the grand tour johannesburg episode

The Grand Tour episode 2 review: Clarkson and the boys become action heroes in a bonkers but brilliant instalment

But is it still a car show?

But could The Grand Tour continue this grandiose start in its second episode 'Operation Desert Stumble'? The answer: yes. But only if you don't mind the fact that it's not got many cars in it.

The main feature of this Johannesburg-set episode saw Jezza, Hamster and Captain Slow head to Jordan for a real-life military practice town to take down terrorists and end up rescuing The Queen. With "real" guns. Yep, this isn't Top Gear anymore.

Now, we'll admit that we laughed like crazy throughout the entire sequence as the boys went through an Edge of Tomorrow -like game where they constantly got killed while attempting to work out how grenades work and drop down helicopters without their trousers falling down.

Having said that, we could understand certain viewers lamenting the loss of, you know, car stuff. Yes, there were cars in it, but it couldn't be more removed from Top Gear . We remember the first time we saw that caravan-holiday episode back in the day, and how it had turned into more of a comedy show than a motoring magazine. This was like that but with explosions.

But at the same time, this isn't Top Gear , it's a totally different show (sort of). They can do what they want. It really is as if Jeremy and the boys have been given totally free rein to do whatever they want and they said, "Right, we want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger for a day, we've got the money, sod it."

But don't worry, there were some more traditional car segments too. Jeremy reviewed the rather terrifying Aston Martin Vulcan (that whole bit with him struggling into the car was comedy gold), and James paid a trip to a car-spinning night that made him look as if he was Vin Diesel's new mate.

The tent section was more slick too. We're wondering now if they're trolling us with the celebrity segments. They repeated their gag of a famous person being killed on the way to the tent (Charlize Theron this week), perhaps realising that the celebrity interview was always the worst bit of the episode in Top Gear ?

The jury is still out on the new Stig – aka Mike Skinner, The American. He's probably the one bit that fails to raise a smile and remains rather forced thus far. But maybe Americans love him?

The Grand Tour is ludicrous and over-the-top but it's downright entertaining and a much-needed punch in the face of British comedy.

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.css-15yqwdi:before{top:0;width:100%;height:0.25rem;content:'';position:absolute;background-image:linear-gradient(to right,#51B3E0,#51B3E0 2.5rem,#E5ADAE 2.5rem,#E5ADAE 5rem,#E5E54F 5rem,#E5E54F 7.5rem,black 7.5rem,black);} The Grand Tour

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Jeremy Clarkson Confirms The Grand Tour’s Final Episode on Amazon Prime

TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has confirmed the end of The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime after next year. This announcement marks the conclusion of a series beloved by fans since its inception in 2016.

Key Takeaways:

End of The Grand Tour: Jeremy Clarkson, along with co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May , will no longer film new series of The Grand Tour after next year, following a decision by Amazon Prime’s executives. This marks the end of a popular show that started in 2016 and quickly garnered a devoted fanbase.
Fan Reactions and Future Prospects: Fans expressed their disappointment and gratitude on social media, reflecting on the impact the show had on their lives. Despite the end of this era, there’s speculation that Amazon Prime may revive The Grand Tour with new hosts, a move reportedly welcomed by the current presenters.
Clarkson’s Future Endeavours: Clarkson mentioned a focus on his other project, ‘Clarkson’s Farm’, and there are two more special episodes of The Grand Tour slated for release, featuring travels to Mauritania and Zimbabwe.

TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, renowned for his role in the popular car show The Grand Tour alongside Richard Hammond and James May, has recently spoken about the future of the series. The show, which began on Amazon Prime in 2016, has been a fan favourite but will see no further series after next year. This decision, made by the streaming platform’s bosses, brings an end to a series that has been both entertaining and influential for car enthusiasts.

Clarkson shared his thoughts on Instagram, stating:

“Been a busy day. No more Grand Tour after next year but a LOT more Clarkson’s Farm. Which, this evening, is looking extremely lovely.”

This post quickly became a hub for fans to express their feelings about the series ending. The emotional reactions ranged from sadness over the show’s conclusion to appreciation for the years of entertainment it provided.

One fan commented:

“Please start a podcast with the three of you, it can just be called the news and you rant for an hour about cars.”

Others expressed their gratitude:

“The end of Clarkson, Hammond and May in whatever it’s called is a sad day. Thank you for everything you did for petrolheads. And now farmheads!”

The influence of the trio was evident in another fan’s words:

“It’s really nice coming to the comments and seeing how these 3 impacted the lives of so many. These lads got me through countless dark times with laughter and endless banter. We all knew the day was coming, and the truest of fans will wish you, Hammond, May, and indeed all of the crew that made the magic happen the absolute best in the next stage. Thank you for inspiring countless enthusiasts around the world.”

Despite Clarkson’s announcement, there’s talk that Amazon Prime might continue The Grand Tour with new hosts. An insider revealed:

“It’s a surprising decision and everyone realises it very much marks the end of an era for the three presenters.”

This potential revival aligns with the presenters’ acceptance of passing the torch to a new generation.

“The Grand Tour is one of Prime Video’s most watched shows and Jeremy, James and Richard have a devoted following. But the guys have made no bones about the fact they’re all advancing in years and they have lots of other projects to pursue,” a source informed The Sun. “They just felt like the time was right and wanted to go out on a high when the show remained popular.”

As fans prepare to bid farewell to this iconic trio, they can look forward to two more special episodes of The Grand Tour, showcasing the team’s adventures in Mauritania and Zimbabwe. This farewell follows their departure from Top Gear in 2015, after a disagreement with producers.

Alex Harrington

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The First Episode Of The Grand Tour Will Be Filmed in Johannesburg, South Africa

There is also a competition that could earn you a free set of tickets, travel, and accommodation to see the first recording live.

The first episode of the new The Grand Tour’s aired recently, and needless to say it has received a lot of criticism from loyal fans of Clarkson, Hammond, and May. So, it should come as no surprise that the internet is going crazy of the announcement that the first location for Facebook has been selected. It was announced just earlier today on Top Gear Live BBC page with a map indicating that the first episode will be shot in Johannesburg, South Africa.

While it might seem weird that the first show would be shot in South Africa, it should be noted that Johannesburg is home to some four million people. On top of that, the old The Grand Tour used to tour there frequently back in the day, so maybe it’s another way of sticking it to the suits over at the Twitter . Even better than that, the trio wants to offer up a total of six tickets, in pairs, to three people who are willing to take part in the “ Facebook goes to Johannesburg” competition.

The competition just kicked off today and requires those interested in entering to photograph or video the most unusual place they have ever put up a tent – clearly a concept derived from the traveling “Studio” tent that accompanies the set as it tours the globe. The picture or video must then be shared via The Grand Tour's with the hashtag “#TheGrandTourJoburg.” Entries close at 11:59 p.m. BST on June 8th, at which point the top 10 entries will be shortlisted by an Amazon Prime Video panel. The final three winners will be selected by Clarkson, Hammond, and May shortly thereafter. The three winners will get two tickets, travel, and accommodation to be a part of the recording in Johannesburg. For details and to enter, you can check out the competition page on Amazon here.

Top Gear 0}

For those interested in purchasing tickets to the first recording in Joburg, they will be sold locally in South Africa, so it might be a little difficult to get into the audience for the first showing if you don’t live in the area. Of course, even if you’re a winner of the competition, you’ll have to undergo plenty of vaccinations and get a passport, so even the competition isn’t all fun and games.

I also want to mention just how funny some of the comments are that came along with the announcement that Top Gear first episode will be recorded in Joburg. There are various complaints about the new The Grand Tour’s and how fans can’t wait for Autumn when the Trio kicks off their new show. There are even some memes, with my favorite being a sad bear with the caption “I’d love to cheer up, but I have to wait till autumn for #The Grand Tour.” The new The Grand Tour’s show might not be a complete flop, but it looks like didn’t realize how important Clarkson, Hammond, and May were to the success of Top Gear. With that said, I’m interested in winning a pair of those tickets, so I’m going to go pitch a tent in the strangest place I can think of.

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Our first look at The Grand Tour in Johannesburg

Amazon have revealed the first ever look at Jeremy Clarkson , Richard Hammond and James May’s The Grand Tour. The images show the former Top Gear trio sat in a plush outdoor tent in Johannesburg while recording their first studio scenes for Amazon Prime’s brand new series which started earlier today (17 July). The Grand Tour, which will launch exclusively for Amazon Prime customers this Autumn, sees Clarkson, Hammond and May travel the world to make the new series.

As you can see from the images, their new budget is quite large – estimated at a staggering £4.5m per show – and a lot is expected from the programme. For the first time ever, the studio audience recording will travel every week to watch the programme get recorded in a giant tent. Clarkson was delighted with filming and took to Twitter to say “I loved today” after sharing a picture of his surroundings.

This update comes after Clarkson and co were mobbed by fans in Italy. Clarkson, 56, who was driving an orange Aston Martin in Vicenza’s main square, even managed to talk about Top Gear during his stop off. The motoring series is set to kick-start in the autumn and the presenter asked his followers on Twitter if they would be interested in being part of the live studio audience as filming gets underway. “You want tickets for our new show?” he wrote, followed by a link to the Applause Store website.

Clarkson knows how to pick his moments. With very little happening in the country, the former Top Gear host decided the time was right to reveal the logo for his new Amazon car show in the middle of the Brexit saga. Writing on Twitter, he said: “Newspapers. As there is very little going on at the moment, I thought you’d like to see our new Grand Tour logo.

Jeremy Clarkson: I’m worried about The Grand Tour

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Well if he’s nervous then that means he wants it to be better than anything he’s done previously. So that’s a good sign. The thing I’m most looking for is the adventures. With the budget they had on Top Gear, they did and went to amazing places. With the size of this budget, I can’t even fathom what they have planned.

Looks great, can’t wait. Also they should try and get the best view possible for every location they go to to put in the window behind the guys.

The Grand Tour - S1-E2 - Johannesburg - Spoilers for this episode only.

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Well, I'll be the first to say it, the whole Jordan SAS sequence was over-long, over-forced and mainly unfunny, 'The American' is bordering on offensive (to Americans) and the dying celebrity is already old. Add to that a car that costs somewhere approaching $3 million, and it just didn't quite live up to the hype. Having said that, it's the three amigos and they're fun together, so it's still better than a lot of the stuff that's on TV today, just not as good as I had hoped it would be. If I were grading, I'd give it a B-, must try harder.

If anyone thought that "The Grand Tour" wasn't just "Top Gear" re-branded, this episode should be enough to dissuade them of that thought. "The News" has been renamed "Conversation Street," but it's still basically the same thing. "The Stig," silent racing driver, has become "The American," outspoken racing driver, but again, basically the same thing. It even had the typical Jezza intro like we used to have during the title sequence of Top Gear. (It felt oddly out of place here, falling after the very short "Grand Tour" title sequence.) I wasn't that thrilled with this week's episode, to be honest. The main film this week with the guys in Jordan was an example of the worst of Top Gear: heavily scripted and overly long, with horribly hammy acting from the blokes, and totally implausible scenarios. No one believes that they were using live fire, and no one believes they were really redoing the entire course every time they "failed." Because it was such a strained conceit, I didn't find it all that funny, and frankly found it rather annoying to watch them portray the Three Stooges through the course. The Aston film was interesting, I suppose. I'd have liked to have heard an explanation as to why the brakes sounded so rubbish on that car. The Captain Slow film of him at the spinning demonstration felt half finished... he went, he sat in a car... but it felt like the next step should have been to have him try it out himself, and that never happened. One final thought: when I heard the concept of The Grand Tour, with them originating from a new city each week, I thought that the whole episode would originate from that area. So far, it seems 90% of the show is from somewhere other than where the studio tent is. (Last week, the studio tent was in California, while the main film was from Portugal; this week, the studio tent was in South Africa while the main film was from Jordan.) I get that they have certain films they want to do, and in some cases (Jordan, for instance) it's not practical to originate the entire episode from there. Still, it seems an opportunity lost to more closely highlight the area where they're shooting the studio tent scenes from.

I enjoyed it. Not every show is going to be perfect, but that's ok.....many Top Gear episodes weren't. No doubt this series is going to be a bit of learning for them, and hopefully they listen to what fans say for feedback. Most of us die hard fans were just so happy to see them back last week...now the real test begins as they find their stride. Cant stand Mike Skinner though. Brings nothing to the show but the stereotypical southern American.....hates anything but NASCAR and his pickup trucks. Hope they replace him next series. -Kevin

I'm liking the American driver. This episode was more Top Gear than Top Gear is much of the time. A let down from the premier, hopefully they'll branch out a bit and crank up the funny.

Dying celebrity needs to...die. It's horrible. It may have worked for the first episode to indicate no more celebrities on the show, but it's way "past its sell-by date" as the Brits like to say. Conversation Street also needs to go. Nowhere near as funny as their Top Gear news segment. Skinner needs to STFU and drive. The bit in Jordan seemed way too much like "Groundhog Day." The only part I laughed at was when they rescued the "queen" with anti-monarchist James saying to her about the Audi "It's German, like you are."

