The Man in the White Suit

Okay, I admit it, I’m a huge fan of the BBC show Top Gear. Maybe it’s for middle aged guys who fantasize about driving like Mario Andretti, but it is one of the few shows that makes me laugh out loud. As you can see in the photo on the right, I even have a Stig t-shirt (thank you, D’Aun, for the awesome Father’s Day gift).

You might be asking, “Who or what is the Stig?” Glad you asked. Top Gear is a show about cars, so they take cars onto their test track for timed laps. They want to compare the lap times as equitably as possible, so they hired a professional driver to test all of the cars. That keeps the variables to a minimum since one driver will have the same driving characteristics.

The driver they hired was kept a secret and they started calling him the Stig on the show. Dressed all in white, the Stig is an enigma that nobody knows. He never said anything, nobody ever saw his face, and it was one of the best kept secrets in show business. It became a national pastime to guess who he might be, and lots of journalists and racing fans tried to uncover the “real” Stig. Kind of like the old “who shot JR” thing of a few decades ago, it was something on television that everybody talked about.

Turns out there have been at least three Stigs, but the longest running and best known is Ben Collins. He was the second Stig for the show and had some of the most memorable moments. Yet until a couple of years ago, all we knew about him was that he was FAST on the race track. Beyond that we didn’t know much and the hosts of the show would make up crazy things about him (e.g. “Some say he’s a failed CIA experiment.”). At one point they even brought in the famous Michael Schumacher to pretend he was the Stig (and a lot of people, including myself for a bit, believed it).

Collins was outed after years of anonymity behind the white helmet, and then he wrote The Man in the White Suit: The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me about his experiences. At this point you know I’m going to read this book.

But before I could, while it was in the early publishing phase it caused some legal wrangling in the UK as the BBC tried to suppress it and not let the “secret” out. A losing battle, of course, but it added some intrigue to the whole thing.

So I love the show, even the American version of the show. But I must say that Ben Collins is a better driver than he is a writer. He has led an interesting life — an accomplished race car driver in multiple venues, a member of the British military, a stunt driver for movies, and of course a fascinating run with Top Gear. But the book takes all of that and somehow makes it seem mundane. Not boring, just not as fascinating as it should be. It’s the writing — it doesn’t flow like it should.

Still, if you love cars, love the TV show, or love racing, you’ll enjoy this book. As they say, a petrolhead will enjoy it. I will say without embarrassment that I did. You might too.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice a few drift turns …

By purchasing this book via the link above, a percent of the sale will be donated to PathLight International. Thanks!