Ladies & Men the New Reasonably Priced Car is.....

Words by Rob McSorley

Here at DriverVIBE we aren't afraid to hold our hands up when we are wrong. 

We recently decided to hazard a guess as to the BBC’s new “Reasonably Priced Car” that would be revealed on the first episode of series 20 of the popular show. We were sure it would be Dacia’s Sandero as not only is it the cheapest car you can currently buy in the UK but it would also have been amusing to watch it hurtling around Top Gear's test track in Dunsfold, Surrey.

So if you haven’t yet watched the first episode of Top Gear which aired yesterday (30th June 2013) we can reveal that the new car is......a red Vauxhall Astra 1.6 litre Techline which costs £17,345. With a 113 bhp 16v petrol engine under the bonnet the Astra can hit 0-62 mph in 10.9 seconds and onto 118 mph. It is the fastest “Reasonably Priced Car” to feature on the show but only by a narrow margin. 

To mark the cars arrival (as the team have done previously) a star studded party was arranged by the team to make a start on the lap time wall. Celebrities that turned up for supermarket part food included Jimmy Carr, Brian Johnson, Joss Stone and Warwick Davis.

The most amusing part of the event was the arrival of 3 ft 6 in tall Warwick Davis who came prepared with his two pedal extensions. Richard Hammond asked Warwick why he only had two extensions to which Warwick answered “one for the accelerator and one for the brake”. Hammond then revealed that the Astra was in fact a manual making Warwick one extension short.

Richard Hammond however came to the rescue by fashioning a clutch pedal extension made by attached an empty Pringles can to the pedal using masking tape which surprisingly worked very well. The next problem was that the Astra’s newly fitted racing bucket seats were mounted too low for Warwick to see the dials or over the dashboard. Again Richard came to the rescue with several supermarket bags filled with bread that Warwick had to sit on. 

Unsurprisingly Warwick struggled to get the Astra around the track screeching off onto the grass on several occasions but still posted a lap time of 1:46.8 ahead of Rachel Riley, Charles Dance, Joss Stone and Mike Rutherford. The fastest celebrities on the new leader-board were Brian Johnson, Jimmy Carr (with recently whitened teeth!) and David Haye with times of 1:45.1, 1:45.6 and 1:46.8 respectively.

Perhaps James May will get his own way next time the search is on for a new “Reasonably Priced Car” by using a Dacia Sandero but in the meantime the Astra will just have to do.

Catch Top Gear on Sundays, 8:00 pm on BBC2 for more hillarous "Reasonably Priced Car" action.

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