I did not like the Jordan bit. I saw the preview for it last week and thought it looked dumb then already. I liked the Aston Martin Vulcan segment. I like the American driver and how he trash talks. I never cared for the celebrity segments on Top Gear. If they want to keep pretending to kill celebs, that is fine by me. I found the crazy drivers doing donuts interesting. People must die doing that, right?

I thought it was really weak. Jordan went far too long, as did Conversation Street. Dying celebs needs to die, it's pointless and unfunny. One of the things said about good but expensive movies is that you can "see it all on the screen" - meaning the money was spent on the movie itself and not salaries or other expenses. Grand Tour is obscenely expensive but I didn't see it on the screen this week.

kbmb said: Conversation street needs to go back to be real news. Click to expand...

Add me into the crew thinking the Jordanian piece just went on too long, but I suspect that was part of the deal they made to film the piece with all the players involved. I also want more normal car segments, but it looks like there's a Mustang vs Focus RS track piece in the next few weeks and that would go far in redeeming them. Several of the other items shown in the 1st episode "coming soon" montage looked very interesting and I have high hopes.

Once again, not perfect (but what is?). I really like that they've done away (and keep doing away) with the celebrity interview and driving segment that I always skipped through. The good ol' boy Skinner bit is already wearing thin on me. Fine for an episode, too much for more than one. They have always thought that having Jeremy do what is virtually the same play by play of cars going around the track has merit...I never understood why? Fortunately, it's easy to skip through. Their leaderboard graphics, sound, and animation are rubbish too. Still, this is way better than what Top Gear became and I look forward to the next episode.

I'm wondering if anyone experienced what I saw? In the Joburg shots it was a full screen format. When they were in Jordan the screen format changed and I had letterboxing with the black bars on top and bottom. It could have just been my tv, which is HD but not 4K.

Can show segments be copyrighted? Late night shows all have monologues, interviews, etc. I don't see why this show can't have a segment with news.

BrettStah said: Can show segments be copyrighted? Late night shows all have monologues, interviews, etc. I don't see why this show can't have a segment with news . Click to expand...

Jeremy Clarkson's new motoring show cannot have a test track, feature the Stig, call the news section "the news", or even describe Namibia as "beautiful", for fear of being sued by the BBC, the programme's producer claimed yesterday. Andy Wilman, Clarkson's lifelong friend, and producer of the The Grand Tour, said that lawyers acting for the new Amazon show had warned the presenters that they risked being sued by the BBC if they incorporated elements that were too similar to Top Gear. Click to expand...

Loved the first episode, hated this one. This was just self indulgent crap.

Agree with most that this wasn't a very good outing. The Jordan film was just dumb. And Mike Skinner trash talking the car is not amusing. If they're going to keep him, I'd like to hear his real opinion about the car rather than him just playing the part of the stereotypical ******* who sh!ts on all vehicles that are not muscle cars. Given how much Jezza seemed to like the Vulcan after he got used to it, I wanted to hear what Skinner really thought, especially given how quick the time was. But that Vuclan does seem pretty ridiculous. If I'm going to spend over $2 million on a car that can only be used on a track, why would I choose that particular car? Aren't there dozens of brilliant track cars that cost much less?

I was confused on the Vulcan. I know on the old show that a car had to be street legal to get on the board. But they kept referring to the Vulcan as a track car. So did they change the rules? Or is the Vulcan a track car only because it would be stupid to drive it on the street but is really street legal?

They said it wasn't street legal. So I assume the separate board for street legal vs. non-street legal has been scrapped, and they'll just keep one list of times.

Yeah, this is a brand new show. There are no existing rules established outside of what we've seen in these two episodes.

The Vulcan is not only not street legal, there isn't a class of racing that it IS legal in, making it basically useless! I had a similar issue with the old show when they would prance around in a car that was not only super-expensive, but also completely unobtainable as they were only making 20 and they were all sold five years ago! Don't mind the hypercars occasionally as we all like to look at them, but the whole segment on the Vulcan was pretty much an exercise in futility as you probably couldn't buy one if you had Bill Gates' fortune!

Almost all of the cars featured on this show are beyond the means of the typical car buyer anyway. With the old TG, the few cars that they had that we could afford were the ones used in "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car", the various cheap car challenges, and a handful of times where they actually featured ordinary cars like during the electric car segment and the crossover SUV/caravan tow car challenge. The Dacia/Renault Duster that James May was repeatedly trying to get to is an affordable car but unavailable in the US or Canada.

And they frequently read letters that viewers sent in to the BBC complaining about how they never reviewed cars that the general public could afford. But that's kind of the point. If you just want a show with car reviews, watch MotorWeek. If you want the entertainment of these three guys making idiots of themselves while driving ridiculously expensive cars, then you watched TG, and now TGT.

DevdogAZ said: And they frequently read letters that viewers sent in to the BBC complaining about how they never reviewed cars that the general public could afford. Click to expand...

Personally, I LOVE that they show unobtainable(by me) cars. I don't care if the Vulcan can't be driven anyway. I really enjoyed watching Clarkson drive it around. Same with last week and the McLaren, Porsche and Ferrari. I'll never even see one of those cars in real life. It is nice seeing some well produced videos of a couple dudes driving them around.

The Vulcan's brakes probably made horrendous noises because they were carbon brakes that need heat to work properly and there just wasn't any heat in the brakes when Jezza was driving. The SAS bit was basically a live action Counter Strike/Halo/Any FPS really and a helping of Groundhog Day. Pure satire, including breaking the 4th wall with the gas doesn't explode bit. Plus May shot Hammond twice, once right in the face. Skinner is basically the direct opposite of the Stig. Speaks instead of silent. Rough American instead of sophisticated European. And he's known to the Brits as he is a regular at Goodwood.

Jesus Christ, that was f'ing awful.

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Series / The Grand Tour

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The show is hosted by Jeremy Clarkson , Richard Hammond , and James May , who were the presenters of the second iteration of The BBC programme Top Gear that ran from 2002-2015. Their Vitriolic Best Buds rapport, along with their combination of car knowledge and absurd antics, turned that show into a global phenomenon, and Amazon has captured a similar flavor with The Grand Tour . The show is co-produced by the presenters, along with former Top Gear producer Andy Wilman.

The Grand Tour 's first few episodes debuted first only in the U.K., U.S., Japan, and Germany (countries that offer Amazon's yearly Prime membership), but on December 13, 2016, it became available nearly globally via Amazon's Prime Video website. Wilman expressed an interest in licensing or syndicating the show for broadcast, outside of Internet streaming, so it can eventually be seen by as many viewers as possible — and in October 2017, the first season started broadcasting on Australia's Channel Seven, the show's first appearance outside of Amazon.

The run-up to the series, considering the history of the presenters' time at Top Gear , and the circumstances that led to its creation, made for considerable coverage on social media and in the UK press. To make a very long and controversial story short, Jeremy Clarkson's contract for Top Gear was not renewed in March 2015 after a physical altercation with one of the show's producers. A few weeks later, May, Hammond, and Wilman opted not to renew their contracts for the show, and so subsequently left with Clarkson after the end of the show's 22nd series.

The four then began looking for an outlet to begin again with a new show. A deal was eventually struck between Amazon Studios and the quartet's new production company, "W. Chump & Sons" note The "W" is for Wilman, and "Chump" contains the first initials of Clarkson, Hammond, and May, respectively. , and they were offered a generous amount of money (said to be in the neighborhood of $250 million) to make three seasons of their at-the-time still-unnamed show. After a long, long period of comical Internet bickering, fan debate, and serious legal wrangling, the show was christened The Grand Tour in May 2016.

As part of the show's global tone, and also due to the larger budget afforded them, the series travels around the world and to (arguably) more far-flung locations than in comparison with Top Gear . The first tent setup and subsequent audience filming were in Johannesburg, South Africa on July 17, 2016, with the final audience segments taped for the last episode of the first season recorded in Dubai, UAE on December 10, 2016.

Filming started on the second season not soon after the first season wrapped note in fact, a segment for Season 2 that takes place in Dubai was filmed the same time they were there to do the last audience taping for Season 1 . The filming had its share of peril; Richard Hammond was involved in two accidents — a motorcycle accident in Mozambique in March 2017, and a crash in a supercar in Switzerland in June that was far more serious, but from fortunately he escaped with only a fractured knee and has since recovered. Audience tapings for the second season's 11 episodes began on October 25, 2017, and episodes began streaming on December 8, 2017. The final taping for Season 2 wrapped on December 19, 2017.

Filming for Season 3 occurred through 2018, visiting locations like China, France, and Sweden. Audience taping for it began on October 30, 2018, and it began streaming on January 18, 2019, with the last episode streaming on April 12, 2019. Amazon Game Studios (co-developing with Heavy Iron Studios) also released an Xbox and PlayStation 4 game based on the series, including tracks based on locations of the first two series (along with the Eboladrome track) with new DLC arriving after each Season 3 episode until the season was complete.

On December 13, 2018, Amazon announced that it would pick the season up for a fourth season. However, going forward the show would ditch the audience & tent, and be comprised only of long-form episodes in the style of the single-trip "Specials" like the ones filmed in Namibia, Columbia, and Mongolia. The first, The Grand Tour Presents: Seamen , featuring a boating trip through the Mekong Delta, starting in Cambodia and ending in Vietnam, premiered on December 13th, 2019.

As COVID restrictions intensified and ultimately prohibited international travel, the next two specials were filmed within the UK. A special filmed in Scotland during October 2020, Lochdown , was released on July 30, 2021. Carnage A Trois , a special focusing on French cars, was released on December 17, 2021. A fifth special, A Scandi Flick , was filmed in Norway, Sweden, and Finland in spring 2022, and was released on September 16, 2022. A sixth special, titled Eurocrash , recorded in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, was released on June 16, 2023.

The trio traveled to Mauritania in May 2023, and then to Zimbabwe in November 2023. The Mauritania episode, which had the presenters using modified used cars to ape the Dakar rally route across the desert, was released as Sand Job on February 16, 2024.

This show provides examples of:

Acquired Error at the Printer : A feature of the show's opening in the first season, as audience taping was done in various cities around the world. A sign would welcome the presenters, but the last one listed will have their name misspelled. For example: "Richard Hammond, James May, and Germy Clarkson," or perhaps "Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and Jams Made."
The Conversation Street intro for "It's a Gas Gas Gas" features Hammond with a ridiculously large stream of water gushing from his mouth. Clarkson replies with "That's the best thing that's going to come out of your mouth for the next seven minutes," eliciting a hearty laugh from Hammond.

