Anyone watching Hyperdrive? Does it get better?

I had high hopes for this hooning show, but the first two episodes left me thinking "well there is an hour and a half of my life I can't get back."

Does it get better?

No, but I have to admit my interest had already waned by the end of the trailer, despite the premise.

They hype it up as the best amateur racers on the planet.  I expected something like American Ninja Warrior where you see amazing athletes from smalltown, US.  On that show you sometimes get the story of the guy competing for his daughter with epilepsy or something and you cheer extra hard for him even though he fails on the first obstacle.

Instead, it seems like Hyperdrive just gives you a bunch of random people trying to drive a hodge-podge mix of drag cars, drift cars, Lambos, and they all seem to suck.

Not that I could do better, but these are supposed to be curated from the best of amateur drivers.

I haven't seen the show yet (beyond the trailer), but you can bet that of the top 3 priorities in picking these drivers, "personality" was first and second and "probably won't cause a fatal wreck" was third. It's a reality TV show after all.

Those that don't bring enough drama-packing human trainwrecks to the screen don't last long. I think the best reality TV driving shows were RUFTAR and the British MTV's "Pinks."

There are a few people with legit skills, but I was also generally unimpressed. 

I also thought the water obstacle in the first few episodes was dumb - what's the point in bringing all these people in just to make them drive through an enormous puddle and suck up water into their engines?

I'll probably watch all of it anyway. 

It's an automotive competition designed by people who think racing is boring, but who apparently also know nothing about it except that a lot of people put views on Kenneth Block's Youtube.  Let's build a "racecourse" where in at least three locations around it the drivers have to stop.

Engine noises and tires screeching are also boring.  Let's have lo fi recordings of the "spotter" just yelling "go go go" or other unhelpful observations, and four semi-clueless announcers who overhype minor things by screaming "WOOOO" at every available opportunity.

I'd love to see a British autotest driver or Japanese gymkhana specialist just completely walk all the 800hp OMG dorifto bros in a Festiva, but that would probably be too close to reality for TV...

I thought it looked like a fun concept...   Challenges with cars for time that were a little outside the box, but then they were talking about "high speed cornering" or something like that when it was just drifting..  That is fine...   But not the same..

I was a little lost with a MMA fighter as an announcer...   I really wanted to like it, but didn't make the end of the first episode.

Wife showed me the trailer. She anticipated my reaction:  rolled eyes.

It is totally not racing.  I'm not sure why they even time it, let alone judge the winner by time.

In reply to Curtis :

It's the gridlife version of racing for the most part. If they would have advertised the show as Gymkhana then cool. That wasn't the case though. The fact that basically the ability to balance a bridge was the deciding factor in a lot of cases and most of the obstacles was just about how can we mess up a car lost it for me. 

Combine that with almost half of the people there must have had no clue what the competition really was because they brought a knife to a gun fight. 

I truly wanted that little girl in the South African BMW junkyard dog to kick all they're tails!

One of the many times I'm glad I don't watch TV.

Has any car/racing show been done right on TV yet?

Watched an episode the other night, that was enough.

I added it to my watchlist and intended to ask here.  Looks like I have my answer.

I watched the whole thing, not sure why, other than a few neat stunts.  Sara Haro's V6 Mustang was impressive against the full drift builds.  Apparently the reward is being on Netflix and an ugly trophy.

FuzzWuzzy said:

...Has any car/racing show been done right on TV yet?

Roadkill? (they race occasionally)

aircooled said:

FuzzWuzzy said:

...Has any car/racing show been done right on TV yet?

Roadkill? (they race occasionally)

They started out on Youtube, though and then TV just airs their back episodes

FuzzWuzzy said:

One of the many times I'm glad I don't watch TV.

Has any car/racing show been done right on TV yet?

Does the old school TNN car programming count? I'm thinking stuff like swamp buggy racing, Mickey Thompson offroad series, mud bogs, tractor pulling.

slefain said:

FuzzWuzzy said:

One of the many times I'm glad I don't watch TV.

Has any car/racing show been done right on TV yet?

Does the old school TNN car programming count? I'm thinking stuff like swamp buggy racing, Mickey Thompson offroad series, mud bogs, tractor pulling.

Oh, I had forgotten all about the old TNN shows.  Had a lot of college drinking games watching ShadeTree Mechanic.

I watched a portion of the trailer. Didn't make it all the way through. It is on my watchlist, but I'm not sure when I will ever be desperate enough to actually watch it. Doesn't look interesting to me.

In the SCCA community there's numerous threads ripping on that dude who claims he has 44 national championships or whatever.  Yeah, he's counting like when he finishes 1 of 1 in a local region and similar bullE36 M3 and is apparently a well known resume padder.

I ended up watching it all the way through, was entertaining but pretty ridiculous and absurd at points. Hell, even the producers didn’t think/test things all the way through when one of the course obstacles sent one of the competitors to the hospital when their car was essentially SITTING STILL and they ended up pulling it from the rest of the competition. 

The seesaw bridge was pretty ridiculous in the later episodes- at the beginning it was at least more of a test of control of the car but toward the end it was less that and more trying to figure out where the balance point was. 

I was really disappointed the South African girl got knocked out so fast too- the water obstacles were silly and really seemed almost intended to berkeley with the more stripped/race-oriented cars and give the more stock ones a bit of a chance. 

I had high hopes for another one called Rust Valley Restorations.  It's some dreadlock guy in B.C. that has a junkyard full of, well... junk, and he decided to build a restoration shop with his son and friend to fix them up and sell them.

He took in a Continental convertible that was spiraling out of control with rust discoveries and they would never make the promised date for the customer.  They kept showing how much money they were losing and how the three guys couldn't possibly do all the work... then on the last day, suddenly the car was painted, assembled, had air ride, and a ton of custom interior work done... and they miraculously organized a big reveal at the local drive-in.

All for $15,000 and done in one week alongside three other projects.  By three guys.  I call BS.