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Chris Evans quits Top Gear amidst tumbling ratings

4 July, 2016

You remember Jeremy Clarkson’s fire and brimstone departure from BBC, and Top Gear, last year? Well, this is not about that, but it does concern the show formerly known as Top Gear, which now seems to be known as ‘New Top Gear’ among fans. You see, while Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond went their own way to present their new show, The Grand Tour, BBC forged ahead with Top Gear, featuring an all-new cast of presenters.

As quoted on TopGear.com, “Race driver Sabine Schmitz, YouTube star Chris Harris, F1 pundit Eddie Jordan, and motoring journalist Rory Reid will join Chris Evans, Matt LeBlanc and of course, The Stig” as the updated cast for ‘new’ Top Gear, although this soon drew the ire of fans.

While much criticism can be attributed to long-standing fans of the show being unhappy with the fact that the big three — Jeremy, James, and Richard — are long gone, there was another popular grievance with a lot more direction. Chris Evans, according to the internet, was simply not doing it.

Weeks of public criticism, and rumours of both his being difficult to work with, and co-presenter Matt LeBlanc threatening to quit, all served to put Evans’ neck on the chopping block. But it was the plummeting ratings that acted as the final nail in the coffin. Opening with 4.4 million viewers, Top Gear’s audience fell to 2.34 million by episode four, and last Sunday’s dropped to an unprecedented low of 1.9 million.

It was these falling ratings that finally culminated in Chris Evans’ departure from the programme. This was confirmed via an online message Chris posted on his Twitter account, which read “Stepping down from Top Gear. Gave it my best shot but sometimes that’s not enough. The team are beyond brilliant, I wish them all the best.” The BBC has confirmed that they will not be seeking a replacement.

The butterfly effect

18 June, 2026

The man on the mountain bike pedalled over, taking it all in. Gazing in wonderment at this small Japanese coupe with butterfly doors, he said, “Wow, I have never seen one of these before. What is it?” When I told him it was a Toyota, he nearly fell off his bike.
The Toyota Sera is unique amongst ’90s Japanese coupes. The Sera, which is Italian for ‘evening’, can trace its roots back to Toyota’s AXV-II concept car. Launched as part of a trio of Toyota concept cars at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, it shared its underpinnings with the P70 Toyota Starlet. The similarities ended there, thanks to the AXV-II’s low-slung and rounded coupe styling with butterfly doors. These doors were held upright by gas struts when fully open. Glass covered the upper section of the doors and the rear hatchback.
These features, much to everyone’s surprise, were carried over to the production Sera in 1990. Toyota marketed the Sera, which means ‘will be’ in Spanish and ‘princess’ in Hebrew, as a funky alternative to the much-loved MR2.

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.