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"  Adam Carolla (left) already seems to be getting along with Top Gear co-hosts Eric Strommer and Tanner Foust in this first screen capture from the NBC set, first broken (along with most of the other Top Gear USA news on the show) by Jalopnik When word officially got out last week that Top Gear USA was headed to NBC, a fast-lane frenzy befell the Popular Mechanics car team. This must be what it&amp;#039;s like for teenage girls with every new incarnation of High School Musical: Our vacationing automotive editor skipped the beach and tried to buy back his vintage Lambo, two of the other guys zoned out on YouTube for an hour-long Jeremy Clarkson marathon, and I ... well I got on the phone with Adam Carolla. Best known as the snarkified co-host of two defunct cable hits--MTV&amp;#039;s Loveline and Comedy Central&amp;#039;s The Man Show--Carolla has a popular radio show syndicated on the West Coast and a new movie, The Hammer, hitting DVD today. But this bona fide luxury-car owner (and self-proclaimed car &amp;quot;nerd&amp;quot;) has a much bigger role beginning this fall as Gearhead Numero Uno on the American network adaptation of Top Gear, made famous on the BBC as an hour jam-packed with supercar test drives, ridiculous road trips and death-defying stunts--and made the world&amp;#039;s biggest car program by its runaway success on YouTube. Alongside Hollywood stunt driver Tanner Foust and soap-opera-star-turned-DIY-television-personality Eric Stromer, Carolla will attempt to fill the shoes of the legendary Clarkson in a weekly primetime romp that plans to mirror the British version. But rabid Top Gear fans haven&amp;#039;t had many more details to steer them toward September ... until now. In his first interview about the show since NBC&amp;#039;s announcement, Carolla sat down with PopularMechanics.com for a half-hour exclusive on what&amp;#039;s in store for Top Gear 2.0. Here&amp;#039;s what we learned: * The NBC adaptation will follow the BBC format: guest segment, stunt, test drive and, yes, the Stig (casting for that crucial role is still pending). * The premiere episode will feature a race from Las Vegas to San Francisco, ending in a &amp;quot;mammoth stunt.&amp;quot; (NBC isn&amp;#039;t insisting on copycat stunts or episodes, a la Season One of The Office.) * Carolla is pushing for an on-air drive of the just-unveiled BMW M1 Homage concept as soon as it&amp;#039;s available, as well as the Aston Martin DBS (though that would be a reprisal of a Clarkson drive). * Clarkson and Carolla recently met face-to-face, but Carolla promises to focus more on improv than the heavily-prepared Clarkson. * Officials from Top Gear in England, who are producing the show, along with &amp;quot;everyone involved,&amp;quot; have assured Carolla that he will be able to speak his mind on any car &amp;quot;without fear of reprisal&amp;quot; from advertisers, which he fully plans to do. Read on for more of our Q&amp;amp;amp;A with Adam Carolla (including why the Corvette ZR1 isn&amp;#039;t first on his list for the show and why he&amp;#039;ll at least be better than Tim Allen), then stay tuned for the complete interview on The Popular Mechanics Show podcast (including how the new team will make nice with America after Clarkson and Co. ran for the border last year) and weekly coverage of NBC&amp;#039;s Top Gear right here all season long! PopularMechanics.com: Adam, thanks so much for taking time away from what I&amp;#039;m sure is some pretty intense preparation for Top Gear USA as it heads into production. Before NBC sent the gearheads and Clarkson crushes into a frenzy on the Web with its official announcement on Monday, you kind of let it slip that you got the gig on your West Coast radio show back in February. How&amp;#039;d the show come together so quickly? Adam Carolla: Well, they were looking to cast the show and I got called into a meeting at a hotel room, which means that either you&amp;#039;re gonna get a job or you&amp;#039;re gonna get whacked. I assumed it would be whacked, but either way, I had a meeting with these guys from BBC America and we discussed my passion for cars and talking about cars and driving cars. I guess they were immediately sold on me, and that was only one part of the three-part show, so we needed to find the other two parts. That process took a little little bit longer. PM: As I mentioned, the Internet geeks are already pumped up about the show--my buddies at Jalopnik are already calling you the &amp;quot;proto-Clarkson,&amp;quot; and I&amp;#039;m sure fans of your radio show and accompanying blog have been hammering you about which rides you&amp;#039;re pulling out of that stacked garage of yours and onto set. But Top Gear in the UK is kind of an online phenomenon in this country to begin with--it&amp;#039;s gotten bigger on YouTube than some of your old Man Show tricks. What do you make of that, and are you as into the, well, insane stunts of the original as we are? AC: You know, it&amp;#039;s funny. I like cars more than I like stunts. The stunts are cool, but I would much rather just see ... I was just watching a rerun and Jeremy had that Aston Martin DBS in the Aston Martin Racing Green and he was turning some hot laps with that thing on an Air Force base they have over there in the UK. For me, as a viewer, in terms of just pure eye candy, I like watching that more than I like them turning a car into an amphibious landing craft or something. That&amp;#039;s all well and good, and there&amp;#039;s a place for it, but for me it&amp;#039;s really about the cars. PM: Back in March, when all that word was spreading about the show first coming to America, our own Jay Leno wrote an op-ed in The Times of London saying he thought it would be &amp;quot;impossible to recreate or live up to the standards of the British show.