One of the things that you may not know about me is that my first Art Director credit was on a car magazine. When I was a fresh thing out of college, working at Harris Publications in NYC, I was responsible for the Consumer Digest car magazines. It was just me and an editor (striking similar to the work I do now) and we would put out 10 special guides a year. It was black and white mando with a glossy color cover—and was nothing but stats, stats, stats. I learned my way around a style sheet on those books, and actually I think much of my current speed was developed working on those titles. I was drowning in car info and photos, and aside from a few special proto-types, I could never tell one from another. I just don’t have the DNA that can look at a car and tell the make and model—Dan does, but we think it’s mainly a guys thing. I am thankful for the job for the experience and the editor helped us find our very trustworthy 1996 Geo Prizm (which is still running great over 10 years later). But I never developed a love for cars.

So why do I love the BBC’s Top Gear? It’s just brilliant—the hosts, the camera work, the challenges—all just brilliant. We just watched an episode tonight where one of the hosts raced a car across Japan, while the other two took a bullet train. So wonderful silly.

They are launching a US version of Top Gear soon, and it makes me want to cry.  Sure the American version of The Office didn’t suck the way I feared, but with Adam Carolla, Tanner Foust and Eric Stromer I don’t think there is any hope for it.

So I recommend checking out Top Gear on BBC America, or at least Youtube, and avoiding all other versions. It turns out that cars might actually be cool.