Sony and Polyphony Digital are running a massive race competition around recently-released Gran Turismo 5, partnering with car maker Nissan on a multi-phase gaming event -- and it'll be televised as a reality show.

The three-phase gaming contest is part of programming in the works for car-focused cable channel Speed Network in 2011, although the competition itself began on December 15.

Contestants will use pre-selected Nissan vehicles in Gran Turismo 5, earning "free digital content" for competing and gaining other prize chances on their way to be selected as one of the top 32 virtual racers in the U.S.

The final 32 will compete against one another in March 2011, and from there, 16 finalists will engage in more kinds of contests against one another -- including driving real Nissan racers, according to the announcement. The final winner earns the chance to join "GT Academy", where they train with professional drivers at tracks all around the world and join a professional racing team.

Source: Gamasutra

Jeremy Clarkson would be impressed. Outside Ben ­Collins’ smart Bristol semi are two brand new cars: a £40,000 sporty A5 and — ­perfect for a growing suburban family — a £40,000 VW people carrier.

Meanwhile, inside the four-bedroom £575,000 house in Bristol’s most upmarket area workmen have been renovating the place for weeks.

If Ben has been worried about losing his job on Top Gear after unveiling himself as the man who has appeared as The Stig for the past seven years, he certainly isn’t showing it.
Mystery man: Ben Collins, pictured leaving the High Court on Wednesday, right, was revealed as The Stig last month
Mystery man: Ben Collins, pictured leaving his home in Bristol this week, right, was revealed as The Stig last month

Mystery man: Ben Collins, pictured leaving his home in Bristol this week, right, was revealed as The Stig last month
Life in the fast lane: Ben Collins as The Stig with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise

Life in the fast lane: Ben Collins as The Stig with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise

Indeed, the stunt driver appears to have been splashing cash about recently, which is ­surprising because the Mail can reveal that his company, Collins AutoSport, has racked up a £1 million loss over the past five years.

The tidy advance of about £250,000 he got from HarperCollins, which is publishing his autobiography later this month, should help.

But company accounts show that despite ­Collins making cash injections of around £100,000 a year into his company, it has still required ­support from him.

First, though, a few warm-up laps for Top Gear novices. The Stig is an anonymous racing driver on the popular television motoring show who test-drives cars, sets lap times and prepares celebrities for the show’s Star In A Reasonably Priced Car section — while dressed in a white racing suit and full-face helmet so that viewers never know his true identity.

Read more: DailyMail

Anyone who has ever spent more than 10 minutes on an automotive forum knows that a flame war is only one inflammatory comment away. Fanboys love to trash anything that doesn't carry their badge of choice, but tread on their beloved marquee and the thread turns into Niagra Falls. But rather than frown upon the typical forum vitriol, a report from the Autoblog Podcast veterans at the Hooniverse shows that Speed TV plans to give these automotive fanatics some air time instead.

The new show is called "Forum Wars," and the premise is to give these big talkers track access to replace wimpy words with tire-smoking action. You think your pristine Dodge Challenger is better than a Mustang forum owner's Bullitt? You may have a chance to take it to the track to decide who's right, once and for all. The show is scheduled to hit the airwaves on Monday, April 5, with the inaugural episode pitting a Shelby Mustang GT500 against a Nissan 350Z. Drivers will hit the bends and take on the straightaways at a drag strip, so all bases are covered. Preview in the jump!



Source: AutoBlog

If you’re one of the people who prefer watching Top Gear on the TV but can’t figure out how to get your computer hooked up to your TV, you’ll be happy to know that Top Gear season 13 will be premiering on BBC America on Monday, January 25 at 8 PM PST/EST. 24 hours after airing, the episode will be available for purchase on iTunes for just $2.

Even better, once season 13 is done airing, season 14 (the one that just finished airing last Sunday) will start airing immediately — no time off. That will be on March 15th, three months behind the UK airings (which isn’t that bad).

Source: FinalGear

Aug. 6 at 8 p.m. ET, as the SPEED original, PINKS All Out, presented by NAPA, will showcase the first-ever nationally televised four-wide drag racing competition at newly built zMAX Dragway in Concord, N.C.

