Beyond the Burnouts: How Top Gear's Editor Crafts Global Car Stories.
Of all the sacred temples in the automotive world, none are quite as revered, or as riotous, as the hallowed hangar that houses the production of Top Gear. It is a place where the smell of petrol is considered a premium aftershave, where the line between a car review and a three-act comedy sketch is gleefully blurred, and where the laws of physics are treated less as immutable rules and more as polite suggestions. To understand how modern automotive journalism works, one must look beyond the glossy magazine pages and the high-octane television sequences. One must spend a day, in spirit, with the individual who sits at the very epicentre of this beautiful chaos: the Editor.
The day does not begin with the roar of an engine, but with the quiet hum of a laptop and the gentle steam rising from a first, crucial cup of tea. The Editor’s office is less a corporate sanctuary and more a curated museum of motoring mayhem. A slightly bent wing mirror sits on a shelf, a trophy from an ill-advised encounter with a bollard. Framed photographs show the team grinning in front of a car that is, unmistakably, on fire. The air is thick with the quiet anticipation of the day’s planned insanity. The first task is not to plan a shoot, but to navigate the digital deluge. Hundreds of emails from public relations firms, car manufacturers, and hopeful freelancers have accumulated overnight. Each subject line is a siren’s call: “EXCLUSIVE: First Drive of the New Hypercar,” “Invitation: The All-New Sedan Launch in Reykjavik,” “PLEASE READ: Client’s Revolutionary New Wiper Blade Technology.”
The Editor’s skill here is not just one of organisation, but of clairvoyance. They must sift through the polished corporate stone to find the rare, unpolished gems. A new hypercar from a famed Italian marque is an obvious cover story. But a quirky, affordable city car from a Korean manufacturer that might just be brilliant? That is a story with a different, more relatable heartbeat. This is the first, fundamental truth of automotive journalism at this level: it is not merely about reporting on cars, but about finding the narrative. Every machine has a story. The Editor’s job is to find it, shape it, and assign it to the writer whose voice will make it sing, roar, or sputter comically.
By mid-morning, the theoretical gives way to the tangible. The day’s main event is a “comparo” – a comparison test pitting three rival German sports saloons against one another. The location is a disused airfield, a landscape of cracked tarmac and vast, grey horizons that serves as the programme’s outdoor laboratory. Arriving on set, the atmosphere is a unique blend of military precision and school trip excitement. A dozen crew members in thick coats scurry around cameras mounted on tracking vehicles, while the three cars gleam under the diffuse British sunlight, looking like predatory animals temporarily paused.
The Editor does not stand aloof, observing from a monitor. They are in the thick of it, walking the line between the show’s charismatic presenters and the production team’s logistical needs. A discussion erupts about the cars’ interior quality. A presenter is making a wild analogy involving a badger, a top hat, and one car’s infotainment system. The Director is concerned about the light. The Producer is concerned about the schedule. The Editor’s role is to listen to the comedy, understand the technical point being made (however obscurely), and ensure the final piece will have both entertainment value and journalistic integrity. They might pull a presenter aside and ask, “That bit about the turbo lag was hilarious, but was it actually slow, or just poorly geared?” The answer dictates whether the joke stays or gets cut.
This is the core of the Top Gear alchemy. It is a delicate, often chaotic, balancing act. The journalism must be sound. The facts about horsepower, torque, lap times, and fuel economy must be unassailable. The crew employs precision timing equipment and sophisticated data loggers. The opinions, however subjective, must be earned at the wheel, not invented in the scriptwriting room. Yet, this bedrock of truth is the stage for transcendent entertainment. The Editor is the guardian of this balance. They ensure that when a presenter claims a car feels “as nimble as a mountain goat on espresso,” the viewer understands the subjective feeling of agility, and trusts that it’s backed by a genuine driving experience, not just a writer’s whim.