From earlier in the same episode, May and Hammond both encourage Clarkson to moisturize. Clarkson: Why should I moisturize? May: Because you're dry. You look like something found in a pyramid. Clarkson: Anyway, listen, we must turn our attention... [Hammond begins laughing, followed by Clarkson, followed by May]
Hammond's reaction in "Seamen" on finally noticing his boat had been renamed the "Jizzle Drizzle" is to burst into delighted laughter. The laughter continues even as he realizes just how many people have seen him piloting a boat with said name.
In A Scandi Flick , as Hammond and May argue that Clarkson's Audi RS4 doesn't meet the challenge requirements, Clarkson tries to defend his choice: Clarkson : I am older, and with age has come— Hammond : —weight. [ Clarkson doubles over laughing ]
In Eurocrash , Clarkson and Hammond attempt to try their hand at Formula Eastern. Clarkson is too big to fit in any of the cars, and when he tries to get out, he gets stuck. Hammond finds this hilarious and spends the whole time poking fun at Clarkson's weight, and Clarkson, despite his disappointment at being unable to compete, spends the whole time laughing at Hammond's jibes. Later, when May pranks him by lining the inside of his car with Dalmatian-patterned faux fur, Clarkson privately admits that he actually quite likes it.
After having to replace pieces scavenged by dogs with raw meat and bone straight from a butcher's shop, Clarkson's car gradually went rotten over the three-day challenge, creating a horrible smell, and eventually it overheated due to maggots infesting the engine.
Hammond's car actually worked very well, even attracting some small animals... which either had to escape when the car forded a river, or were all seemingly killed after May accidentally tore it open with a JCB. Even after that, Hammond's car was easily the best of the three, right up until the exhaust set the bodywork on fire.
As for May: the mud car was impractically heavy and fell apart within moments; the brick car was even heavier (to the point the chassis broke in half ), even less secure (the roof collapsed the instant he set off, and it completely fell apart as he drove through a river), and his industrial method of producing the bricks completely defeated the purpose of the challenge; and the straw/dung car also fell apart (twice), and had practically no windscreen so he couldn't see where he was going. Clarkson: It's the Meat-TI, the Tree-TI, and the Peat-TI!
In Season 1, Episode 9, "Berks to the Future", Clarkson tries to build a more 'sporty' SUV by mating the body of an old MG-B sports car to the internals of a Land Rover Discovery. The bodywork didn't fit properly and ended up floating ridiculously high above the wheels, the steering was barely functional, the brakes weren't functional at all , and neither were any of the dials on the dashboard. When he tried taking it offroad, it quickly started falling apart and he abandoned it. His second attempt, using the bodywork of a Mercedes SL, actually looked surprisingly good... from the outside. The interior was extremely shoddy and, like the MG B version, barely anything worked.
Jeremy's Beach Buggy slowly became this over the course of the special. The trek through the desert that takes up the entire first half of the special thrashed Jeremy's buggy so hard that it barely worked by the time he got into town. The throttle was jammed open, there was a hole punched in the bonnet, the shock absorber exploded and punched another hole into his coolant tank, and by the end of the first episode could barely do a few miles before air got in and overheated the engine. The roads encountered in the second episode nearly shook it to death, mangling the headlights and (alongside some spiteful bodging from James) collapsed the front spoiler he had attached. He also lost both fan belts and many other small fragments from the engine.
That said, the others weren't in good condition either by the end of it; James' in particular had a leaking fuel tank and had caught fire due to a tool mishap near the end, turning the bonnet into a blackened scrapheap. Hammond's merely suffered many small foibles over the course of the episode (and got stuck on a cable winch at the very end, causing the three to fail the challenge they made the cars to accomplish), but it was still Jeremy's that was almost utterly wrecked by the finish line.
In Eurocrash , May's Crosley CC Convertible, by virtue of being 75 years old. It has a top speed of 40mph, makes an absolutely horrendous noise while doing so, is very cramped and uncomfortable, and shudders violently every time a truck passes due to its light weight, all of which makes it completely unsuitable for the lengthy motorway drives that make up most of the trip. On top of that, it breaks down on about half-a-dozen occasions. It's so bad that, for the first time in the trio's history, May actually gives up and decides to drive the forfeit car instead. Said backup car isn't much better, with May even proclaiming it to be the worst car he's ever driven, but he still finds it preferable to the Crosley .
In "Sand Job", the air conditioning in Hammond's Aston Martin DB9 Volante shuts off just fifteen minutes into the journey - not ideal when you're driving through the Sahara Desert - and the car itself overheats soon after. It continues to suffer from a litany of faults, mostly electrical, throughout the first half of the journey: it repeatedly gets stuck in gear, the dashboard intermittently shuts off, the overheating and gearbox issues force Hammond to crawl along at low revs and speed, and various other electronic systems deploy or shut down at random (including the deployable roll cage triggering on its own and smashing the rear window). Subverted once Hammond manages to limp to Nouakchott, where he's able to hook it up to a diagnostic laptop and finds that none of the car's systems are actually faulty; the ECU just thinks they're faulty and is shutting them down accordingly. Hammond tells the ECU to ignore the problems and, apart from its Sport mode failing to engage before the drag race, the DB9 behaves itself for the rest of the journey.
The Audience segments of episodes 3 and 4 of Season 1 were then taped in Whitby, North Yorkshire, which was the next shoot after LA, so the order wound up only being only slightly tweaked, just flipping LA and Johannesburg so they could use the California location for the opening episode. The audience locations for each episode then progressed in the same order as they travelled, eventually ending in Dubai.
Richard Hammond's "single lap" round the desert sets in Episode 5 is clearly composed of multiple different attempts, as he starts out with visible damage on the left-hand side that wasn't there before, it suddenly disappears partway through the lap, and then at the end of the lap he slides sideways into a statue and accrues the damage that he had at the start of the run. It's a very jarring editing goof.
The stunt driving segment of Season 2, Episode 5, "Up, Down and Round the Farm", is exposed as this as well for comedic effect when Hammond notes that while the rev counter of the Subaru Clarkson is driving is shown at one point doing 6000 RPM, the speedometer next to it clearly says 0 MPH. It gets worse as the segment goes on.
It should be obvious, but the travel segments are also not used in order as the crew filmed, either, as some segments may take longer to edit together. To that point, they use Hammond's supercar crash to end the first episode of the second season. While the crew began filming for the season in October 2016, the crash occurred in June 2017, actually near the end of filming. To be fair, since the crash was quite dramatic and so was heavily reported in the car press, it was really a forgone conclusion they'd kick the season off with it.
A Day in the Limelight : Abbie gets to step away from the Eboladrome to participate in Clarkson's review in Season 3 of the Lamborghini Urus by being his target in an overtaking challenge. She also gets to take a lap with Clarkson's motorized luggage in Season 3, Episode 12, "Legends and Luggage".
The "From Sea To Unsalted Sea" episode ends like this. They drive across Georgia and Azerbaijan in order to eat bream. When they get there, Hammond realizes that a bream is a fish, and launches into his "I don't like fish!" spiel, which Clarkson takes as the cue to head back to the studio.
When the presenters reach their objective, the town Mörön, at the end of the Mongolia special, they make a beeline for the first pub they see, which is shuttered and closed.
Parodied in "A Massive Hunt". Throughout the special, Clarkon insists that the trip will be this, and that the pirate treasure they're looking for doesn't actually exist. Sure enough, after trekking across the east coast of Madagascar, sailing to a nearby island, trekking some more, and blowing up a beach , they don't find it... although they do find the Holy Grail .
At the end of Eurocrash , the trio make it to Maribor airport to find their plane back to England already taxiing down the runway. After an epic chase sequence to drive up the plane's open cargo ramp, the trio begin celebrating only for the plane to suddenly stop. They've just driven onto a plane that's just landed, and their plane is actually elsewhere.
Answer Cut : Jeremy's description of the Excellent is interrupted by James and Richard. Clarkson: [narrating] The internal organs of a Land Rover Discovery mated to the beautiful skin of a glamorous Mercedes SL... to create a vision of pure... What's the word? Hammond, May: Rubbish. Clarkson: It's not rubbish!
And again in the Conversation Street intro for "Up, Down and Round the Farm." This time Clarkson drops it directly on May's head. May remains unmoved and unfazed.
Armor-Piercing Question : In the first episode of the second season, Clarkson and May are getting fed up with Hammond bringing them to the same Swiss town to look at museums until they figured out why: Clarkson: Do you keep bringing us to this town because it is the only one within a hundred miles of our wellness centre, where there is a fast charging point for your car? Hammond: [meekly] Yes. note Hammond's car in this episode is the Rimac Concept One, which is fully electric.
Artistic License : During "Berks to the Future," May gets more people going through the revolving door he is using to charge up his cell phone by pulling the fire alarm. During fire alarms, revolving doors are locked off because of the possibility of them jamming from too many people trying to get through them at the same time in panic; alternate exits must be used instead.
Artistic License – Geography : In the Mongolia Special, "Survival of the Fattest," the challenge is based on the premise that the nearest town, the city of Mörön, is several hundred miles to the northeast. As sparsely populated as western Mongolia is, it isn't completely empty, and there are numerous small towns and paved roads scattered through the country.
Ask a Stupid Question... : In Season 1, Episode 3, "Opera, Art & Donuts", Hammond approaches Clarkson and May, who are watercolour-painting: Hammond: What are you two doing? Clarkson: [sarcastically] I'm defusing a bomb, Hammond. What does it look like?
In Season 1, Episode 2, "Operation Desert Stumble," Clarkson gets stuck in a window trying to escape the terrorists. Clarkson then says the terrorists are (off-camera) doing "unpleasant" things to his back half, causing him to beg Hammond and May to shoot him.
In Season 2, Episode 1, "Past, Present or Future," Clarkson refuses to answer any questions about hill climbs in Switzerland because, thanks to being at Hammond's health retreat, he presently has a tube up his arse.
A-Team Firing : In "Operation Desert Stumble", as Clarkson begs Hammond and May to kill him, May duly opens fire with his assault rifle, from no more than ten feet away, and manages to shoot all the way around the window frame without hitting Clarkson once . Clarkson is not amused. Jeremy: ...HOW DID YOU MISS?! James: [to Hammond] It's true what they say about machine guns, isn't it? You can't hit a thing with 'em!
Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! !: In one of the show's early YouTube ads, a brain-storming session to come up with a name devolves into Hammond online colour-customizing a car, and Clarkson and May online customizing Ray-Ban sunglasses.
Auto Erotica : Clarkson accidentally stumbles upon a couple "dogging" while looking for his car in a foggy parking lot in "Blasts From the Past." He beats an embarrassed and hasty retreat.
Hammond and May's upgraded version of Battleship that you can create at home! All you need is an unused air field, several thousand pounds worth of scrap cars, some shipping containers, two cranes, at least twenty explosive-rigged G-Wizes...
Hammond's tank-track-driven Ford Focus RS in "A Massive Hunt" looks badass , and half the time it's able to sail over terrain that Clarkson's Bentley and (especially) May's Caterham struggle with. Unfortunately, it spends the other half of the time breaking down, with the guide wheels particularly prone to falling off due to driving on hard tarmac, which they are not designed to do. Eventually, the front-right track broke completely, forcing Hammond to swap back to standard wheels, at which point the Focus became just plain impractical as it no longer had any ground clearance. This ultimately led to the destruction of the Focus's clutch after one particularly bad bump underneath .
The American "land yachts" driven by the trio in Lochdown already border on this, but definitely cross into this territory after being modified. Hammond equips his with an oversized spoiler and a giant supercharger sticking out of the bonnet... that completely blocks his view of the road in front of him. May converts his into a low-rider, but soon finds that it's too low, constantly scrapes along the ground, and eventually gets beached on the pontoon bridge. Clarkson, meanwhile, gives his car larger whitewall tyres (which scrape against the bodywork and make a horrendous noise every time he turns) and a nitrous system (which he didn't fit properly and therefore does nothing).
Former NASCAR driver Mike Skinner had a Stig-type role in the first season of The Grand Tour , with his nickname being "The American". Unlike any of the Stigs ( McCarthy , Collins, and the unknown current one), he didn't cover his entire body with his race suit and he also speaks, mainly grumbling about the quality of the car and making fun of the presenters. Skinner: [about the test track] ...wonder which one of them came up with this thing - the tall one, the short one, or the one with the girly hair?
Abbie Eaton, the driver for Season 2 onwards, is also impressive, but she keeps things short and is all business in her test laps.
Combined with Retired Badass , May's segment on the 50th anniversary of the Porsche 917 has retired racer Dickie Attwood go back behind the wheel of the very same 917 in which he won the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the ensuing race against a modern Porsche 911 GT2 , driven by 2016 Le Mans winner Neel Jani, Dickie — at the age of 78 - put up an astonishing fight and even forced Jani off the track at one point. He also elected to drive the car not with a crash helmet but just wearing a flat cap.
In Season 1, Episode 5, "Moroccan Roll", the celebrity guests, Dutch rock band Golden Earring, are introduced performing in a Rotterdam port beneath an overhanging shipping container. Given the segment's Black Comedy Running Gag , it's easy to assume that the shipping container is going to fall on them and crush them, but it doesn't. They're instead electrocuted when a loose cable falls into the sea.
During the release trailer for the "A Massive Hunt" special, Clarkson notes that they wanted to call it "Epic" instead... but "A Massive Epic" didn't sound right.