&amp;quot; But I guess the big deal here is that it&amp;#039;s the first real gearhead show to come to American network TV. So now that you and Jimmy Kimmel are, you know, kind of a big deal around here, do you see new opportunities to tap into this kind of mainstream car-guy phenomenon here in the States? AC: Well, it&amp;#039;d be nice. It&amp;#039;s gonna be nice to have gearheads doing a gearhead show as opposed to a bunch of Harvard guys writing jokes for Tim Allen where he&amp;#039;s gonna put a brakes and Briggs &amp;amp;amp; Stratton on his washing machine and make the ape noise and we all laugh like hyenas because no one knows what he&amp;#039;s talking about. I, as a gearhead, go insane when I see non-gearheads writing dialogue for guys who are supposed to be gearheads but really aren&amp;#039;t. This will be a gearhead show for gearheads, and it will be a real gearhead show--no more impostors. That much I like.  I dunno if you guys are as nerdy as I am, but when you watch even a movie like Transformers, which is probably at $150 million budget ... Did you see the movie? At a certain point, Megan Fox, she&amp;#039;s a gearhead because her dad was a mechanic. So she pops the hood and looks under it and says, &amp;quot;What do we got? High-rise manifold with a double pumper.&amp;quot; Awesome, except for I&amp;#039;m looking at cross-draft injection. There&amp;#039;s cross-ram injection, and it&amp;#039;s not carbureted, it&amp;#039;s injected, and there&amp;#039;s-- it essentially looks like four side-draft Webbers in a cross-ram configuration, except what comes out of her mouth is, &amp;quot;Hey! Hah! High- rise with a double pumper! &amp;amp;gt;  --&amp;amp;gt;  --&amp;amp;gt;  Having met with Jeremy Clarkson, the infamously snarky host of Top Gear on the BBC (right), Carolla says his style of humor and hosting will be &amp;quot;a little more spontaneous and a little less thought out.&amp;quot; (Photographs via The Adam Carolla Show and TopGear.com) PM: That&amp;#039;s what you could worry about, with a mainstreaming of car knowledge. You&amp;#039;ve got some sick rides-- a couple Lambos, Maseratis, Ferraris-- but on the new Top Gear, are you going to have $100,000 sports cars flying around the set, or are you going to feel comfortable laying into that average American ride which might be advertised around the show, like GM had a part in Transformers? Are you guys going to be okay going after the everyday American ride, or are you going to be playing out to the $100,000 car? AC: I can only tell you what they&amp;#039;ve told me thus far, and I&amp;#039;ll just take them at their word. Their mantra has been, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to do it exactly the same as they do it in England, and you&amp;#039;ll be able to say whatever you want about any car you like regardless of who makes it or if they sponsor the show or not.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s been the discussion that I&amp;#039;ve had more than once with everybody--from everyone involved with Top Gear, not only on this side of the pond, but that side as well. That&amp;#039;s what they say. I don&amp;#039;t know if they&amp;#039;ll change their tune when they hear some of the things that I have to say, but they say the reason the show works over there in England and elsewhere is that the host is allowed to speak his mind without worry, without fear of reprisal, and that&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m gonna do. PM: But it&amp;#039;s not just going to be like The Office was when it came from the BBC to the NBC, where they&amp;#039;re doing every show and recapitulating it for America. I imagine you have tricks up your sleeve besides mobile home racing. Any sneak peeks? AC: You just ruined the pilot for everybody. Well, that&amp;#039;s it. They call them caravans and everything. Yeah, they&amp;#039;re not planning on doing or recreating shows they&amp;#039;ve already done over there. They&amp;#039;re planning on coming up with new, bigger, better stunts, if you will, for us to do over here.  