You can hear Adam Carolla talk to Eric Stromer on his radio show about the new Top Gear and how Eric was chosen. Thanks to Final Gear for the information.
Top Gear U.S.A. Gets its Hosts
Back in January it was reported that NBC and the BBC had reached an agreement to bring the famed car show Top Gear to America. It is a show that we all know and love. I added my two cents on the subject in my own article. After months of everyone doubting the truth and honesty of Top Gear really ever hitting our shores, and also the scary thought of a butchered American version we finally have word that we are getting Top Gear. Weeks ago Australia already named their hosts and the time frame for the show to start. We had nothing. Today, though, NBC finally came out and told us that the U.S. version of Top Gear wasn’t dead, and that they were giving us all of the hosts’ names. Now we just have to worry about whether or not it will be worth the time of sitting down and watching. Let’s take a look at the hosts and what they are linked to shall we?
Adam Carolla, Tanner Foust and Eric Stromer. Those are the hosts that we are getting. Should we be scared? Well, let’s take this one by one here, and we’ll see.
NBC had supposedly asked Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld to host the show. They both declined.
I’m sure most of you know who Adam Carolla is. If you don’t, yikes. If you’ve watched Comedy Central in the past 10 years you have undoubtedly seen ‘The Man Show’. The Man Show was a show about just that, men. It was dedicated to beautiful, scantily clad women and beer. And a few other men things, but nothing as devoted as the women and beer. Adam has also been a rather popular radio talk show host for a number of years. He has a nationally syndicated show and talks about many automotive related issues. Even more so, if you have watched ‘Test Drive’ ever on SPEED Channel, you have seen him with Tommy Kendall racing around the track against one another. He seems to be a good driver, and a general car nut.
Next is Tanner Foust, The real driver of the bunch. If you have never heard of Tanner Foust just go watch Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. No wait, that’s too damn painful to watch… Okay, go watch The Bourne Ultimatum, or The Dukes of Hazzard. You can see his great driving stunt skills in all three of those movies. You may have also known that Tanner won both the X-Games Rally and Formula Drift championships in 2007. So he’s not too shabby. He also hosts a pretty good car show on SPEED Channel called ‘Supercars Exposed’, in which he drives exotic sports cars and even in one episode tries to see what it’s like to be an exotic car salesman. Other shows that he hosts and works on are ESPN’s Import Tuners and SPEED’s Import Tuners, among others. In conclusion, Tanner Foust drives an AC Schnitzer E46 BMW M3. This guy knows his shit. Let’s give him a good chance to win us over.
And last but not least we have Eric Stromer. Who the hell is Eric Stromer? That’s what I said… well, I did a little research on this guy. Apparently he has no real automotive background. He just has a Billy Ray Cyrus like face and is the host of some home improvement shows on HGTV. He isn’t funny either. What’s worse is that he drives a Toyota Camry Hybrid. Yeah, this guy is super cool! I can’t wait to see what his nickname will be. Can anyone guess? I say we start calling him ‘guy who doesn’t belong on Top Gear’. In all seriousness, though, whatever you do, don’t listen to the music that Stromer has performed and has for sale on his website. It may make you want to commit suicide, and we can’t have that.
As much as I love that Top Gear is coming to the U.S., I am quite afraid now. I like Adam Carolla and Tanner Foust, as they both have a general love for automobiles. Tanner especially since he is a professional driver and seems to fit the type of guy that I would want to watch on a car show. Adam is of course funny as hell and extremely blunt in character. I like that he loves cars and won’t go anywhere without a nice one. Better yet, he is a man’s man. He loves power tools and playing with cars. Eric Stromer really makes me worried though. It seems rather obvious that he was asked to draw attention to the show and have it be more appealing to women. Not that women won’t or can’t watch the show, I am not at all saying that. You know that I am all for women loving cars. I am just scared that the wrong crowd will be watching for stupid reasons. I really hope this doesn’t turn into a show with a bunch of street racing crap either. I still think they should have hired me. I am funny and can bring controversy. And even better than that, I love cars and actually drive one that does something outside of being a glorified status symbol.
Please NBC, don’t f— this one up. All I ask, along with most Gear fans, don’t toy with the central notion of Top Gear. It is a show dedicated to cars and hysterical outlooks on so many other automotive subjects. Let’s keep the same principle and drive this one home. Thanks!
-Josh
“Happy Motoring!”
Photos taken from: Adam Carolla, Tanner Foust, Eric Stromer
For more information on each of the three hosts, check out Jalopnik.com, who has done a nice job at showcasing the career’s of each host. Or, just follow the links here: Adam, Tanner, Eric