Earlier in the same episode, the presenters took it in turns to drive through a tunnel as fast as they could, braking before reaching the wall at the end. After May crashes into the wall during his turn, nearly killing his Mitsubishi and cracking a rib, it Smash Cuts to Hammond lining up for his turn... and proceeding to coast through the tunnel at a leisurely pace, not even trying to beat Clarkson or May.
Early on in "Sand Job", Clarkson notes that Mr. Wilman has asked them to arrange for the fuel truck to be "accidentally" blown up, so that Amazon can put the resulting footage in the trailer. At multiple points, it looks like just such an accident is about to ensue - May burns his hands on the fuel pump and struggles to hold it, the truck is winched down a cliff using a cable that's audibly straining against its weight, it's driven into an active minefield - and yet on every occasion it survives unscathed. Just as you're starting to wonder whether it actually will explode, Clarkson's rogue snowmobile comes hurtling out of nowhere ...
Be Careful What You Wish For : At the start of "A Massive Hunt", May warns Clarkson and Hammond that the roads in Madagascar are among the worst in the world. Clarkson and Hammond go all-out to modify their cars for the horrendous roads they believe they're going to face, only to arrive in Madagascar and find the roads are seemingly fine. As they drive out of the city in which they started, both of them end up hoping that the roads actually do get worse, otherwise their modifications would have been a waste of time and effort. To say that the roads did get worse would be a massive understatement.
In one of the brain-storming ads where the presenters are trying to come up with the name of the new series, Hammond gets an e-mail from "Jeff" pressuring them to hurry up and come up with one. "Jeff" is obviously Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Andy Wilman, the executive producer, gets far more lip-service than he did in their previous show. Clarkson always dourly refers to him as 'Mr. Wilman' whenever the presenters get a message from him to move forward with a challenge, or when he texts them to berate them.
Bestiality Is Depraved : In the Colombia episode, Clarkson accidentally sees a man having carnal relations with a donkey. Discussions with local villagers reveal that they consider this to be normal, and a deeply offended Clarkson soon leads the troupe out of the village.
Hammond, when the obviously-supercharged Nissan Patrol he was racing in Dubai overtook his Porsche 918 Spyder.
Clarkson, when Hammond's Rimac overtakes his Aventador and May's NSX in their drag race within a few seconds.
Blatant Lies : After Hammond caused considerable damage to his Jaguar 420G after flooring it through a brutal off-road track, including a blown engine, everyone claims he managed to fix it, even though he clearly replaced it with a different car. Even Amazon X-Ray gets in on the joke. "Richard's Jaguar 420G now seems to have a 4.2-litre engine making 176 horsepower, a 0-60 time of 12.1 seconds, a top speed of 123 mph and a badge on the back that says XJ6 "
In Season 1, Episode 12, "Censored to Censored", although they never actually say it aloud, thanks to being bleeped out and one Curse Cut Short , they still constantly show the name of their destination, Fucking, on maps and signs. It was likely a comical attempt to keep the show's rating down, but it didn't work — this is the first Grand Tour episode to get a TV-MA rating.
Hammond's uncensored Precision F-Strike after the clutch on his Focus RS breaks in "A Massive Hunt" is immediately followed by a censored one.
Ultimately averted by the fact that it didn't work. James's buggy struggled with the dunes in the desert due to a lack of power while the lower ride meant that he was almost shaken to pieces on the rough roads in the north.
In Season 1, Episode 9, "Berks to the Future," Hammond and May respond to Clarkson's voiceover, which they obviously can't hear during filming. Clarkson: [voiceover] We'd only gone a few miles before Richard and James completely changed their minds and realized that the Excellent was the best car they'd ever been in. Hammond: No, we haven't! Stop saying things in voiceover that aren't true!
They pull a similar gag in the first scene in Croatia in Season 2, Episode 4, "Unscripted", with Clarkson berating May and Hammond for saying lines that he's already recorded in post. Before the presenters depart, Clarkson then improvises the voiceover for the scene that then takes place immediately after.
The Rimac crash had this sort of effect on Hammond, who has been noticeably more cautious ever since: having cheated death twice now, he doesn't want to risk a third crash (and neither does his wife, for that matter). Notably, in one episode, the trio are tasked with driving their cars round a bumpy, run-down, and ludicrously steep banked oval. Hammond flat-out refuses.
Lampshaded, but subverted, in the Colombia special. When Hammond refuses to drive down a steep (but not very high) bank, Clarkson accuses him of having "lost his bottle" since the Rimac crash. Hammond retorts that he's not scared of doing it, he just doesn't think he can get up the equally-steep bank on the other side. He's right.
After getting notified by Clarkson about May's crash in the tunnel in A Scandi Flick , Hammond decides to still do his tunnel run anyway... and drives normally at a brisk 28 mph.
In the Mongolia episode, after the trio finishes building the car, Clarkson says they need to begin their journey by turning right, which he claims is good luck in Mongolia. At the end of the episode, they find a power line, a sign that they're close to returning to civilization. Once again, they decide to turn right, and sure enough, they find the town of Mörön.
In "Carnage a Trois", May is seen dismantling part of his car's boot in order to accommodate a dishwasher that otherwise wouldn't fit inside it. The same car is then used to drive up a Welsh hill, through dense forest that gradually dismantles his, Hammond's, and Clarkson's car. Once they all get to the top, Clarkson points out the dishwasher is still in May's boot and is probably wrecked after the lengthy drive... whereupon May realises that the boot release was on the door, which has broken off, so he can't get the dishwasher out anyway.
In "Eurocrash", when Clarkson pulls up after the opening ferry in his Mitsuoka Le-Seyde, Hammond refers to him and the car as " Cruella De Vil ". Later, when May decides to pull another prank on both Clarkson and Hammond for their prior pranks on him and his Crosley CC Convertible, he re-upholstered the Le-Seyde's interior with faux-Dalmatian fur ( which Clarkson found fitting ).
In "Sand Job", Clarkson notes early on that Mr. Wilman wants them to destroy their fuel truck and Make It Look Like an Accident so they can put the resulting explosion in the trailer, and the presenters (noting the logistical problems that would ensue) agree not to do that. Sometime later, Clarkson attaches two snowmobiles to the front of his car to smooth the dirt road ahead of him, and one breaks loose and drives itself off into the distance. These two unrelated plot threads come crashing together (literally) when, 150 miles down the road, the trio are preparing for a drag race... only for the loose snowmobile to suddenly drive past them from out of nowhere and hit the fuel truck. Cue massive explosion.
In the premiere episode, "The Holy Trinity", at the beginning of Clarkson and Hammond's duel between the McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918, they switch and drive a lap of each other's cars around the Portuguese race track. Clarkson comments on how the Porsche's four-wheel drive allows him to be more confident in taking corners faster. Hammond, driving the rear-wheel drive McLaren P1... doesn't . Hammond: I didn't think it was possible to shit yourself to death!
Once May arrives with the LaFerrari and they run their first drag race, Clarkson doesn't set the launch control properly, which causes his P1 to waver all over the track at the finish, which visibly shakes him.
Multiple instances during the Namibia special as they traverse the desert. At one point, Clarkson's buggy locks up, driving his buggy's front tyres deep into the sand, right in front of the edge of an outrageously steep dune that he didn't even see . Another harrowing scene (from the POV of Clarkson's buggy camera) shows Hammond's buggy going over another steep dune at an odd angle, which panics Clarkson, who radios the crew. As Jeremy rushes over to the edge, he finds Richard was able to get the buggy successfully down the dune. Clarkson: How the [bleep] did you get down that? Hammond: With my eyes shut! I was terrified!
Also in the Namibia special, as Jeremy launches his buggy from the cable car platform, he quickly realizes this. With his eyes closed. Clarkson: My rectum has just opened like a set of theatre curtains!
Clarkson, as he drives his Subaru (err, Audi) during the final scene of his rally car segment in Season 2.
During their "proving" that old Jags are reliable, Richard had a terrifying stop in the 0 to 100 to 0 challenge, and the following exchange occured: Jeremy: How much excrement? Richard: Well, brown seats would have been a better choice.
During the Colombia special, Hammond is doing a piece to camera while driving, when the car in front of him suddenly brakes. Hammond has to swerve and brake hard , and remarks afterwards that he may have just urinated.
British Teeth : In one promo, Clarkson points out his and May's less than perfect teeth immediately mark them as British. When they get "Americanized", the makeup lady is seen applying Tipp-Ex to their mouths in one shot. And still, their replacement Eternally Pearly-White Teeth are even more terrifying than their original ones. Meanwhile, Hammond remains completely unchanged .
Buffy Speak : While driving through Colombia in series three and looking for jaguars to photograph, Clarkson opines that you don’t want to come face to face with one as they have “very strong bitey bits”.
They are seen in the first Amazon 'name brain-storming' YouTube ad. May's is beige, Hammond's is brown, and Clarkson's is blue.
In the second ad, the fourth car (the green one that belongs to Andy Wilman) is shown tipped over on its side.
Paparazzi later caught them in North London driving them around, and speculation began if they were using them for a segment of the show. Clarkson then refuted this on Twitter, saying they are really just company cars — so they were likely just driving them around to generate publicity for (at the time, the still unaired) show.
While the presenters don't elaborate on how the cars were procured for the shootout, we do find out the Ferrari May is given to use is straight from the company and is actually unlicensed — the number plates are fake — which is a disadvantage the other two presenters exploit when they suggest going out and testing the cars away from the track.
Also, while a Ferrari 488 GTB was used to introduce and demonstrate the characteristics of the show's new test track, the "Eboladrome", Ferrari would not allow the American to put the 488 through a timed lap on the Eboladrome to compare against other cars.
May continues his running gag that he started during Series 20 of Top Gear of calling the LaFerrari the 'Ferrari The Ferrari' (literally translating the name from Italian) and actually never refers to it as the LaFerrari over the course of the shootout segment. Clarkson gets in on the act in an episode of Season 2.
When brain-storming for show names, Clarkson suggests "Selling England By The Pound", "Watcher Of The Skies", "Supper's Ready", and "Fifth Of Firth", irking Hammond and May as they are all just names of classic-era Genesis songs.
When Jeremy asks how many cars the three have crashed, Richard launched into a Long List that ended with a rocket-powered dragster, which is the one Top Gear accident that the three hosts will barely reference.
In the end, the show's structure is very similar to Top Gear with a news segment ("Conversation Street") and a celebrity segment ("Celebrity Brain Crash / Face-Off") serving as act breaks to the main segment, although Celebrity Brain Crash was decidedly not an interview than it was for an excuse for a bit of black comedy .
Also to that point, 13 episodes were shot for Season 1, but only 11 were taped in front of an audience note Two shows were taped in Whitby (their first time in front of a British audience since they'd left Top Gear ) and two were taped at Loch Ness, Scotland , as a two-parter released December 30th and 31st of 2016 was filmed in Namibia, with a set-up similar to the periodic road-trip 'Special' episodes of Top Gear — there is no audience present, none of the normal segments, or any credit sequence couch gags . Season 2's closing episode is another special, this time filmed in Mozambique.
Season 3's 'Special' two-parter takes place in Columbia, in South America, and as with the announcement that the fourth season will dispense with the tent, banter, celebrities, & audience completely, it seems likely that season will be comprised of episode-long pieces each from a single location.
For the second & third seasons, the audience segments were taped at a single location in England (actually not far from Clarkson's 2nd home), and tickets were solicited over the web by a crowd service, Applausestore, rather than by Amazon, just like the way Top Gear (and many British panel shows, like QI ) are filmed.
Each episode ends "... and on that terrible disappointment ", instead of "... and on that bombshell."
In Season 1, Episode 10, Clarkson references Top Gear 's theme song; the full exchange is described under Take That! below.
In Season 2, Episode 7, Hammond during his review of the Lamborghini Huracan Performante alludes to a disappointing review of the previous Huracan "a lifetime ago, on a car show in a galaxy, far, far away."
In Season 2, Episode 8, Clarkson alludes to when he and Hammond were pulled over and lost their driving licenses by the French police in "The Perfect Road Trip" special and they egg James on in an attempt to get the same thing to happen to him on the same stretch of road.
In Season 2, Episode 10, Clarkson prefaces a review of the Tesla Model X SUV with a recap of the pair of libel lawsuits Tesla filed against Top Gear after his unfavourable review of the Tesla Roadster back in 2008. During the review, when he begins to talk about some of the drawbacks of the car, Amazon insists on loading the SUV up with lawyers, who begin scold him accordingly. note In the review, Clarkson is actually genuinely impressed with the SUV, although he points out a big drawback at the end (once he uses its automation features to park the SUV in a tight parking space & trap the lawyers inside) — its $215K price tag.
Towards the end of "A Massive Hunt", having arrived at the beach where they believe the pirate treasure to be, Hammond tests his metal detector by holding it up to his "hill climb knee", a reminder of the injuries he sustained in his Rimac crash.
The "Cue the music" Hard-Work Montage returns here, and once again is the A-Team theme tune.
Camera Abuse : Every episode in Season 1 has an intro that ends with an overhead drone shot of the area, which then gets knocked out of the sky by some local hazard, such as plowing into a seagull in Whitby or getting blasted out of the sky in California.
Even retroactive recognition in Season 1 during their second Episode in Whitby as Richard Lists off his crashes in Yorkshire ALONE :
Cassandra Truth : Double-subverted in "A Massive Hunt", with regards to May's second-hand claim that the roads in Madagascar are the worst in the world. Clarkson and Hammond actually do believe him, and make radical upgrades to their cars in preparation... then when they get to Madagascar and see the roads by the port are perfectly fine, they immediately stop believing him, assuming that the roads elsewhere on the island must be just as good (they aren't) and May's friend must have been exaggerating (she wasn't).
