Season 3 of Top Gear is now available as one torrent. The source of these rips are BBC Prime which means unfortunately the rips feature replaced music, but the quality of video and audio are better than the original rips from back in the day by Vuk (when filesizes needed to be smaller). For most people, this is a worthy tradeoff.

The site may not look that different initially, but the entire backend of the non-news parts of the site have been recoded from scratch. The season listings and episode listings have been completely redesigned and now many feature screenshots from the episodes.

I still have some tweaking left to do over the next 24 hours or so such as displaying the ratings for each episode, but the main things should be up and running now (done!). Any bugs though should be reported via this thread on our forums. That’s also the place for any feedback.

I hope you enjoy the new features!

Oh, and thanks to everyone that helped out making screenshots of the episodes for the wiki as well as Blayde for making the season banners!

Within the past day or so, Top Gear episodes have started popping up in the Gran Turismo TV area of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on the Playstation 3. I currently only see 6×01, 6×02, and 6×04, but there are reports of there being more.

The episodes are currently available for US$0.99 a piece and after you buy them, they are available to watch for a period of 2 weeks before being automatically deleted. Prices are rumored to go up after this initial promotional period. It is unknown what the new prices will be.

It is also unknown whether these episodes feature the original music and no cut content, but my guess is that they’re similar to the BBC World rips and have replaced music and some cut content such as the news. Please let me know if you buy one and figure out what music and content is in the episodes and what kinda quality they are.

While this is great in that it will hopefully further the awareness of Top Gear, I personally find it a bit of a shame that they expire after two weeks. It would have been much cooler if they didn’t, even if the cost was a bit more.

Yep, that’s right. Our last small batch of T-shirts was so popular that we’re doing a second batch. For those that haven’t seen it, here’s the design of the shirt (note that the shirt is red even though the image is slightly pink):

If you’d like one (or more), please visit this thread on our forums. The more shirts that get ordered, the cheaper they get for everyone. The target price is $16/shirt. Shipping is $5 to the United States ($8 for 2, $11 for 3), $10 to Canada, and $12 internationally. You only have until August 8th to order, so don’t wait!

TopGear.com has posted quite a bit more content that didn’t make it to air.

• 11×06 News Uncut
• Jeremy and Jay Kay talk cars

Thanks to Laba and narf for the tips!

For those that are interested, here’s some footage from the 24 Hours of LeMons race over the weekend in South Carolina. This footage, shot by Quiky, is of Team Salazar Racing’s E30 BMW 3-Series being crushed after being elected “The People’s Curse”.

This video is also available in 720p HD WMV format. More videos coming soon.

In my effort to replace all of the individual and hard to maintain individual torrents for old episodes, season 2 of Top Gear is now available as a single pack. If you haven’t watched old Top Gear episodes and are looking for something to do now that Top Gear is off the air, this just may be the solution for you. Plus, watching season 2 along with season 1 is a really good way to see just how far the show has come in the past 5 years.

TopGear.com has posted up cut content from the past two episodes:

• Diahatsu Terios hunt [11x05]
• Mercedes vs. Rolls-Royce classics [11x05]
• Top Gear vs. D-Motor [11x06]

Forum member robybobey was driving around his town this morning when he spotted James May and Oz Clarke filming a segment for their Oz and James’s Big Wine Adventure TV show.

robybobey managed to get a few moments of James’ time and asked him a few questions. James responded to the false rumors that he was leaving or that he was getting a huge pay raise. He also surprisingly mentioned that he does visit this site from time to time and that he appreciates our criticisms and feedback.

Video of the short interview is here (robybobey had to reask his questions as he didn’t have his camera out the first time around):

Pretty awesome. Major thanks to James for being so cool as well as robybobey for posting the great video!

During the filming of the American version of Top Gear on Saturday, a few of our forum members got to chat with Andy Wilman. While we already knew that the British version of Top Gear would be back in October, Andy revealed that it would have 8 episodes and that they are looking to do 14 episodes per year to avoid running out of ideas and such.

He also mentioned that while they hadn’t gotten the Top Gear Stuntman right, he would be returning in future episodes.

You can read more about what Andy talked about in MadeBackwards’ thread and buried throughout the tickets thread on our forums.