The show, which was taped on April 25, unfolded in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 30,000 spectators. The four-wide competition showcased 32 cars vying for the final eight spots in the field, each running four abreast to find a single winner. The 107-cam provides never-before-seen shots from above the action.

zMAX Dragway is the only facility in the United States with two side-by-side purpose-built drag strips, thereby providing the sole opportunity to hold such a competition. PINKS All Out host Rich Christensen stood in between each four-car runoff, directing the event and starting the races with his signature old school “arm drop.”

In addition to Christensen, Pullin Television (PINKS All Out production team) and zMAX Dragway officials worked hand-in-hand with CompuLink to synch the four lanes together to create the setting for the races to take place.

“I have been going to races for a long time and very few things compare to what I saw at zMAX,” said Clay Millican, PINKS All Out technical advisor and current NHRA Top Fuel driver. “I am all wired up, being filmed for PINKS All Out, but what am I doing? I have my cell phone out videotaping the first four-lane races at zMAX. Hit the jump for a video!



Source: SpeedTV

Finally, after bad reviews and low viewership, NBC has killed Knight Rider after one season and 17 episodes. Take a note TV networks: Get some new ideas and don't rehash the classic television that we grew up with as children.

The Top Gear UK host Jeremy Clarkson always finds himself in very controversial situations. Not afraid to speak his mind, Scottish politicians have urged BBC to take Clarkson off air after he called prime minister Gordon Brown a “one-eyed Scottish idiot.”

During his visit to Australia, where Clarkson is going to host Top Gear Live, he accused Brown of repeatedly “telling us everything is fine” with the world in a financial crisis.

While none of this matters to us in the automotive industry, Clarkson however did mention that Top Gear USA has been banned because Americans “just don’t get it.” Bonus video in the jump!



Source: eGMCarTech

Two days after British media reported that Ben Collins, a 33-year old former Formula Three, Le Mans, GT and NASCAR racer from Bristol, has revealed himself as The Stig - Top Gear has come out with their official word. According to a post on Top Gear’s blog, The Stig is none other than Graham Hill.

Who is Graham Hill you ask? Norman Graham Hill was a British racing driver and two-time Formula One World Champion and the only driver to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport (an unofficial motorsport achievement that includes winning the Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Formula One World Championship.) The only problem is that Graham Hill died in 1975. More in the jump!

The Top Gear blog reads: In an alleged plot believed to have cost the license payer millions of pounds, BBC bosses apparently helped Graham Hill fake his own death in a plane crash.

According to Mole sources, the BBC knew as far back as 1974 that one day they’d hire Jeremy Clarkson to front their motoring show which didn’t exist yet, and that Jeremy would probably go to a school where they called new boys “Stigs”, and that in 2002 he’d probably invent an anonymous racing driver and probably give him that same name.

So they approached Graham Hill, whose professional driving career was over at that point, and asked him to crash a plane and then hide in a bush until he got the call from the Top Gear team 20 odd years later,” said a BBC insider.

He added: “The BBC does make a mess of some things but they’re pretty good at forward planning.”

BBC is one amazing network. The identity of The Stig was supposedly revealed after some moustache wax was found in a Mercedes-Benz SLR the Stig had been driving.

Source: eGMCarTech

For years the identity of The Stig has been a closely guarded secret, but Collins – who has previously competed in Formula Three, Le Mans, GT and NASCAR – has apparently outed himself to staff at a Bristol gallery.

The 33-year-old let his secret slip when he asked them to help him produce a limited-edition print of The Stig in action.

Gallery owner Simon Whitehead, 27, said: "I was absolutely amazed when he said he was The Stig, it was quite a big thing in a weird way." More in the jump!

Builder Jason Goody, 21, also discovered The Stig's identity when he did some work at Collins' home and found the famous white suit and gloves on display in a cabinet.

Other fans of Top Gear, presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, have been closing in on Collins in recent months. One YouTube clip shows The Stig, in full disguise, talking with a Bristol accent to a foreign TV crew – and then cuts to Collins sounding very similar.

