Top Gear is an entertainment show. With staff of writers and producers. Everything is preplanned, everything that is said is said with entertainment and marketing in mind. Almost no factual substance. I think it's hardly surprising that they don't do thorough technical analysis.

Fifth Gear is along the lines of Top Gear, but a little more fact based.

My personal favorite is Evo car magazine based out of the UK. They do "long term tests" for a lot of exotics like Aston Martins. As an example here is a review of the V8 Vantage from a few years ago: http://www.evo.co.uk/carreviews/evolongtermtests/202705/asto...

I actually just watched those back episodes of Top Gear two days ago. I thought they conveyed most of the things said by your parent fairly well. They expressed extreme disgust with the gearbox, demonstrating clearly how non-functional it was, and showed comparisons with cars in the same price range in which it had much more body roll and braking distance.