Former Top Gear team sets sights on domination of the four-wheeled Internet

James May (left), Jeremy Clarkson (middle), and Richard Hammond (right).

You have to hand it to Messrs. Clarkson, May, and Hammond. Together with producer Andy Wilman, they took a moribund BBC show about cars and turned it into a global phenomenon—we are of course talking about Top Gear. Under their revised format, Top Gear dropped the idea of being Consumer Reports for cars, instead opting for comedy banter, insanely impractical road trips, and breathtaking cinematography. When things ended badly with the BBC, Clarkson, May, and Hammond were snapped up by Amazon with a budget reported to be $7 million (£4.5 million) per episode. But they evidently want more. On Monday Variety revealed that the gang, together with a tech entrepreneur called Ernesto Schmitt, want to create a digital home on the Internet for car people.

The site will be called DriveTribe, and will cater to a range of different car enthusiasts—or tribes—with verticals full of written content as well as video. Each tribe will have a different host, including Clarkson, Hammond, and May. According to Hammond, "Gamers have got Twitch, travelers have got TripAdvisor and fashion fans have got, oh, something or other too. But people who are into cars have got nowhere. There’s no grand-scale online motoring community where people can meet and share video, comments, information, and opinion. DriveTribe will change that. And then some."

Clarkson was more succinct: "I didn’t understand DriveTribe until Richard Hammond said it was like YouPorn, only with cars."

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments