Top Gear: Season 1, Episode 1

1 - 1: Stig Outruns a Speed Camera

In our very first programme we looked at the Citroen's Berlingo Multispace - the van-turned-people carrier. It found favour with the TG team for its cheery character, and even Jeremy raved about its all-round ability. Richard Hammond was impressed by the Mazda 6, and spent some time pouring over the Ford GT40 concept, which wowed our studio audience long after we finished filming. Apparently, if you pass a speed camera fast enough it can't take your picture - or so we heard in a pub once. So we borrowed a Gatso and set about trying to find out if it's true. We got our tame racing driver, Stig, to test the theory. To our surprise, the camera didn't just not catch the car, it didn't even go off. The bad news was, 170mph is the speed you have to do to avoid the little piggybanks. Our first guest in our 'Star in a reasonably priced car' feature was Harry Enfield, who tried out our big-value motor, the Suzuki Liana.