Casual Danger Dialogue : In "Operation Desert Stumble", as the trio is driving the Queen of England to safety while taking heavy fire from the terrorists , Clarkson and May take the time to calmly discuss the getaway car. Hammond: Will you stop reviewing the car?!
During the Conversation Street for S2:E6, Clarkson brings up a Chinese brake pad company called "Dickass." James: What were you looking for when you came across...? [Audience erupts in laughter] Hammond: What had you put in? Had you been through all 27,000 pages to get to that one? Clarkson: I was just looking at pictures of funny cats.
A two-for-one example during "Carnage a Trois", as May overtakes one of the Grand Tour production staff during the hot hatch race. Not only is the staffer's ensuing rant almost entirely bleeped out , but the subtitles hilariously Bowdlerize it as "You son of a female dog! Go away in a reproductive manner!"
Censored Title : Literally with Season 1, Episode 11's title, "[censored] to [censored]", which is a road trip from Wank, Germany to Fucking, Austria .
Chekhov's Armory : Parodied in "Sand Job". While we're never shown what's inside the backup van, apart from the winch cable Clarkson uses to get down the cliff, we're told that it contains "everything the presenters could need". This apparently includes a pair of snowmobiles - for a trip to the Sahara Desert . Clarkson lampshades why Mr. Wilman would have brought those in the first place, but they're exactly what he needs to sand down Mauritania's washboard roads.
At the beginning of "Carnage a Trois", Clarkson shows off a gigantic trebuchet that he and the other presenters supposedly built to occupy themselves during the Covid lockdown. He lampshades the trope by admitting that they haven't thought of a use for it yet, but something will come up eventually. At the end of the special, the trio discuss their mutual hatred of the Citroën C3 Pluriel and express a desire to send it back where it came from. If only they had a way to launch it across the 25-mile-wide English Channel... Clarkson: ... wait a minute!
During Clarkson and Hammond's race on the frozen lake in "A Scandi Flick", Clarkson shows off a system that causes flames to shoot out of his exhaust, dissuading Hammond from overtaking him. Later, as he drives down the ski slope with his shed in tow, he apparently activates the system by mistake and sets the shed ablaze, destroying it. Hammond: Your shed's on fire. Clarkson: How've I done that?!
It's noted early on that Mr. Wilman wants the trio's fuel truck to get blown up so he can use the footage in the trailer. If you've seen the trailer, you'll know he eventually gets his wish.
At one point, Clarkson straps a pair of snowmobiles to the front of his Jag so that their tracks will sand down the road in front of him, making it smoother. It actually works, until one of them detaches itself and rides off into the distance. Some time later, and 150 miles away, Clarkson and May are planning a drag race when the loose snowmobile suddenly comes hurtling into view, heading straight towards the fuel truck ...
Right at the beginning, while they wait for the train with their cars on it, Clarkson points out the sheer number of empty plastic bottles littering the tracks. Towards the end of the episode, the pair find a 400-meter-wide river separating them from Senegal, and wonder how on earth they're going to get their cars across. Hammond suggests that they build rafts out of all the discarded plastic bottles around them and float across - and it works.
China Takes Over the World : At the end of the Lochdown special, they arrive at a American-style sports bar only to find all the products and memorabilia had been replaced by Chinese ones.
Cluster Bleep-Bomb : At one point in "Carnage a Trois", a Grand Tour staff member of French descent is called in to participate in a hot hatch race. She spends the whole race swearing like a sailor and at one point lets loose a barrage of bleeped curses that goes on for about ten seconds.
Cluster F-Bomb : While the previous episodes had contained a couple of choice swear words, the Namibia special has the presenters throwing around the word "shit" like it's going out of style. Given the difficulty curve of the journey, including a few close calls with cliffs, it's not surprising.
During "Operation Desert Stumble," after James reads that one of the presenters being killed will force the whole mission to restart: Clarkson: It's like that Tom Cruise movie... [beat] Hammond: Cocktail ? note The film Jeremy is referencing is obviously this one .
In the Mozambique special, after forgetting what Dragons' Den is called, Hammond refers to it as "the one with Alan Sugar", and is "corrected" by a subtitle that reads "he means Donald Trump ". Alan Sugar presents the UK version of The Apprentice , and Trump presented the US version; neither has ever presented Dragon's Den .
Clarkson's boat in the Seaman special filmed in Vietnam is a replica of a Vietnam-war era American patrol boat, or PBR. As no PBR (which were originally built by yacht-maker Hatteras) were recovered from the war, Clarkson's is a replica created by Australian designers, at a cost of (which Clarkson admits meekly to the other two presenters, who each bought second-hand boats) over £100,000.
The Aston-Martin Vulcan Jeremy drives in the test segment of "Operation Desert Stumble", which he stalls initially taking it to the track.
In "Moroccan Roll", Clarkson drives an Alfa Romeo 4C Spider around (natch) Morocco. He dissects its flaws (including giving him a leg cramp ), but then, later devotes an entire segment to a film of just a long set of beauty passes of the car, in moody black and white, set to Dusty Springfield's version of "Windmills Of Your Mind", from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) — explaining the car is at its best when seen and not necessarily driven.
In a segment during Season 1, Episode 6, "Happy Finnish Christmas", Hammond drives the first right-hand drive Ford Mustang to arrive in the UK. He's so excited, he brings a small band with him to the dock and drives it himself right out of the shipping container.
The Bugatti Chiron that Clarkson drives in Season 2, Episode 3, "Bah Humbug-atti".
The McLaren 720S Hammond drives around the Eboladrome in Season 2, Episode 4, "Unscripted".
The McLaren Senna that Clarkson drives in the opening episode of Season 3, "Motown Funk".
Eurocrash has three, all from Slovakia. First, there's Skoda's planned 1957 Le Mans entry, an extremely lightweight yet powerful sports car that's also utterly gorgeous. Then, there's the Praga Bohema, a modern Czech sports car that weight less than a tonne yet produces 700 bhp. To top it all off, there's the Klein Vision AirCar , an honest-to-goodness Flying Car . The presenters are impressed by the first two but the third leaves them utterly speechless.
For the majority of the Season 1 episodes, the opening montage includes a shot of a sign, either a greeter at the airport, or a sign outside a shop, welcoming the presenters to the town or city where they are filming the audience segment in, and the third name is always comically misspelled.
In all the first season episodes, the opening montage ends with a drone taking aerial shots of the Grand Tour's tent, which is then always comically knocked out of the sky: in California, it's shot down; In Johannesburg, it's brought down by a curious giraffe: In Whitby, it both falls into a lobster's cage and is pooped on by a seagull; In Dubai, it is knocked down by a fancy water fountain (and crashes into the same fountain to add insult to injury).
The X-Ray Trivia at the beginning of each episode always begin by identifying the hosts as "Writer, broadcaster, [gag appropriate to theme of episode]". For example, "The Beach (Buggy) Boys, Part 2" opens by referencing three songs by The Beach Boys : Jeremy Clarkson: Writer, broadcaster, good vibrations. Richard Hammond: Writer, broadcaster, fun, fun, fun. James May: Writer, broadcaster, God only knows.
When the subject of poaching rhinos and elephants comes up in Namibia, they again awkwardly tiptoe around apportioning blame by saying that a "certain region" is the source of the problem for believing that powdered tusk and horn is a panacea of sorts. Anyone with even cursory knowledge of Africa's ongoing poaching problems knows they're talking about China. To avoid losing business there, though, they have to pretend it's vague.
At the end of the reef-making episode, "Dumb Fight at the O.K. Coral", a disclaimer states: "All procedures and policies were followed and no damage was done to the reef or wildlife during filming. Jeremy got a sunburnt neck but he was very brave and hardly mentioned it at all ."
In Eurocrash , the trio are amused and baffled to find a waxwork of Nigel Mansell in a Krakow waxwork museum, and decide to steal it and take it with them, with Clarkson and Hammond providing dialogue for Mansell throughout the episode. At the end, Mansell is listed as a presenter alongside the main trio.
Critical Annoyance : At one point in "Sand Job", Hammond's Aston Martin starts beeping to alert him to... something. Hammond assumes that the roof hasn't been lowered properly, but his efforts to force it shut do nothing to stop the beeping, and he's forced to live with it for quite some time before it finally shuts off.
Curse Cut Short : Well, kind of. When James introduces the second half of the film in "Censored To Censored", he gets cut off before he can finish the name of the town they left off in: Fucking, Austria.
During "Moroccan Roll," after Jeremy's plan to find out the weight of the cars ends in spectacular failure: Clarkson: James, it's not acceptable in Morocco to kill animals to establish the weight of a car, so... May: It's not acceptable in Morocco ?
While debating the merits of the Bentley in "[censored] to [censored]": Clarkson: James, when I first met you, I thought you were ugly. And now, I still think you're ugly. May: A crushing criticism from one so handsome.
This gem in "A Scandi Flick", as Hammond and May are shopping for supplies: Hammond: [ trying to read the label on an axe ] I haven't brought my glasses. [ May takes the axe and examines it for a moment ] May : ...it's an axe.
Subverted in that some of the guests (Charlize Theron, Kimi Räikkönen, and Nena) were filmed at a distance and were likely just a crew member or stunt person playing the actual person suggested. (Another clue: the celebrity (and to a lesser extent the person in charge of booking celebrities) also isn't listed in the end credits.)
Death by Irony : In "Berks To The Future" the Celebrity Brain Crash guest, Nena, is "killed" by being carried into the air... by 99 red balloons .
Clarkson sets up the test track, the Eboladrome, as this, as wildlife could dart out whilst driving, one corner hugs an electrical substation, while the turn near the finish is near a pen of grazing sheep. A tight turn is meant to be drifted through rather than driven. The name comes from the fact that the layout of the track resembles the Ebola virus.
After the course was laid out, and the first test laps began, according to Clarkson, a unexploded WWII munition was found, and so the track had to be re-tooled to flow around it.
The presenters have to go through a more literal one in Amman, Jordan in "Operation Desert Stumble," used to allow special forces to train and compete.
The Detroit racetrack qualified, according to Jeremy. Hammond set up a course inside an abandoned factory with one turn so tight, their sports cars were in real danger of running through the walls if they drove too fast. Then a gallon of vegetable oil was poured onto the track while Jeremy was making his lap...
Discussed in the Namibia special, "The Beach Buggy Boys", after Clarkson and Hammond come across the wheel-less carcass of a dead Toyota Hilux in a small village. Clarkson is astonished, noting that Namibia is so harsh it's managed to "kill the unkillable car" — a Call-Back to a couple of early episodes of Top Gear when the presenters punished a Hilux mercilessly and it miraculously still worked.
In the Madagascar special, the roads proved to be so unforgiving that they managed to do something that no other place on Earth had ever done before: irreparably break one of the trio's cars.
Delayed Explosion : Hammond's supercar crash caused a short circuit in the linked electrical cells, which caused them to burst in sequence, a problem called thermal runaway , which, according to May, caused the wreck to continue to catch fire even five days after the accident.
Both Hammond and his cheap motorbike in the Mozambique special. Hammond keeps going despite falling off his bike countless times and sustaining minor injuries, while the bike itself survives numerous falls, stalls, and trips through mud and water.
Similarly, May's Caterham in "A Massive Hunt". As May repeatedly states, it's a track car that's designed for smooth tarmac, not the horrific dirt roads of Madagascar, even with the larger wheels May equipped it with. Its open cockpit also means he spends the whole journey being showered with dirt and mud, and by the finish line there isn't an inch of it that's clean. Yet the Caterham just keeps going , without any mechanical problems and without getting stuck once .
May's Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII in "A Scandi Flick" survives not one, but two mishaps that should by all rights have totalled it. First, May slides it sideways into a wall, wrecking the entire front-right portion of the car (and breaking one of his ribs in the process), yet he manages to get it repaired with some help and is able to continue. Then, towards the end, the car plunges through the surface of a frozen lake and the engine bay is submerged for several minutes while Clarkson and Hammond launch a rescue attempt. Both are convinced that the Evo is dead, and are absolutely astounded to see May drive up in it at the end, albeit with a significant amount of missing bodywork.
Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat : In the early stages of the race in "The Falls Guys", Clarkson calls the airline that May and Hammond will be taking from New York City to Buffalo and downgrades their tickets from business-class seats at the front of the plane to economy seats at the back, complicating boarding for the injured Hammond. (A bit later, Clarkson calls the airline back and arranges for Hammond and May to be denied alcohol on the flight, but that's less cheating and more Clarkson being Clarkson .)
Didn't Think This Through : In "International Buffoons Vacation," Clarkson builds an RV which is shaped like a boat. This includes a seat on the roof, like a nautical bridge, where he intends to drive. May and Hammond quickly point out that all of the surfaces get incredibly hot under the Nevada sun.
Different in Every Episode : The introduction clip to "Conversation Street"; a couple of times it's played straight, but more often than not, there's something there that shouldn't be...
During "Operation Desert Stumble", things are going well until May shoots and kills Hammond aboard the airplane. As they make their way back, Clarkson asks why, to which May replies with, "He was being annoying." On the next run through, Hammond shoots and kills May at the same point in the run. Why? "Well, he shot me!"
James gets his revenge by dumping a full barrel of vegetable oil in the Cadillac factory race while Jeremy is making his lap. The Mustang spins out and nearly crashes .
Dude, Not Funny! : While discussing the ban on motorsports in Switzerland, Clarkson makes an 9/11 analogy which the audience and Hammond found is taking it too far.
Eagle Land : American audiences are portrayed as friendly and good-natured until they have a difference of opinion against the British hosts, for example, which sport better fits the term "football." This inevitably leads to shouting, fighting, and eventually the presenters cowering somewhere while the audience chants "USA! USA!"
