BBC: Clarkson - Heaven and Hell (2005)

British personality Jeremy Clarkson, host of Top Gear, brings you Heaven and Hell, a critical review of the best and worst cars in the automotive world. Clarkson trawls the whole of "car-dom" to bring you seven great cars and truffles the undergrowth looking for seven automotive disasters. The good ones - the Ferraris, the Porsches and the Aston Martins - are driven to within an inch of their lives on the track. The bad ones are killed. Sawn in half. Hung, drawn and quartered. They're hammered and blown to pieces with dynamite and their skeletons left in the open to rot. There's even some time for a game of car jousting.

REVIEW
If the mere mention of Porsches, Ferraris, and Maseratis is enough to get your heart racing, you'll want to take Heaven and Hell out for a spin. Jeremy Clarkson, host of the International Emmy award-winning British series Top Gear, puts you in the driver's seat of the sports cars of your dreams (and other ill-fated vehicles of your worst nightmares). You only have to be a fan of vintage James Bond films to get a rush from the tire-smoking test drive of the Aston Martin V8 Vantage. Clarkson is authoritative and funny, and his enthusiasm is contagious. But woe to "the unimaginative junk built with no soul, flair or passion." "Seven deadly sinners" are dispatched to "hell" in creative ways. Clarkson purchases a Perodua, drives it across the street from the dealer, and then pummels it with a sledgehammer. He stages a jousting match between the "hateful" TR7 and a Ford Scorpio, A Citron gets the Monty Python treatment when a dumpster is dropped atop it. The test drives around the track can get repetitive, but considering that this is the closest many of us will ever get to a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti or a Porsche 911, just strap yourself in, sit back, and enjoy the ride. –Donald Liebenson