All new Top Gear!

Well in a way - they're still doing the classic car stuff (James May's Bora review, the History of Car Controls segment) but it's being increasingly integrated into the challenge / fun side - British Leyland commemoration for example, or the Alfa Romeo challenge.

It's interesting to note that the first ever car review on "new" Top Gear was for the Citroen Berlingo.

It's still all good stuff though.

The Citroen Berlingo review took up a substantial portion of the show too didn't it? As did a studio segment on how to properly convert used cooking oil for use in diesel cars, which included rules about telling the taxman about it! God and who can forget the 'Insider Deals' thing which James carried on for a bit when he turned up? You could tell Jason Dawes just wasn't right for the programme when he was singing the praises of the Nissan Sunny as a second hand buy

Has Dave shown series 1 of the 'new' Top Gear? I think the earliest I've seen on Dave is series 2, I'm assuming due to James May not being in series 1.

I have bits of it repeated, possibly on G2 or another UKTV channel rather than Dave though. Think it might have been edited down into highlights and to remove Jason.

The first episode of the second series, where they introduce James May for the first time has been shown on Dave recently though

why would they remove jason?

I think UK Horizons showed Series 1, but it was heavily edited. Unfortunately they did keep some of Jason Dawes, and whilst he actually fits in as a presenter on that ITV show he does now, he was so out of his league on Top Gear. I think the only decent piece he did was taking those supercars to that school for the kids to see. I think Clarkson or even Hammond would have probably done a better job at it though.

He does seem to have been totally written out of Top Gear.

As Mr Stabby says he wasn't very good and I can't imagine that Top Gear would be as big a phenomenon as it is had he remained as the 3rd presenter

Probably because Dawes is actually a proper auto journalist...

So was James May but he seems better equipped to play the fall guy to the other two.

If you take Jason for what he is, he actually does know what he's talking about. Which is a fatal flaw on Top Gear

Don't get me wrong, I love TG but I do think Dawes is unnecessarily maligned. He was just put on the wrong show. Had he gone onto the more serious Fifth Gear (as was at the time as opposed to the TG-aping horror it is now) I think he'd have fitted in nicely.

Top Gear Episode One

Interesting to note that during the news it's only Hammond & Clarkson, though there are three seats present. Also there is far less audience, and the age range of the audience seems somewhat older.

and the lighting is a lot different than it is now

The set is much lighter in colour - I have seen this episode on UKTV G2/Dave at some point.