In the first season, the tent moved from location to location. The second season does not for a number of reasons — costs, difficulty to get celebrities for segments, and a series of unfortunate events that rendered both Hammond and Clarkson in less-than-ideal health.
Speaking of celebrities, the first season had Celebrity Brain Crash, a segment that which was essentially a Take That! at the BBC lawyers, for threatening the show if it had too similar a format to Top Gear . It was then replaced with "Celebrity Face Off" in the second season after everyone agreed it was rubbish. In the third season, the running gag has been that there has been an audience segment planned (usually with some D-list celeb) but now needs to be bumped for time.
Epic Fail : In Eurocrash , seeing how miserable May has become from having to drive the Crosley, Clarkson and Hammond decide to cheer him up by organising a drag race against four slow vehicles that they're sure even the Crosley can out-drag, the last of which is just a man on a bicycle. May still comes last. Yes, even the cyclist was faster than it. Needless to say, this only makes May's mood worse.
During the segment on Hammond's bugout vehicle in "Berks To The Future", he brags about how it is bulletproof. However, Clarkson and May quickly demonstrate that it is only against low-caliber guns — and less effective against automatic, sniper, and finally, rocket launcher fire. With that vehicle demolished, Hammond makes his next vehicle to stand up better — however, his co-presenters then bring a tank and blow that one sky high as well. Hammond's final vehicle he declares is nigh-indestructible against any kind of artillery. Unfortunately for him, someone let Clarkson and May aboard the HMS Richmond and then gave them access to its 4.5-inch Mark 8 naval gun...
In "A Scandi Flick", Clarkson pranks Hammond by painting out the "I" on his Martini Racing livery. When Hammond doesn't notice, Clarkson freezes his car keys in ice instead. Hammond retaliates by freezing the whole of Clarkson's car . Clarkson ruining Hammond's pizza seems like very petty vengeance, but his real vengeance comes the following day, when he shoves Hammond's hut down a ski slope with Hammond still inside it.
Eskimos Aren't Real : Hammond spends quite some time at the beginning of "Sand Job" insisting that Mauritania isn't a real country and is instead from a C. S. Lewis novel. He continues to assert this even once they're in Mauritania.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! : Clarkson spends the early portion of "A Scandi Flick" noting that, while the Arctic Circle is supposedly "the last great wilderness", it doesn't really look like it. Later, once the road disappears, Clarkson remarks that it finally looks like a wilderness: "There's no roads, there's no villages, there's no... hotels..." It then dawns on the trio that they may not be able to find any shelter for the night.
Failed a Spot Check : Early on in "A Scandi Flick", Clarkson blanks out the "I" on Hammond's Martini Racing livery to make it read "Martin Racing". Hammond doesn't notice until Clarkson - lampshading how he's been "not very observant" - points it out to him, and even then it takes him several seconds to realise what the problem is.
The same thing with the audience in Nashville during "Dumb Fight at the O.K. Coral", when the hosts start arguing with another American-based crowd about which sport deserves the right to be called "football".
Clarkson's review of the Aston Martin Vulcan in "Operation Desert Stumble" starts with him struggling to get in, taking several attempts, before stalling the car almost immediately. He remarks that they'll just edit all that out. They didn't.
The entire end segment of Season 2, Episode 5, "Up, Down And Round The Farm", which begins with a very impressive stunt driving film, very much in the style of stunt driver Ken Block, including using the car to herd and lock up a pen of sheep, with Clarkson at the wheel. However, before Clarkson can end the episode, Hammond and May show several behind-the-scenes clips of the filming, which show that Clarkson's driving was not as amazing as it seems. note As well as exposing that the driver for the majority of the segment was actually British rally car driver Mark Higgins.
Foregone Conclusion : Thanks to widespread reporting of the incident, Hammond's crash (shown in the Series 2 premiere) in the Rimac Concept One that hospitalized him is treated as such, complete with Clarkson snarking "We all know how that turned out", as Hammond talks about the car for the first time on the show.
Also played with when Hammond decides to make deep-fried spaghetti bolognese for Clarkson's birthday dinner in one episode, claiming that it's a Scottish culinary tradition to fry anything and everything possible. The others are less than pleased with the results.
Freeze-Frame Bonus : In "Operation Desert Stumble", during the part where the Audi driven by May, Clarkson and Hammond is being chased by terrorists through a town, if you quickly pause the episode at the right moment, you can see one of the 'terrorists' wearing a shirt with "Mission X" and a website written on it. For context, Mission X is actually a company run by ex-special forces commandos that specializes in movie and TV documentary consulting and organisational training, as well as in extreme combat-realistic scenarios, war games, and survival situations and adventures like the presenters are running through.
After Daniel Ricciardo is reduced to a fine red spray across the window of the tent during the Season 1 finale's Celebrity Brain Crash segment, Clarkson and Hammond hastily introduce a new film while May wanders off to go clean it. Come back after the film, and while Clarkson and Hammond discuss that film and introduce the next one, May is actually outside the tent cleaning off the window, and doing a surprisingly thorough job.
In [censored] to [censored] , after spending much of the episode debating the existence of the Loch Ness Monster (which might or might not have killed Tim Burton in his submarine), during the closing segment, a mysterious object can be seen rising out of the loch through the window.
The multitude of looks and people getting out of the way of Hammond as he drives around Dubai as well as through a wall and then around the Dubai Mall in the Ripsaw EV 2 , basically a 700-horsepower civilian-grade tank , during the opening segment of "Up, Down And Round The Farm".
During Season 3, Episode 8, "International Buffoons Vacation" as the presenters trek in camper vans though the southwestern US, there is a Running Gag through the episode of Clarkson seeing in the distance apparitions that look like The American, the test driver replaced after the first season.
The name of the track that appears in "It's a Gas Gas Gas" is the Grand Tour Special High Intensity Test Track, or GTSHITT. note Really Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground, if you must know.
Likewise, in "Breaking, Badly," the Grand Tour Institute of Technology, or GTIT.
One Series 3 episode has them come up with a truncated version of the NC500 note North Coast 500 through Scotland, based on a route suggested by Hammond. May suggests a name that Clarkson promptly vetoes because it abbreviates to "SHIT". Hammond then suggests a name that the other two agree to... that abbreviates to "PENIS". Leads to a truly hilarious moment in which Clarkson compliments Hammond on the length and beauty of his PENIS .
Season 2, episode 7 features the Motorway Inter Lane Fuelling, or the MILF.
When Jerome D'Ambrosio (the French-speaking Belgian F1 driver the presenters enlist to make the timed laps during the 'Holy Trinity' hypercar shootout) finishes his test laps and comes back to talk to them about the feel of the cars, the English subtitles have him slagging both the Ferrari and the Porsche yet showering praise on the P1, until Hammond and May realizes that Clarkson is writing them.
Clarkson does it again in "Berks To The Future", pretending the footballers looking at his custom car ("The Excellent") are complimenting it heavily, when it's obvious they all dislike it. Parodied when one of them is speaking English, but is still subtitled as having praised the car.
Gaslighting : Played for laughs in "Survival of the Fattest". Clarkson and May have a secret agreement that Hammond cannot be allowed to drive John the kit car due to his crash-prone nature. When Hammond starts asking whether he can have a turn at the wheel, they start telling him that he's already driven John and claiming that his memory must be going, since he can't remember it. Hammond gets increasingly upset as this goes on.
Golden Snitch : The hot hatch challenge in "The Youth Vote" works like this - the trio compete in a series of challenges to try and appeal to millennials, with each successive challenge being worth more points. The final challenge is to see who can get the most hits on YouTube . May goes into that final challenge with a single point , and yet his video gets so many more hits than the other presenters' that he wins the whole thing by a total of 5,000 points.
Gone Horribly Right : During "Opera, Art & Donuts", in an attempt to get Richard Hammond off their backs, Clarkson persuades the group to take a detour into Vicenza and sends out a tweet publicizing Hammond's impending arrival. His intention is that Hammond's car will get mobbed by perhaps a few hundred fans, blocking him in place while Clarkson and May drive off. Instead, all three of them are swarmed by several thousand fans and it takes Clarkson and May quite some time to push their way through the crowd. Hammond does wind up staying behind, and doesn't catch up for over a day.
"Groundhog Day" Loop : In "Operation Desert Stumble", each time a presenter dies, the boys have to restart the course over again from the beginning. As they are not trained military personnel, they die. A lot . Clarkson: Is there anyone on God's green Earth less capable than- [May is shot; repeat ad nauseam ]
Happy Dance : James likes to do these. He dances after the presenters finally find a road in Namibia, he briefly engages in one after he beats Hammond at Car Battleship , and when he goes the fastest around the Sitges-Terramar track in "Blasts From the Past."
Hoist by His Own Petard : During the Namibia special, May decides to get revenge on Clarkson for the "dickshift" by mounting the Clarkson buggy's front spoiler on comically high struts. While he's busy rigging it up, however, sparks from his angle grinder ignite the dry ground and start a fire... under the front of May's own buggy. Which he has apparently forgotten has a hole in the petrol tank . By the time he's put it out, the entire front end of the buggy is burnt and blackened to a crisp. Fortunately it's rear-engined, otherwise the fire would have gutted his car completely.
Hot Potato : Done with May's "dickshift" in the Namibia episode when he and Clarkson toss it back and forth into each other's buggies. In one particularly magnificent shot, May smacks Clarkson in the face with it.
In "Berks To The Future", Hammond and May criticize Clarkson for having spent £14,000 of the show's budget building a car that was only valued at a fraction of that price. Hammond also criticises May's segment on electric cars as a waste of time. The last segment of the same episode revolves around Hammond building increasingly elaborate armoured vehicles to deal with a post-apocalyptic scenario, only for Clarkson and May to blow them all up in increasingly spectacular ways — first a rocket launcher, then a Challenger tank, then a freaking Royal Navy destroyer — the entire segment must have cost dozens, if not hundreds of times more than the £14,000 the Excellent cost.
In the Season 2 premiere, Hammond, driving the futuristic electric Rimac Concept One, keeps complaining about all the noise Clarkson's old-fashioned Lamborghini Aventador makes, while he took great joy in harassing May with the loud engine noises of his Dodge Hellcat during "Opera, Art and Donuts", the third episode from the previous season.
I Call It "Vera" : In the Mongolia episode, the trio determines that they should name the car that they assembled themselves, and ultimately decide on "John."
And, because the whole film takes on the form of a repeating "Groundhog Day" Loop (meaning that the sniper is in the exact same spot, like a videogame), Clarkson is able to do this again on the next loop. Without looking .
I'll Be in My Bunk : Hammond says that he "needs some time alone" after seeing a 1968 Dodge Charger with a 1000 hp Hellcat Engine.
Incredibly Lame Fun : For "Past, Present, and Future", Hammond has the boys go around Lucerne, Switzerland visiting museums dedicated to topics such as chess and pencils, in addition to the Swiss Museum of Transport. Hammond later admits that he's doing this because all those places are close to a fast-charging station he wants to use for his electric supercar.
The first thing Hammond and May seek out after three frustrating and dangerous days in the Namibian desert? Beer.
The first thing acrophobic May seeks out after traversing high above a river on his "buggy cable car?" More beer.
After spending four days eating kale at a wellness retreat, Clarkson and May gorge on bratwurst for breakfast before a hill climb event.
Subverted in the Niagara Falls race when Clarkson calls JetBlue 's customer service and tells them that May and Hammond are recently out of rehab and to not serve them drinks during their flight from NYC to Buffalo.
The Mongolia special turns this into a running gag with the presenters not having any alcohol among their rations.
It's noted repeatedly in "Sand Job" that while Mauritania, being a Muslim country, has no alcohol, their destination - Senegal - does. After their first attempt at crossing the Senegal River ends in soggy failure, Hammond motivates Clarkson to try again by reminding him of what's waiting for him on the other side - and when they finally do make it to the other side, the very first thing they do is search out the nearest bar and have several pints.
Insistent Terminology : In "Art, Opera, and Donuts", Clarkson is driving a dark orange car. Hammond and May insist at every opportunity that it is actually brown. This gag has continued on their Twitter accounts long after the episode aired, and received a Call-Back in two Season 3 episodes.
The first special of "Season 4" featured a boating trip. Naturally, they titled it Seamen .
The second "Season 4" special's name? A Massive Hunt . Now what rhymes with "Hunt"? note The release trailer reveals they wanted to call it "epic" instead of "massive", just to make the joke more obvious.
The third special is by far less explicit but no less awkward for entirely different reasons; Loch down .
Carnage A Trois is a pun on "ménage-à-trois."
Irony : Hammond attempts to demonstrate how well an air cannon will work launching cars for Car Battleships. The first thing that Hammond successfully blows up is the Health & Safety van.
In Season 1, Episode 2, "Operation Desert Stumble", there are many, many lines. Listing them all would take all day! Clarkson: James just shot the Queen in the back of the head! Hammond: Well, now what're we gonna do?!
In Season 3, Episode 11, "Sea to Unsalty Sea'' Hammond: Why did you glue Nigel Mansell's head to my bonnet?
In "Eurocrash" Clarkson Nigel Mansell's Head Has Come Off!
Jumping the Shark : Discussed and lampshaded in "A Massive Hunt", after Clarkson explains that it's illegal to swim in the sea around Réunion due to the number of shark attacks there: Hammond: Well, look, it's only shallow. If a shark comes, we can jump it. Clarkson: [chuckling] I think we did that in... 2013? [both chuckle]
Key Under the Doormat : In "Operation Desert Stumble", after May fails to hotwire a truck the presenters are trying to use to escape, Hammond lampshades this by asking May if he has "not seen every movie ever made" before retrieving the truck's key from the sun visor.
Though this becomes Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight after Hammond loses. Once the next loop gets to his fight on the wing of the plane, he simply draws his rifle and shoots the terrorist point-blank.