Collins, from Bristol, has always denied being The Stig and could face the sack if he admitted it. The first Stig, stunt driver Perry McCarthy, lost the job after outing himself in his book Flat Out, Flat Broke, published in 2002.

He was known as The Black Stig and always wore a black suit and helmet before he was "killed off" during the third series in 2003. Collins has since become The White Stig, and wears an all white helmet and suit.

Collins started his motorsport career in 1994, competing in Formula First and Formula Vauxhall Junior on his way to International Formula 3.

He has appeared on BBC's Top Gear as himself on various occasions to perform some dramatic stunts.

The Health & Safety Executive report into Hammond's accident in September 2006 recorded that Collins had "worked closely with Top Gear as a high performance driver and consultant" and had prepared a briefing for the presenter.

Collins also recently spent three months working as a precision driver on the latest James Bond movie The Quantum of Solace.

He was the double for Daniel Craig and drove the Aston Martin DBS in some of the most challenging driving sequences.

Collins said of the experience: "It was a bit like a dream come true to work on a Bond film. On the first day filming I had to pinch myself as I was sitting there in Bond's pin stripe suit with an Omega Watch. I felt totally at home in the Aston Martin DBS, which is just an awesome car and it was a lot of fun hammering it around the Alps.

"There were sheer drops of a thousand feet on some of the roads we using. I think a highlight was sliding the DBS up the mountain road between two giant rocks, then onto the pass with nothing but a hand rail to stop the car falling off a cliff."

The Stig's name derives from Clarkson's days at Repton School where, he said, new students were always called "Stig".

The identity of White Stig has not been officially revealed and is regarded as a carefully guarded secret by the BBC.

However, it has not stopped people from trying to identify him and names such as Julian Bailey, Damon Hill, Tim Schrick, and Russ Swift have all been suggested.

A Top Gear spokesman said: "We never comment on speculation as to who or what The Stig is."

Source: Telegraph

We have a scoop on the much-anticipated U.S. version of "Top Gear": BBC has decided to take the show to cable, where presenters' funny mouths, from which often spill foul words, will be more at home. There are no hard feelings and NBC will be sharing custody of "Top Gear" dog. A number of cable networks were delighted with the news... so we'll keep an eye out.

Source: Top Gear

More than 30 Royal Marines were doing exercises carrying guns and landing helicopters on the beach at Instow, North Devon, as Clarkson road tested the lime green car. The filming was organised by Instow major John Lugg after marines from Poole came up with the idea and contacted Top Gear, who agreed to it.

A spokesman for the Marines said: "Instow was the best place to do it because the expertise is here, it has the right conditions and the space.

"There is a film crew of 12 here, including Jeremy Clarkson and this has been in preparation for a couple of months."

He said: "We are here just for the weekend and as we heard about it, we thought we would come along and take a look. We are both regular watchers of Top Gear, although we look at it more as a comedy not a car show. It is good the local Marines are involved. Jeremy is always known as a advocate of the armed forces."

Source: Telegraph

KITT - you let us down. According to the website TV By the Numbers, Knight Rider's primetime spot of 8pm only yielded a score of 4.9 in terms of ratings. In other words, Nielsen is estimating that 4.9% of all TV households were watching Knight Rider last night, and that group includes TV households that both did and did not have their TVs turned on at the time. The second number means that out of all the TVs turned on between 8PM and 9PM last night, 10% were watching Knight Rider.

Hoff would not approve. Did you watch the show? I know I had more important things to do like laundry. Seriously, laundry sounded more thrilling than watching this rehash of the series.

Source: TVByTheNumbers

For those who don't want to watch this one on the couch and rather do it on office hours, here is your first episode from the execs at NBC. We didn't get a chance to watch it ourselves (we work, you know!), so we'll let you be the judges.

Source: Hulu

Here's a clip that just leaked showing off some of the special effects that will be used in the new Knight Rider TV series. Pretty cool. The rest of the clip? Bad acting that makes me want to poke my eyes out.

The new Knight Rider TV show will be premiering on September 24th on NBC. Will you tune in? I'm thinking I have better things to do like an oil change.