Review: Top Gear Live

Richard Hammond, like the Telecom XT service was for many of its users, was nowhere to be seen. It didn't stop his Top Gear colleagues from shaming him for promoting it. Photo / Supplied

Richard Hammond mightn't be in town for this year's Top Gear Live shows but his spectre loomed large.

The world's biggest kid Jeremy Clarkson and 'Captain Slow' sidekick James May wasted no time whatsoever last night in wading into Hamster's advertising campaign for Telecom's XT network.

As the capacity crowd absorbed temperatures that would have had Bear Grylls looking for somewhere cool to hide, the Top Gear duo spoke at length about Hammond's embarrassment at backing the beleaguered network. It, they said was the reason he wasn't down here this year.

Last night's petrol-soaked spectacular opened a three-day run at Auckland's ASB Showgrounds, which have been transformed into the Top Gear Live Motoring Festival for the duration, meaning there's more to see than at last year's show.

Clarkson and May were again joined by local hero Greg Murphy, who was also the obligatory 'native' for the Australian shows.

Things kicked off with a scantily-dressed lovely and a matte black Subaru WRX rally car sizing each other up, before all hell broke loose. She started flinging fire-poi around, while the car did donuts and generally misbehaved until the rear of the car burst into flames. A burning Subaru and a pounding Rob Zombie soundtrack - just like Friday night in Henderson.

Precision driving was again a highlight, with four Ford Focus RSs defying sanity in an impressive display on the narrow stage that - given one more coat of paint on any of the vehicles - could have easily ended in tears.

Similar tactics to last year's show were employed to tie it in to the television programme - the 'Cool Wall' proved popular, with audience participation deciding which nominated vehicles were naffest.

The telly version prides itself on crazy challenges which, this time around, involved Clarkson, Slow and Murph raiding their garden sheds to concoct vehicles out of "what was lying around".

Murph, it seems, had half a dozen chainsaws doing just that.

Also of note was an excellent display of incredibly expensive and exotic supercar machinery - which include such vehicles as Aston Martin's $555,000 DBS, a Ferrari F40 and an F60 'Enzo' and even KTM's bizarre little X-Bow. Not the most exciting part of the night, but nice to see so much stunning metal in one place.

Of course there's no show without Punch - or The Stig in this case - who came out as part of a gameshow-themed segment that involved Mad Max-styled cars, flame-spitting machine guns and the world's first indoor loop-the-loop, which saw the helmeted hero pulling an organ-popping five Gs as he avoided falling to his doom.

Top Gear Live's second journey to Auckland offered a better level of audience participation, was more engaging than 2009 and was probably funnier with the Captain taking over from the well-shamed Hamster.

It was, however, insanely hot again, with Clarkson asking just how tight the centre's manager was that he wouldn't even turn the air conditioning on.