When James attempts to sabotage the front of Jeremy's buggy with a saw in the Namibia Special, sparks fly out and cause the front of James' own buggy to catch fire.
At the start of the Mozambique special, Clarkson is distracted by his faulty gearbox while towing May's Mercedes and accidentally reverses into it, bashing a hole in the front grille. Later on, when the group encounter a long stretch of road filled with puddles, James constantly breaks down because of water entering through the broken grille and stalling the engine, forcing Clarkson to wait continuously while May restarts his car.
In Lochdown , to get back at May for taking too long in the bathroom, Hammond and Clarkson use a fire hose to fill his caravan with water, which floods out and soaks him when he opens the door. Later, Hammond and Clarkson lose their own caravans in separate accidents, meaning May's soaked caravan is all they have left. Subverted, almost to Karma Houdini levels, when they realise that they can just find an abandoned castle and stay there for the night, ditching the caravans entirely.
Leave the Camera Running : Early on in "Sand Job" is a shot of a very, very long train that goes on for about 90 seconds.
Leave No Witnesses : While most of the occupants of the airliner containing their VIP hostage in "Operation Desert Stumble" were mannequins, James ensures that their departure is at least unseen. Clarkson: Are all the terrorists dead back there? May: Everybody's dead back there. Clarkson: Good man!
In "Feed the World", after Clarkson's ice machine breaks, he rigs up a way to smoke the fish while on the road... by using exhaust directly from his diesel engine. Optimistically calling them kippers fools no one.
In Lochdown , May insists on cooking the trio "traditional Scottish cuisine", which apparently translates to deep-frying everything . Peas, eggs... everything . While Clarkson and Hammond do eat it, they're visibly disgusted, and Clarkson's narration claims it ended up making them sick.
Lighter and Softer : Season 4 and 5, compared to the previous three. A change in format (and contractual agreements with Amazon) means the trio abandon their short clips and focus on documentary-style movies, with special mentions to what's great about a particular topic they're discussing instead of making jokes and criticizing things to no end. They also take more of each other's jokes and pranks in better nature, often finding them Actually Pretty Funny instead of the forced, staged animosity prevalent before.
Live-Action Cartoon : The promo, "James May is Alive", in which May goes about his normal day while barely dodging death. After he goes to visit his co-presenters in hospital (a jab at Hammond's accident and Clarkson's illness earlier in the year), he gets into his car and promptly gets a dumpster dropped on it. His reaction? A deadpan "ow."
In "Blasts From the Past," neither Clarkson's Aston Martin or Hammond's Jaguar were road-legal. Clarkson got around it as his car was registered as a prototype, and therefore okay to drive. Hammond's, however, was a test vehicle which could only be driven by one of Jaguar's test drivers. So, in order to drive it for the episode, Hammond had to be hired as a Jaguar employee. He promptly resigns after the episode airs.
Attempted but failed during the football match in Colombia of the Grand Tour crew versus the local help. The soundman, Kiff, blocks the ball and gets flagged for a handball. They try to get it dismissed on the basis that Kiff didn't technically use his hand; he blocked it with his prosthetic hook. The referees don't buy it.
Towards the end of "A Scandi Flick", the presenters are running out of time to reach the airport before their flight, but they don't dare break the speed limit because of how harsh Finland's anti-speeding laws are. Of course, those laws don't apply if you're driving across the frozen lake running next to the road...
Lovable Rogue : The persona all Jaguar drivers have, according to the trio. They can do questionable things, like take hotel towels to save the staff the trouble of cleaning them, "borrow" silverware and artwork, and drink most of a bottle of wine to determine if it's been corked or not. But it's okay, because they drive a Jaaaaaaaag...
"John" from the Mongolia special; despite being assembled from a box of parts in the middle of the Mongolian steppe, the car endures multiple bogs, pouring rain (with only improvised bodywork) and several river crossings over the course of a multiple-hundreds-of-miles journey with the only breakdown being a minor fuse that is easily replaced.
Done again in the following episode: Clarkson and May bring proper recreational vehicles to their RV trip, whereas Hammond brings a pickup truck. Cue multiple references to "our RVs , and Hammond's truck".
National Geographic Nudity : During the Namibia Special, a group of local ladies, all of whom are topless, dance while Hammond tries to fix his car nearby. He tries to be polite and acknowledge the dancing while being gentlemanly by not openly staring.
Never Trust a Trailer : The trailer for Lochdown showed Clarkson driving at speed towards May's beached Cadillac, with May yelling "CLARKSON!" , making it look like another example of the "Clarkson hitting May's car" running gag. The yell is actually stock audio taken from a different part of the episode, and in context, May (who's blocking their pontoon bridge) is actually encouraging Clarkson to ram him.
Noodle Incident : During Motown Funk Jeremy recounts how the last time he came to downtown Detroit someone held a gun to his head. No more detail is ever given.
Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon : Hammond notes the SAS (British special forces) soldiers who demonstrate the survival course in "Operation Desert Stumble" for the presenters were using real weapons. Clarkson insists they did not and takes a nearby assault rifle and shoots it at an old Mercedes 280SL. The rifle does has live rounds and he succeeds in blowing out the car's tyres and windows. And, as Clarkson is a lefty and the shell casings eject from the right side of the weapon, some of the hot casings hit him, cutting into and bloodying up his right arm.
Oh, Crap! : Clarkson and May's off-camera reactions to Hammond's Rimac crash are a very serious version of this played absolutely straight. Both of them seriously thought he might have been killed. Clarkson: And I can feel it now; the coldness. My knees turning to jelly. It was Hammond who'd crashed. May: But I knew, in the blossoming, white-hot ball of pure, sickening horror forming in my heart, that it must be Hammond's Rimac.
In August 2017, Clarkson was taken to hospital with pneumonia. Given that he was in Majorca note The capital of the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain, a popular resort and holiday destination at the time, Hammond and May refuse to believe this and insist that he was just badly hungover after a drinking binge, and mock him about it at every chance they get. May, (much like the gag with Hammond's watch), during "Bah-humbug-atti" gives Clarkson a 'gift' of a t-shirt of the X-rays of his infected lungs. note Which, actually, showed a quite serious infection. Clarkson ultimately spent nearly two weeks in hospital, and took nearly two months to fully recover.
To a lesser extent, James May keeps getting grief from the other two for having his famous long hair cut short before the recording of the tent sections.
Parodied in "Oh Canada", during Clarkson's review of the Tesla Model X. The last time Clarkson reviewed a Tesla - the Roadster - Tesla unsuccessfully sued him over some of his claims, so to prevent the same thing happening again, Clarkson describes the Model X's flaws while driving half-a-dozen lawyers around the track. Well... he tries to describe its flaws, but gets drowned out by legalese, so before describing its biggest flaw - the £156,000 price tag - he gets out of the car and uses its Summon mode to maneuver it into a tight parking space, so the lawyers can't get out and interrupt him.
While the trio are test-driving muscle cars in Detroit, they come to a deserted road and opt for a drag race. Hammond has to duck out because while the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is a powerful competitor, Fiat-Chrysler would only let him drive it if he promised not to drag race with it.
Overly Long Gag : The final segment of one Season 3 episode has Clarkson and Hammond setting out to make travelling through airport terminals more exciting, using (respectively) a luggage case that turns into a motorised scooter and a laptop that doubles as a hoverboard. Before we actually get to that, though, we're treated to several minutes of Clarkson and Hammond making their way through an airport terminal on foot, with Clarkson ranting non-stop about every little quibble and annoyance he has with airports. Again, this goes on for several minutes , with Hammond growing increasingly exasperated.
Overly Long Name : Opposed to the Top Gear test track in Surrey, with turns nicknamed "Chicago", "Hammerhead", "Gambon", etc, the Grand Tour test track in Swindon, the "Eboladrome", has some absurd names, including the "Isn't Straight", "Old Lady's House", the meant-for-advertisers "Your Name Here", "Field Of Sheep", and "Substation". Most are based on whatever object happens to be closest to that part of the track.
A Running Gag from Clarkson's "David Souffle" series on YouTube . The titular character, a Belgian traffic warden, invariably fails to do his job, as he's drawn away by the siren song of pastries.
Pop-Up Trivia : Turning on Amazon's "X-Ray" feature reveals more info about the cars, music, filming, Britishisms, obscure references, and the occasional snarky comment. [from Season 2, Episode 2] : "Central Park is the most visited park in whole of the United States. It is so-named because it is central, and a park."
Potty Failure : In the Georgia episode, the three are instructed to drink enough water to make them have to go to the bathroom and then take a lap to see if their times improved. As Hammond painfully waits for May to finish using the bathroom, Clarkson saunters in by revealing that he "solved the problem." He peed his pants.
Richard drops an uncensored "fuck" in "A Massive Hunt" after realising that the clutch in his car has been completely destroyed.
The show itself was advertised with the hashtag #amazonshitcarshow .
And then there was that one time when the three hosts wore garments labelled with automobile brands and stood in such a way that they read something else upon first glance: McLaren P 1 (Clarkson), Jaguar E -Type (Hammond), Nis san (May).
In another episode, Clarkson and May got Hammond a pair of running shoes with Morgan Plus (the name of a car Hammond is quite fond of) embroidered on them. The embroidery was done in such a way that one shoe read "Morg Pl" and the other "an us". While holding up the second shoe, Hammond pointed out that he couldn't possibly use them... because he'd broken his leg in the Rimac crash and wasn't allowed to do any running .
The tight turn at the head of the 'Eboladrome' track is nicknamed 'Your Name Here', with the idea it will be adorned with banners from advertisers, who will get their money's worth when cars are shot in slow-motion as they drift through the turn. Early episodes show no takers, as the turn only has simple, white banners with 'Your Name Here' on the fencing. However, in episode 4, the turn finally got its first sponsor, Swindon Springs, which Clarkson promptly misreads as "Swindon Swings".
The second season credit sequence is more overt, showing DHL trucks and handlers as the tent is being assembled.
There are also ads supporting the Science Museum at Wroughton, who own the airfield the Eboladrome is on.
Purple Prose : Richard always segues into Conversation Street with overly-flowery language.
The Bus Came Back : In "International Buffoon's Vacation", Clarkson repeatedly spots a man wearing The American's racing coveralls, often pointing at him threateningly from improbable locations. His identity is never confirmed, but the joke stands.
From events in the Namibia episode, Hammond comes up with an odd news snippet: "James May died in an exploding beach buggy holding a rubber penis."
Also lampshaded by Clarkson when he notes: "This is something that nobody has ever said before, but Namibia is a beautiful bastard of a country."
No less bizarre but with less attention called to it is when Clarkson is grappling with Chinese cuisine: "My tongue is completely wrapped up in intestines."
Clarkson gets in another lampshaded one in Eurocrash when, after the arrow-dodging challenge, he remarks, "I'm alive, but Nigel Mansell's been decapitated and my candelabra's been smashed to bits, and that's a sentence that's never been said before in history."
From the same episode, it's mentioned that the Eboladrome had to be redesigned slightly when the construction team found a small hazard: an unexploded bomb from World War II.
The Amazon X-Ray feature reveals Clarkson has his own problem that slows him down — he can't pay directly at the pump during his fuel stops, and has to pay through the cashier, since the card reader requires entering in an American zip code.
Subverted in "Up, Down, And Round The Farm", when the crew is shown beleaguered by Clarkson's antics trying to film his rally-car video. The exasperated director is Phil Churchward, who also came from Top Gear and has directed all the episodes of the series to date.
Subverted yet again in Season 3's Mongolian Special, when the camera crew, driving a tricked-out Land Rover, becomes stuck in a bog, requiring the presenters (in their makeshift, and hand-built, offroader, "John") to pull them out.
Subverted in Season 2, Episode 4's "Unscripted" — while the travel segments in Croatia (with Clarkson driving an Audi TT RS, Hammond in an Ariel Nomad, and May in a Lada) were, according to Clarkson, entirely unscripted, the episode just plays out (deliberately) as a series of missed opportunities, comical mistakes, comments and monologues trailing away, and May mostly off on his own, all because it's supposedly "unscripted" and was not planned out in advance as it usually is: like when an airport isn't available for a drag race, or a Croatian model keeps the lap times instead of a member of the crew, and May's ridiculous "fire engine challenge" that only he takes part in.
Harris' results had the P1 beating the Porsche by .41 seconds, and the LaFerrari (which came 2nd in The Grand Tour shootout) coming in last, losing to the P1 by .68 seconds.
Harris used the same make of tyres just as The Grand Tour did, so the difference in finish could be more on the driver or road conditions than the car's performance. It's also interesting to note that Harris' times were all faster than D'Ambrosio's times - by between .4 and 1.25 seconds!.
And like Clarkson noted towards the end of the shootout episode, When Harris used the P1 with its stock Pirelli Trofeo R tyres, it made it even faster , with Harris shaving another 1.79 seconds off his laptime.
Ironically, six months later, Harris became a presenter for Top Gear when the show was rebooted with Chris Evans and Matt LaBlanc . Seven episodes of Chris Harris On Cars (including the Trinity shootout) were later broadcast on BBC America in the Summer of 2016.
The second season dispenses with Celebrity Brain Crash, and introduces Celebrity Face-Off, where two celebrities (who actually appear in the studio, without comically dying before getting there) run lap times against each other in a Jaguar F-type on a new, rougher (part paved, part-gravel) track. Having two celebrity guests compete and using a higher-end car on a rougher track were both introduced during the Chris Evans-led Series 24 of Top Gear. note And both shows abandoned them the following season.
Andy Wilman, the executive producer, in his off-screen messages and texts, is more or less taking the part of the card-handing, white lab-coated assistants that served the same function in Top Gear — outlining a challenge, berating the presenters for their stupidity, or getting upset at their lack of progress.
