Stuff to do in a world of your own

Top Gear: Planet Garage

Top Gear celebrates The Garage: Your den,  workshop, laboratory,  hiding place, and sanctuary.

Richard Porter is the author of over 10 official Top Gear titles and two Grand Tour tie-ins. He is the creator of online motoring satire magazine sniffpetrol.com (150k users per month; Twitter 76k), and is also one of the three presenters on podcast Gareth Jones on Speed, which regularly tops the automotive charts with approx 1,000 downloads a day. He lives in London.

Building your own hovervan or brewing your own beer? Get down to the garage. 
 
Looking to store several step ladders or conceal a secret collection of owls? The garage is the place. 
 
Maybe you just want to whistle, drum or shout 'Ow my thumb!' without being told to shut up. The garage is waiting. 
 
This book celebrates the garage and all that happens in it. Even the fires.

50 Great Motoring Cock-Ups

Top Gear: Epic Failures

The definitive collection of colossal cock-ups that the motoring industry would rather forget.

Designing and making cars is an expensive thing to do. So is racing them. All told, the car business spends billions every year and with such vast sums at stake you’d think the people involved wouldn’t give desk space to Captain Cockup. Sadly, you would be wrong. 
 
Every department in every car firm and motorsport operation is capable of complete and abject failure, and on a surprisingly regular basis. 
 
Which is what this book is about. You see, Top Gear knows a thing or two about embarrassing mistakes, as anyone who watched our India special will know. The truth is, for many years Top Gear has also regarded failure as funny. Where other television programmes edit out the moment where the presenter falls over or slams their hand in a door, Top Gear gleefully leaves it in. 
 
So who better to take you on a gentle canter through 50 of the car world’s biggest and most glorious failures? That’s right, it’s Top Gear. Who else did you think? If you want this sort of stuff from Countryfile you might be in for a wait.

A celebration of the fourth best country in the world

The Top Gear Guide to Britain

Literally exploding with interesting facts.

For over ten years, Top Gear has been travelling all over Britain in the course of making the world’s best programme about cars, driving, and three men in smart-casual clothes shouting at each other. So, who better to assemble a guide to Britain itself with all its glories, quirks and multiple words for bread rolls? 
 
This book is not only a guide for outsiders; it is an invaluable reference manual for Britons themselves, like a mirror held up to our very souls.* Join us then, as we travel from A-Z cataloguing and making moderately flippant remarks about every aspect of life and living in the best country in the world after New Zealand, Denmark, probably Canada and some bits of France. 
 
*Although in this case, a mirror that has been dropped and then run over by a small lorry but don’t worry, some bits of it still just about work.

Vital Survival Tips for the Modern Man

Top Gear: How to Parachute into a Moving Car

A collection of the Top Gear team's sensible, level-headed advice for coping with the everyday scenarios that we all face now and again.

Life is full of complications. 
 
From buying petrol and driving on a motorway to using a microwave oven and becoming a Formula 1 driver, all men have suffered from the stresses and inconveniences of the modern world. 
 
Happily, this handy book will solve all of these problems by applying the unique brand of Top Gear logic to a range of everyday situatons, such as making a ham sandwich, designing a supercar, receiving directions and, of course, how to parachute into a moving car.

Crap Cars

From the Austin Allegro to the Renault Safrane, and from the MGB to the Volkswagen Beetle, this book brings together 50 of the worst cars ever to grace the roads of Britain. 
 
The book features everything from the aesthetically pathetic to the mechanically misguided and includes tales of the most bizarre and appalling cock-ups in motoring history. 
 
With full-colour photos to illustrate each entry, this chronicle of classically Crap Cars will transport you back to the beige and brown world of the seventies and eighties and your very own Morris Marina.

Top Gear: My Dad Had One of Those

A trip up memory drive in the familiar cars your Dad knew and loved.

Giles Chapman's motoring writing has included The Independent, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, Evening Standard, Condé Nast Traveller, Auto Express, Top Gear magazine, Classic &amp; Sports Car, and Octane. He is author of nine books, including Moving Objects, Car Badges (2005) and TV Cars (2006). He was voted Jeep Consumer Writer Of The Year, 2006. 
 
Richard Porter is script editor for BBC's Top Gear, a columnist for Evo magazine and contributing editor for Top Gear magazine. He is author of BBC Books' Crap Cars (2004).

Good old Dad and his good old Dad's car. As solid and dependable as the man himself, if a little less balding, Dad's car was almost a member of the family, whisking you to exciting days out, or just to visit boring relatives in distant parts of the country to the chant of 'are we nearly there yet?' Like the man behind the wheel, Dad's car made you feel safe and secure, because it was as reassuring and sensible as he was. Maybe in an idle moment Dad dreamt of driving something rakish and fast, just like in idle moments he dreamt that your Mum was Twiggy, but the demands of family life meant soft tops, hard suspension and anything even remotely sporty were off the cards. Even anything less than four doors would have been wildly hedonistic. But although the family car may not have been the very essence of rock 'n' roll, Dad was proud of it. 
 
Spanning the 1950s to the '80s, this is a celebration of the heyday of the Dad car. From much loved family workhorses like the Ford Cortina and Vauxhall Viva to the rakish excitement and playground kudos of the Rover 3500 and Citroen CX, all the great Dad cars are here. Reflecting a time before people carriers and lifestyle off roaders, when the nearest thing to an airbag was hiding behind your fat brother, this is a celebration of simple, honest cars that were as flawed and as loveable as your Dad himself.

Richard Porter

The first and only practical guide on how to become F1 Champion, for the millions of Grand Prix fans who have always dreamed of making it onto the podium. 
 
Are you the next Lewis Hamilton? 
How to be F1 Champion provides you with the complete guide to hitting the big time in top-flight motorsport, starting wiht the basics, including the correct look, how to manage your social media account, the art of champagne spraying and how to wear a massive watch. 
 
Then you'll be ready to learn more advanced skills such as inserting 'for sure' at the start of every sentence, talking about key sponsors while sounding like the force is draining from your body, and psychologically crushing your teammate without him noticing. 
 
How to be F1 Champion also sets out a strategy for hiring your entourage, and how to treat them once they're on the payroll. 
 
Helpful illustrations accompany the text throughout. 
 
See you on the podium!

Richard Porter

Books by Richard Porter

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