I watched the first half. Not bad. I'm glad James May is in there, he's a bit more entertaining. The other two are too fond of their superlatives. But I cringed whenever they let May handle anything when he clearly didn't know what he was doing.
My wife and I took the Cowley MINI plant tour in Spring 2006 toward the end of the R50 & R53 production life. During the tour, I spotted some unusual, unpainted body shells, recognize them as being of the yet-to-be-introduced R56, and the tour leader confirmed what I was seeing. Felt kinda getting a peek at the next generation car before others did.
I see they didn't make the BBC presenters wear the MINI jumpsuits they made those on the tour put on.
Or anywhere else besides the UK? Keep in mind that this was a government funded production and PR to promote British industry.
The closest we have is the How It's Made series on Discovery/Science Channel. It's on a much smaller scale, covering 4 topics in a half hour. They have done an episode on the MINI Cooper seat:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cx8lVVolvc"]How It's Made Automotive Seats MINI Cooper - YouTube[/ame]
They have also done a whole series called How It's Made: Dream Cars on the making of supercars:
The downside of this is that the producers feel they have to dumb things down to appeal to a wide audience - did you note one presenter explaining that the dashboard (or 'cockpit') was where the instruments and radio were?
And this was shown on the second (intentionally oddball) BBC channel at its time of lowest ratings (early evening), so 'prime time' is a bit generous.
But then we Brits do do documentaries - nobody here could understand the fuss over the 'March of the Penguins', since we've been getting programs like that on a weekly basis for 50 years.
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