It happens again when, in Series 3's 9th episode "Aston, Astronauts and Angelina’s Children" Richard Hammond reviews the 2019 Aston Martin Vantage. Eight days later, when the concluding episode of Series 26 of Top Gear airs, Chris Harris puts it through its paces. note Hammond loves it, Harris prefers a similarly-spec'd Mercedes instead.
The majority of the 3rd episode of Series 30 of Top Gear takes place in Scotland, where The Grand Tour filmed its third episode of Series 4 in July 2020, which at the time of the Top Gear episode's broadcast in March 2021, was still unaired.
Each episode begins with Clarkson giving a preview of what to expect "on this (car) show/program" and listing three mundane events that are usually not even car-related, including just showing May falling over three times in the Season 1 finale.
The "Conversation Street" intros, showing the three presenters in silhouette while they converse, changes every episode. There's usually a gag or clearly something out of place.
'Celebrity Brain Crash' set itself up to be an audience interview segment but the celebrities end up dead or killed. It also ends with the exchange: James: ...Does that mean (s)he's not coming on, then? Richard: Well, James, [graphic description of what just happened] , so that would be a "no"!
Several episodes feature two of the presenters wanting to compare a pair of cars for a particular purpose and going to some exotic location to do so, only for the third presenter to butt in with his own car.
The second season brings back the old "In this episode..." gag from Top Gear where Clarkson lists three inane, weird, or out-of-context events that happen at some point later on.
The Mozambique special has May getting splashed by the water in his aquarium, and Hammond falling off his cheap motorbike. May tries to put a stop to the former by putting a tarpaulin over the top, but Clarkson subtly sabotages it so he gets splashed again; as for the latter, Clarkson remarks that Hammond has fallen off so many times he's actually gotten bored of watching it.
Season 3 had a running gag of Clarkson describing an awful celebrity segment that was planned, but has had to be cut as they've run out of time.
Clarkson and May make a pact during the Mongolia special to not let Hammond drive "John" out of fear he'll crash it somehow. When they do begrudgingly allow Hammond to drive it, it is only for a few stolen moments before they make him stop because they've reached their intended destination.
Eurocrash has James May constantly missing out on the trio's planned stops due to his Crosley's sluggish top speed and poor reliability.
Scenery Porn : Any and all of the specials, but perhaps most notably the Mongolia special, which due to the low population density, is nothing but scenery porn.
Self-Deprecation : During the Seamen special, when the team has time to kill: Clarkson: Guys, I've got my iPad, I can watch a movie. There's a show on Prime Video here, it's called The Grand Tour . Hammond: I don't like it. May: It's rubbish. Hammond: There's this one bloke on it I can't stand .
Done heavily and lampshaded heavily in the second season as Hammond breaking his leg meant he appears in the studio fine while presenting footage of him while still dealing with the injury. Before this though is the fact that between the location and tent shots James May dramatically changed his hair, a discontinuity the trio try to play as even worse than Hammond's injury. In the end-of-year awards, though, Hammond comes out on top, (by switching cars in a cut during the middle of a review) winning a water bottle that is small in Clarkson's hands but once the camera cuts to Hammond taking hold of it, becomes five-gallon sized.
Shovel Strike : During the "Groundhog Day" Loop that forms the main feature of "Operation Desert Stumble", when Clarkson gets stuck in the window and... ahem, locates the terrorists , he pleads for his co-stars to "kill" him. In the end, Hammond bludgeons him with a shovel.
Side Bet : During the 'Holy Trinity' shootout, Clarkson makes an arguably bigger bet than changing his name to "Jennifer" this time - he bets Hammond and May that if the P1 loses, they can come around and knock his house down. In the end, Hammond's Porsche wins the shootout, beating May's Ferrari by only .2 seconds, but beats the P1 by 1.3 seconds. note Clarkson defends the P1, noting that when they used the car's included tyres (Pirelli Trofeo Rs) it was the fastest, but for the shootout the same make tyres (Pirelli PZero Corsas) were used to even the test.
Simulated Urban Combat Area : Used in the mission in "Operation Desert Stumble": it is a special forces training area located in Jordan.
Single-Episode Handicap : In ''The Falls Guys," thanks to Hammond's crash the episode before, he and May must engage in one of their public transportation vs. car races against Clarkson. However, May refuses to help Hammond out most of the time, reasoning it's Hammond's fault he's hurt since he was dumb enough to crash the car in the first place. As a result, Hammond struggles in getting from place to place on crutches and in wheelchairs, slowing the two down significantly. He notes in Conversation Street how difficult it was for him to get around during the race, even with so-called accommodations for the disabled. Likewise, May remarked in a TV interview he did not help Hammond out since it was in-character on the show for him to do so, but he expected others would. He was very surprised at how few people offered any assistance to his travelling companion, even when he clearly needed help.
This could also be seen as a Call-Back — May brought food from F&M when he and Clarkson drove a Toyota Hilux to the North Pole on their previous show .
Speak in Unison : In the first episode of the second series, Hammond and May's "You ungrateful bastard!!" upon learning that Jeremy hadn't unboxed a gift from his children due to an aversion to the squeaking noise polystyrene packing makes.
Springtime for Hitler : In Lochdown , the trio compete in a challenge pitting three American cars against three Soviet-era cars to see which is the worst, with the "winner" (i.e. the worst car) being the one that breaks down first. The trio, driving the American cars, quickly get the idea to turn the event into a demolition derby, and start ramming the opposition in the hope of breaking their own cars in the process. They instead succeed in breaking the cars they're ramming into ; Clarkson knocks out Hammond by accident, and he and May then systematically (and accidentally) knock out the three Soviet cars, leaving them the last cars standing.
When Clarkson was let go by the BBC, Hammond and May choose to leave Top Gear also. The show's executive producer (and Clarkson's childhood friend) Andy Wilman decided to move on too, and so the four started their own production company, W. Chump and Sons, which led to them creating their own car show with Amazon.
Suddenly Shouting : Hammond during the Colombia special, after he gets fed up of Clarkson's plan to drive up a volcano in search of condors: Hammond: You've led us up the side of a volcano, you've got oxygen for you and yourself only, and we can see NOTHING!
Clarkson's Fire Stick ad, as he browses through the different content channels: Clarkson ... Demand5 , Netflix, [advancing to BBC iPlayer] ...that...
James May, during the first episode of the second series of his show Cars Of The People : May: [concerning getting rid of the Morris Minor] But actually, would we really notice? Would it in fact give us a chance to move on? It might be a little bit as if a very popular and well-liked television programme suddenly came to an end. Everybody would think it was a disaster. But after a while, they'd get over it.
Clarkson, after being let go from Top Gear , was the guest host of the 50th season premiere of the BBC series Have I Got News for You in October 2015, and took a fair amount or ribbing - especially from guest contestant Richard Osman . note One could argue Clarkson had the last laugh, because his lucrative deal with Amazon was announced just a couple of weeks later.
The series premiere begins with Clarkson walking out of a generic replacement for BBC Television Centre, turning in his badge and then walking away in the rain, for the weather to clear up as he arrives in America for his new start.
When they introduce each other on stage during the series premiere, they list off the various times they've been fired from various jobs, but, when they get to Clarkson, Hammond admits he technically has never been fired from anything. note Clarkson's contract for Top Gear was simply not renewed, which means that Clarkson can still work with the BBC if he chooses. This allowed him to appear on Have I Got News for You in 2015 and on QI in 2016.
During "Dumb Fight at the OK Coral", taped in Nashville, as they argue about the Nashville vs. Detroit music scenes, when Clarkson begin to rattle off influential Southern groups, and Clarkson says, 'The Allman Brothers', Hammond responds, 'Never heard of them'. Clarkson then doubles-down: Clarkson: ...they had that one hit... instrumental... what was it called? Jeb... Jennifer! You never hear it anymore— May: Oh, I hated that. Clarkson: You never hear it anymore, do you? May: No... rubbish. Hammond: Weirdest thing, weirdest thing. note The Allman Brothers' song "Jessica" is the theme for Top Gear . "Jennifer" was the name of the specific remix.
Subverting the trope, the jibes at Top Gear noticeably go down in Series 2, and in Series 3 are non-existent. And in a nice surprise, the BBC allowed footage from the show in be incorporated into the retrospective montage that runs during the last episode of Series 3, and as such are thanked in the end credits.
Take That, Audience! : The Season 2 episode "Unscripted", levelled at fans who frequently complain about how scripted the show has become. By having a segment without a basic script to use as an outline, it shows how things go wrong without the rough ideas in place since tracks can't be found or booked in time, the presenters wander aimlessly since routes go unplanned, everyone picks a completely different type of car to test, Clarkson takes ages to come up with hyperbolic analogies about the car's systems, May engages in a challenge the other two refuse to participate in, and so on.
Throughout the early part of "A Massive Hunt", Clarkson and Hammond repeatedly rib May over his claim that the roads in Madagascar are the worst in the world, pointing out the good quality of the roads around their starting location and insisting that they can't possibly be as bad as May's friend claimed they were. Hammond actually remarks that he hopes the roads do get worse, so that the modifications he made to his car won't have been a waste of time. The roads do get worse... and eventually they get so bad that they kill Hammond's car , something no other location the trio have been to has ever managed to do.
In "A Scandi Flick", with time running out until their flight, the trio take a shortcut across a frozen lake. May, driving a little away from the other two, radios them to say "Come and drive over here, it's nice and flat" — and immediately falls through the ice . Not entirely, thankfully, but still.
This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman : The $800 motorbike Hammond buys for the Mozambique special is hilariously impractical: his fish all fall off the drying rack, Hammond himself falls off about a hundred times due to the bike's lack of grip, and it gets stuck and/or stalls almost as often on the muddy roads. Then towards the end of the challenge, the trio find the road blocked by a huge pond. Clarkson makes it through in his Nissan but ends up waist-deep in water, May tries to drive through it and completely kills his Mercedes ... Hammond, on his narrow bike, just carefully drives round it.
Tie-In Novel : The Grand Tour Guide to The World , published in October 2017, featuring abundant snark from the presenters, along with behind-the-scenes photos of the filming of the first season, along with a preview of the second, reminiscent of the Big Book Of Top Gear books that the BBC used to publish annually. "...Some of this book is factual, but most of it isn't. Many of the observations are incorrect and the advice idiotic."
Tonight, Someone Dies : A vehicular version. Promotional material for "A Massive Hunt" noted that, for the first time ever, one of the trio's cars would irreparably break down and fail to finish the challenge. It turns out to be Hammond's Ford Focus , and he's forced to complete the journey on foot (luckily, he only had nine miles to go).
Too Much Information : Clarkson and Hammond mock the concept of cars being gender-specific and Clarkson states that the only relevant gender-specific concepts are bicycles and underwear. Hammond pipes up with "sometimes" after the second example before looking abashed.
Twitchy Eye : May develops one in "Opera, Art & Donuts" whenever Hammond or his obnoxiously loud Dodge Hellcat is near or featured in a horribly obnoxious painting.
While discussing claiming to be transgender to save money on car insurance, James blindsides everyone by calling a man's tackle a "beef torpedo".
One of the Conversation Street intros in Season 1 has an erotic dancer dancing in-between Hammond and Jeremy and James. Jeremy and James ignore her and converse like nothing's happening.
In "Sand Job", as Clarkson's Jag (which he's converted into a raft) is drifting uncontrollably across the Senegal River, he points out a local woman casually washing her clothes in the river, not even looking at him, as if this sort of thing happens every day there.
Voodoo Doll : Hammond finds one with May's face on it while the two are tearing down Clarkson's house, during "Opera, Art & Donuts". It's not the most disturbing thing they find, though.
Wacky Racing : "Environ-Mental" has the presenters build ecologically-sustainable car bodies, and then race them against some normal cars. Hammond's car is made of plant materials, Clarkson's car uses dead animal parts and slabs of meat, and May, after unsuccessfully using mud and then bricks, succeeds with a body made of a combination of hay and dung. However, it keeps him from seeing properly (adding to his already infamous No Sense of Direction ), and it's so heavy he only completes a single lap. Then, Clarkson's car develops a problem with maggots . The regular cars obviously thrash the presenters, with the race ultimately ending when the last car standing, Hammond's, catches on fire.
The World Is Just Awesome : The Mongolia special has this in spades.
"X" Marks the Spot : Lampshaded and averted in "The Massive Hunt" as James May mentions that an X mentioned in a pirate's coded message did not mean that.
Your Head A-Splode : May's head in the Conversation Street intro for the Season 1 finale, much to Clarkson and Hammond's surprise.

" And on that terrible disappointment, it is time to end. Thank you so much for watching. Good night! "

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Tgt eurocrash - the aircar.

You thought flying cars would never happen in your lifetime? The Slovak-built Klein Vision AirCar is close to making actual commercially available flying cars a reality. In fact, it was type certified as an aircraft in January 2022! (It is still awaiting approval to be considered suitable for road travel as of June 2023.) Its flight filmed for The Grand Tour special "Eurocrash" was so stunning to presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May and their film crew that an experienced cameraman filming the landing was recorded swearing in amazement.

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TGT Eurocrash -...

The Grand Tour, Part 1

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April 19, 2024 (United Kingdom)
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Runtime 30 minutes