oh no no NO no no I am sorry my dear @thebirdtm you are NOT underselling one of the most seminal pieces of television of my entire childhood like that on MY watch.
"How is claiming they drowned a Hilux possibly underselling it" GREAT question.
To start with a little disclaimer, Top Gear's Hilux did not start off, as in the video above, in pristine condition. It started off with nigh-on 300k kms (for you yankees, that's about 8.4 million Boeing 737 wingspans) and a condition to match.
And it's only once careless driving around town yielded zilch in given shits...
(look, I found a local newspaper picturing it being driven around!)
...that they decided to drown it.
Now, the underselling part: if you told me that they drowned a pickup the first place my mind would go to would be "driving it through a river a bit too deep for it, perhaps as deep as its height, until it stalls and then tugging it back out".
You will concede that's rather different from tying it down on the seashore with the second highest tide in the world...
...and leaving it there until it engulfs the whole truck...
...only for the ropes to snap...
...and for the truck to be lost to the tides for FIVE HOURS.
(and for those wondering, yes, just as promised, well within an hour and the mandatory limits of basic tools and no spare parts, up the mechanic made the thing fire and away the presenter drove it - I must imagine doing a number on his clothes in the process.)
Oh also I would have mentioned the caravan.
Or at least the wrecking ball.
But hey, at least the fire was mentioned.
Still, I feel it's criminal to leave out how they celebrated it surviving all it did: by parking it at the top of a 23 story building for all to see! :)
Well, that was uncalled for.
Given what it survived, it deserved to rest in a museum instead of being unceremoniously cleared out with the other chunks of public housing that buried it.
Or at least, given that buried it wasn't...
...to be tumbled down from the rubble utop which it sat...
"be fueled up", pfft, what for?, I hear you say. And you are right.
Look at that thing, you say.
Let's be serious now, however pretty of a story it would be that's not a truck that will do anything remotely in the ballpark of firing up, let alone running.
And again, you are right.
The battery was disconnected.
"You can't be serious." Oh darling I sure can!
"Well the presenters can't then" no no, I assure you, it lived. Go see it for yourself! It's at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieau, England!
I grew up watching Top Gear and it shaped me in many ways. My adoration of old Toyota Hiluxes is one of them.
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