FTR's Email to Top Gear

Anybody in the UK who saw BBC2's Top Gear programme do a slot on Hot Rodding probably feel the same way as us about what was said. We sent an Email to the programme telling them what we thought of it !!

Below is a copy of the Email sent, and under that is the reply. Did they read our Email ? Did they take up the challenge ? NO !! We think not ......

Read for yourself and make your own decision .........

From  Adrian Murray

Date  29th February 2000  23:16

To  topgear@bbc.co.uk

Subject  "Mr Wilson's" Hot Rodding Feature

What on earth was he on about, that there's no Hot Rodding scene in the UK. Don't you do any research before you're programmes ? There are thousands of hot rodders in the UK who obviously don't exist !!

You showed cars out of the SoCal Speed Shop, well, at the big Hot Rod show in the UK in 1999 the owners and founders of SoCal Speed Shop, Pete Chapouris and Alex Xydias, came to our show and were very impressed. It's a shame that QW can't come and be as impressed as a couple of guys who are famous worldwide in hotrodding and who have been in our scene for 50 or 60 years each !!!

Jeremy Clarkson did a hatchet job years ago about a hot rod in this country "Porky 7" saying "it would be no good to go shopping in" and "you can't get in it" or words to that effect and QW does our hobby no good either with his lack of knowledge.

The hot hatches seem to be covered well enough, when are you going to cover our part of the scene sensibly ? There are literally hundreds of hot rod shows the length and breadth of the country every year, when are you going to turn up and do something positive so that we get recognised for all our hard work and effort into sourcing parts anything up to 70+ years old. Anyone with a pocketful of cash can go and buy most of the cars you feature at the drop of a hat with no effort at all. I'm not saying cover it every week but for gods sake cover it once and do it properly !!

There are three websites below that might shed a little light on what we do

http://www.ftr.btinternet.co.uk/  this is the site I run for the Bedford Club, Flat Top Roadsters

http://www.flatheadv8.freeserve.co.uk/  Mart runs a site that shows grass roots level hot rodding as done in the '40's and '50's by the Americans

http://www.nsra.org.uk/  is the UK Street Rod homepage

Adrian Murray

Flat Top Roadsters

Fairly balanced I'd say .......................

and the reply ....................

From  Richard Porter-BM

To  'Adrian Murray'

Subject  RE: "Mr Wilson's" Hot Rodding Feature

Thanks for your e-mail regarding Quentin Willson's feature on Hot Rods. In
his opening remarks to the piece Quentin did not mean to imply that there is
no Hot Rodding scene in the UK, he was just trying to suggest that in this
country the word 'customising' is more synonymous with dolled up Novas and
that California is the spiritual home of 'Rodding. I'm sorry if you found
this misleading.

Richard Porter

Researcher, Top Gear

errr ............ lost for words ............... of course the Email address for Top Gear is up there if you're interested ................