on BBC America, there are still ways of getting them. New episodes air Sundays at 8pm GMT.