Top Gear: Season 1, Episode 4

1 - 4: The Mondeo Beats the Germans

On a secret agent-packed Top Gear, Steve Coogan tried out our reasonably priced car, Jason showed you how to buy a used Nissan Skyline, and we celebrated the launch of the latest James Bond film. We couldn't actually get Bond's real car, but got the next best thing. We pitched a standard Vanquish (that is, no machine guns) against the revised Ferrari 575M, and recruited Damon Hill to help Jeremy decide which was best. They preffered the Ferrari. But it's fair to say people don't hate Aston drivers as much as Ferrari owners. We'd also noticed that many of the competing manufacturers made a mid-range 2.0-litre-ish four-door family saloon. So we decided to get them all together and see which was fastest around our test track. The answer was the Ford, and it was the most fun too! Jason investigated the Nissan Skyline. This is a car that dominated its class in motorsport (some countries changed the rules to eliminate it from competition) and, especially in its latest guise, with so many electronic gadgets, it would even have impressed Q! Steve Coogan took his turn as our star in a reasonably priced car. The weather was predictably rubbish again, but after a couple of spins he really got the hang of it.