PM: Anything you like so far? I know you said you weren&amp;#039;t a stunt guy. AC: The first one and, uh, I don&amp;#039;t want to step on too much, but the first one is gonna involve some sort of race from Vegas to San Francisco, and it will culminate with a mammoth stunt. Something very big, and that&amp;#039;s about all I know. PM: Any other new cars you&amp;#039;re dying to test drive on the show--or already have lined up? The ZR1 perhaps? AC: I would love to get behind the wheel of the aforementioned DBS Aston Martin just because I&amp;#039;m a big fan of that car and that car company. Let&amp;#039;s see ... trying to think what&amp;#039;s coming out ... I&amp;#039;m trying to think of the names of the cars that aren&amp;#039;t out yet because it&amp;#039;s hard to think of the names of the cars that aren&amp;#039;t out yet because they&amp;#039;re not out yet ... PM: Well, certainly you&amp;#039;ll get first look at a lot of the stuff, like Jay Leno gets an early ride in an R8 or what have you.  AC: I heard, for instance, and this sounds really, really cool: I just heard that BMW might be coming out with a new M1. I dug the old M1, I mean it was a little bit underpowered, but for its day, pretty bitchin&amp;#039;, and I loved it in its race trim. Its free trim was cool, but the race trim was really bitchin&amp;#039;. The new M1 would be cool. The new Miura for sure would be cool. I don&amp;#039;t even know if they&amp;#039;ve gone into production with that car, if they&amp;#039;re going into production with the new Miura. I&amp;#039;ve seen it at the car show, they put a price on it, but I don&amp;#039;t know if it&amp;#039;s for sale. PM: So I know it&amp;#039;s early in production, but chemistry&amp;#039;s key to Top Gear. Getting a little of that Loveline meets Sexiest Man Alive meets Dukes of Hazzard interplay so far with Eric and Tanner? AC: That&amp;#039;s exactly what we&amp;#039;re going for: Sexiest Man Alive meets Dukes of Hazzard, Boss Hogg meets Brad Pitt. Guess which one I am. I know Tanner&amp;#039;s so cute, and Stromer&amp;#039;s so handsome, and they&amp;#039;re both easy on the eyes. PM: But you are, more or less, the Clarkson of the group. And you&amp;#039;re pretty damn funny, and pretty snarky--I&amp;#039;ll give you that. But how do you stand out from this kind of icon and make your group your own new thing? AC: Well, I met with Jeremy, who seemed like a real nice guy. I met with him, a few months back over at El Toro Marine Airfield. I think the difference might be more improvisation from me. He basically said that he was not an improviser and that his stuff was more thought out and less spontaneous, and I told him I was a little more spontaneous and a little less thought out, and that might be the difference. There&amp;#039;ll probably be more things flying out of my mouth that I didn&amp;#039;t plan on saying. PM: What about guest stars? I&amp;#039;m guessing that Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld are chomping at the bit to get on set with you guys, but is the new format as reliant on celebrity car fans as the BBC version? AC: As far as I know, and I don&amp;#039;t know that they&amp;#039;ve booked anybody just yet, but as far as I know, the plan is to have it be exactly the same as the BBC format, so there&amp;#039;ll be the guest segment, and there&amp;#039;ll be the Stig as well, and there&amp;#039;ll be the stunts, and the test drive, and we&amp;#039;ll have the celebrity segment to the show. I don&amp;#039;t know that we&amp;#039;ll have an A-lister every week, but the good thing about this show is that a lot of big-name guys are also car nuts, so they&amp;#039;re fans of the show because it exists already. PM: Now before we get too caught up in a show that&amp;#039;s still not airing until the fall, you&amp;#039;ve got a very cool new movie, The Hammer, coming out on DVD this Tuesday the 24th. So you basically play a kind of burnt-out-boxer-turned-DIY-guy who decides to go get his butt kicked in lieu of a mid-life crisis. That about right? AC: Sounds about right. It was described by one critic as &amp;quot;Rocky meets Stripes.&amp;quot; Now I will say this to all the nerds online: I know you think it&amp;#039;s my job to plug my movie and tell you all to go out and see it or go pick up a DVD or rent it exclusively at Blockbuster or get it at Amazon or what have you. I know that&amp;#039;s part of my job whether it&amp;#039;s good or bad. I know you&amp;#039;re not supposed to trust me that&amp;#039;s the movie&amp;#039;s good--it&amp;#039;s an independent film and it stars me (hell, last time I checked I was no Adam Sandler. Well, I&amp;#039;ll say this to all the nerds who are listening online or reading about this online: When you&amp;#039;re done, hop on over to Rotten Tomatoes or Fandango, punch in The Hammer, then when it goes to reviews, go to the community. Go and find out what the people who have seen the movie are saying about the movie, and when you see our 97 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and you see that out of 180 fan votes, 173 of them were positive, then you&amp;#039;ll go, &amp;quot;Maybe this is a good movie,&amp;quot; and you&amp;#039;ll go check it out. Or maybe you&amp;#039;ll just listen to Richard Roper and Michael Philips who gave it two thumbs up. I urge you to go to Fandango, I urge you to go to Rotten Tomatoes, I urge you to go to whatever Web site you use and read the reviews. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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