Global Garage - Discovery Channel

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Tue 26 Sep 2006 10:22
Global Garage - Discovery Channel - daveyjp
If you were underwhelmed by Fifth Gear - and reading the thread most of us were, tune in to Discovery Channel at 10pm on a Monday night. Global Garage. Last night's episode - Bangla Banger.

Imagine the Top Gear 'lets make a cabrio Espace' stunt but done in Bangladesh with a local 'car' designer and an East London mechanic with 40 years experience in the trade.

Local goes and buys an absolute shed of a Toyota 2 door coupe - at least 30 years old. Apparently Bangladesh buys up most of Japan's ex motors and scraps them. Pays £1200 for it!. The car is a large number of holes held together with very thin steel! He then spends the next four weeks getting the car ready for the Dhaka motorshow. This involves lots of sheet steel, lots of welding and lots of Bangaldeshis crawling over it. The only tools he has are hack saws, a multitude of hammers, a few spanners and oxy welding gear.

The main guy has the ideas, the locals build the body shell using cardboard templates and the sheet steel. The East London mechanic goes off and finds a new engine and gearbox. The engine is also 30 years old and is found at a huge engine supplier in the middle of Dhaka. The engine is 'bench' tested in the street. A large battery and a pop bottle full of fuel is all that's required - it fired first time. The engine is fitted by 5 locals placing it in the engine bay, there is no engine crane and of course no need for shoes - it's too hot!

The new radiator fouls the cooling fan, so off to a back street welder where the water inlet tube is moved. The machanic then tunes the enigne. The test drive takes place in the streets of Dhaka - no glass in at this stage and body work is base metal - the old paint of the original car has been stripped by many locals using hacksaw blades! The car jumps around as the shockers were shortened by four inches so have no travel!

This show is what happens in a Country where Health and Safety are unknown terms and in parts had me and my wife in stitches. Highly recommended.
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Tue 26 Sep 2006 10:30
Global Garage - Discovery Channel - runboy
I saw this for the first time last night too (was it the first or have I missed some?). Despite being tired the programme had me "riveted" (no pun intended) and it was a master of fresh ideas.

The two guys are a good match and play off one another very well.

If people in India are paying £1200 for a car that in this country you would have to pay someone to take away, then good luck to them!
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