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To the uninitiated, the BBC show Top Gear might seem an improbable hit. Consider the premise: the weekly, hour-long program features "three middle-aged men fooling around using cars as props," says Jeremy Clarkson, one of its presenters. "That doesn't sound very exciting, does it?" Perhaps these guys are easy on the eye? "They're a bit fat, and they dress like s___," says Andy Wilman, Top Gear's executive producer. "You don't look at them and think, it's Ocean's Eleven coming toward you."

Dowdy and doughy or not, the three men and their show can claim an army of followers. The most popular program on BBC2 — the higher-browed of the Beeb's two main channels — Top Gear regularly pulls in more than 7 million viewers, roughly a quarter of all Britons watching TV during the program's Sunday-night slot. Chalk that up to the show's high speed and high production values: crazy challenges and outlandish races — an Aston Martin versus a train between England and Monte Carlo, for instance (the Aston won) — are, like the rest of the show, beautifully shot and edited. Add in the bickering, bantering, male-but-not-macho presenters, and Top Gear has "touched something in the zeitgeist," says Steve Hewlett, a former British TV exec turned media consultant. "It hit this magic combination."

Next step: cash in. The hit U.K. show is already seen in more than 100 countries, from Norway to New Zealand, South Africa to Saudi Arabia; its global audience stands somewhere near 500 million. Almost two dozen local editions of the Top Gear magazine — a best seller in Britain — appear on newsstands worldwide. And foreign versions of the program are next. In September, Australian broadcaster SBS aired the first of eight episodes of its own edition of Top Gear. A pilot of a U.S. version is already in the can, and a Russian series is set to air early next year. With a live arena show about to tour the globe, the aim is to "create the world's biggest 
 motoring entertainment brand," says Wayne Garvie, director of content and production at BBC Worldwide, the broadcaster's commercial arm.

Not bad for a show whose luck stalled just a few years back. In 2001, 24 years after it was launched, Top Gear ran out of gas. Its restart the following year owes much to Wilman and Clarkson, who quit the show in 1999 after just over a decade fronting it. Over beers in a London pub, the two sketched the show's current format: out went the string of turgid, outside-broadcast pieces to camera. In came a cavernous studio. Fresh faces were added. A mystery racing driver, permanently hidden beneath overalls and a crash helmet and known only as "the Stig," injected character into the show. And while Top Gear used to dwell on "What's a car like?" says Clarkson, these days it's "What can you do with a car?" Like: Is it possible to drive to the North Pole? Or drive across the English Channel? (Yes, to both.)

The program's visuals were slicked up, too; deft editing, delicious coloring and crisp sound have made Top Gear as striking as any Italian supercar. Its cool aesthetic, coupled with those proudly uncool presenters, have lent the program broad appeal. Close to half of Top Gear 's British audience is female. Kids are drawn to the presenters' mischief and squabbles.

It doesn't hurt that the presenters sometimes crash headlong into trouble. Behind the wheel of their Toyota pickup in the race with a dog-pulled sled to the North Pole last year, Clarkson and fellow presenter James May sipped gin and tonics, earning a rap on the knuckles from BBC trustees. Earlier this month, in a segment designed to find out how hard life is for truckers, Clarkson, at the wheel of a truck, said: "Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day." More than 1,800 people complained.

Clarkson is key to Top Gear 's on-air attitude, but he and Wilman are also crucial when it comes to squeezing cash out of the brand. The men work closely with Global Brands, the BBC Worldwide unit set up last year to exploit some of the broadcaster's most marketable shows. Merchandising spin-offs — from Top Gear-branded cakes to video games — need the pair's approval long before the goodies hit store shelves. And rather than pay Clarkson and Wilman out of the cash that comes from TV licenses, BBC Worldwide last year took a stake in Bedder 6, a company set up by the men, into which most of the show's commercial revenues are funneled.

Reproducing the English show's success through local versions won't be easy. Unlike more widely franchised programs — The Weakest Link, say, or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? — there's no easy-to-follow formula guaranteed to work. "Our production bible?" asks Wilman, "It's three men, a thick racing driver who can't speak, they're in a room, and that's it. There's nothing." But some aspects of the British show should travel well. "The Stig," for instance, figures in the Australian and U.S. versions, while inviting local celebrities to race the clock around a circuit should also have universal appeal. Much more crucial: finding a cast as comfortable with cars as they are fooling around. Hiring the comedian, rally driver and TV DIY star used in the U.S. pilot took six months. "What you won't want to do is lose the essence of Top Gear, which is ... the independence of spirit, in which people can say things they absolutely believe in," says BBC Worldwide's Garvie.

That can often mean poking fun at cars the show disapproves of. And in markets where automakers' advertising dollars are welcomed (the BBC doesn't air ads in the U.K.), some worry that freedom could be compromised. In the U.S., "I don't think you could be quite as freewheeling with your opinions as you can on the BBC, because sponsors pay for the programs," talk-show host Jay Leno, a fan of the U.K. show who turned down the chance to front the American pilot, wrote in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper in March. Garvie swats away the suggestion. "We haven't found that NBC or advertisers have put any pressure on us," he says. Top Gear's magazines, Garvie adds, "have the same attitude, and the manufacturers still advertise in their hordes." Says Wilman: "It's the only way it can work, that you have pockets of like-minded souls, doing Top Gear-y things." That means making fun, as much as making money.

Read about Jeremy Clarkson's all-time favorite cars.

• ADAM SMITH
• How high speed and high jinks turned the BBC's Top Gear from a tired jalopy into a global hit