Lunch is a hurried affair from a catering truck, a bacon sandwich eaten while leaning against the tailgate of a support vehicle. The conversation is not about ratings or demographics, but about gear ratios, the subtle differences in steering feel between the three cars, and a debate over whether the distinctive grille of one model looks more like a beaver or a Victorian piano. This is the culture. The language spoken here is Automotive. It is a passion that borders on the obsessive, and it is the single most important qualification for the job. No amount of corporate training can teach this lexicon; it is absorbed through years of getting grease under your fingernails and petrol in your veins.
Back in the office later that afternoon, the focus shifts from the present to the future. This is the “forward features” meeting, a brainstorming session where ideas are thrown into the ring with the ferocity of a pit crew changing tyres. A junior writer suggests a piece on the history of the rally car. It’s a good idea, but well-trodden. The Editor pushes. “History is facts. We need a story. What if we buy a rotten old rally car for a thousand pounds and see if we can actually win a local amateur rally?” The room ignites. Another writer pitches an epic road trip across the Balkans in three unlikely vehicles. The Editor’s eyes light up. “What’s the conflict? A road trip is just a drive. We need a goal, a rivalry. What if you’re searching for the best driving road in Eastern Europe, and the loser has to… I don’t know, sell their car and buy a mobility scooter?” The idea is forged in the fire of friendly conflict.
This is where the magazine and the television show become symbiotic. A simple review can be a three-page article. A grand, ambitious idea can become a sixty-minute television special. The Editor’s mind is a constant engine, idling on fact and revving on narrative. They are not just assigning articles; they are green-lighting adventures, commissioning chaos, and bankrolling misadventure, all in the name of finding a new way to talk about the four-wheeled machines we love.
As evening draws in, the final, and perhaps most brutal, task begins: the edit. A rough draft of a feature article lands in the Editor’s inbox. It is 2,500 words on a new, groundbreaking electric SUV. The facts are all correct. The performance figures are stated. The interior is described. But it reads like a manufacturer’s press release. It is competent, but it has no soul. The Editor’s red pen, whether physical or digital, goes to work. The comments are not just grammatical; they are philosophical. “You say it’s ‘comfortable.’ What does that feel like? Is it a ‘floating-on-a-cloud’ comfort that isolates you from the road, or a ‘firm, supportive armchair’ comfort that keeps you connected?” “You mention the acceleration is ‘quick.’ But what is the sensation? Is it a silent, surreal whoosh, or does the artificial motor sound they’ve piped in make it feel like a spaceship from a cheap sci-fi film?”
This process is a masterclass in voice. The Editor is not rewriting the piece, but pulling the writer’s own voice out of them. They are demanding personality, perspective, and honesty. A Top Gear review is trusted because it is human. It acknowledges that a car’s character is defined as much by its quirks and flaws as by its performance metrics. The reader needs to know if this £100,000 marvel of engineering has cupholders that are useless, or a touchscreen that will make you want to weep with frustration. The Editor ensures that the journalistic truth includes the whole, often inconvenient, human truth.
Finally, as the last of the production team heads home and the hangar falls into a profound silence, the Editor remains. The frantic energy of the day has dissipated, replaced by the quiet hum of servers and the soft glow of a computer screen displaying the magazine’s final layout. In this stillness, the role transcends that of a manager, a journalist, or a producer. The Editor becomes a curator of passion. They are the keeper of the flame for a global community of petrolheads, gearheads, and dreamers. They understand that for the audience, these cars are not just appliances. They are symbols of freedom, of engineering art, of escape, and of childhood dreams glued together from plastic kits.
How does automotive journalism work? It works on data and deadlines, on laughter and lunacy. It is a profession built on a paradox: taking an object of profound technical complexity and describing its soul in a way that makes a reader laugh, think, or feel an irresistible urge to find an empty stretch of winding road. And at the centre of it all, the Editor is the conductor of this symphony of combustion and comedy, ensuring that the music, however loud and chaotic, never loses its tune. They don’t just report on the automotive world; they help define it, one glorious, petrol-soaked story at a time.
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