James May reckons the car is at ‘most interesting part of its history since it was invented’ as trio sign off on The Grand Tour

Even the Beatles didn’t last this long. Twenty-two years after they came together to present a revived and revised Top Gear programme for the BBC, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have finally brought their particular brand of vehicular televisual mayhem to an end. The last episode of The Grand Tour featuring the trio will air on Amazon Prime Video from Friday night.
The final episode – entitled One For The Road – sees them trying to drive across Zimbabwe in three old cars; a Lancia Monte Carlo, a Triumph Stag and a Ford Capri (the original 1970s coupe, not the new electric crossover).
There is, inevitably, an elegiac feel to the final episode, although all three said that they went to great efforts to avoid cheesy mawkishness. The use of Dire Straits’s Brothers in Arms over some of the final moments might have undermined those efforts, but whatever you think of Clarkson, Hammond and May and their distinctive sense of petro-masculinity, it’s hard to deny them a victory lap, bringing an end to more than two decades of being the defining voices of popular motoring enthusiasm.
Is that enthusiasm coming to an end? Amazon thinks not, confirming that The Grand Tour will continue, with three new presenters still to be announced. However, it certainly seems like an ending if you listen to Clarkson, who says during the show that quite apart from getting too old to be gallivanting around the world trying to coax unreliable old cars up mountain passes, he sees no point in trying to whip up enthusiasm for electric cars, describing them as “boring white goods”.
In that, at least, his co-presenters disagree. Chatting to The Irish Times before The Grand Tour finale’s release, Hammond said: “I do disagree fundamentally with that. I think for years, we car enthusiasts have been gathered around looking at the object of our obsession and assuming that all is doomed.
“Meanwhile, many people are looking at the future and seeing that maybe one tiny pixel in that picture will be, say, autonomous cars. Press a button on your smartphone and a car shows up. But at the point of that happening, a lot of people find themselves thinking ‘hang on a minute …’ My youngest daughter, for instance, would never consider herself interested in cars. But when we start talking about autonomy, she said ‘well I like my old VW Polo because it affords me freedom’. And a lot of people are going to realise that they are actually car enthusiasts, even when they never would have defined themselves as that in the past.”
And what of electric cars? Will they just be a silent buzz-kill for car fans? “I don’t share Jeremy’s pessimism for it,” May told The Irish Times. “I actually think the car as an idea is at the most interesting part of its history since it was invented. One of the side effects of the switch to things like electric cars and low-emission cars and so on is that we re-evaluate what it is they mean.
“I think our generation became obsessed with the car as an object, as a possession, almost a piece of jewellery or an artwork or something. But I think a younger generation is re-evaluating it correctly, in my view, and thinking ‘what does it actually stand for?’ And ‘what does it allow me to do?’ ‘What does it actually form?’ Which I think is quite healthy, and there will be a new way of addressing car enthusiasm. It will be a very different source of enthusiasm from the one that we grew up with. But it must be there. I don’t believe it will disappear, because the subject isn’t going away. So there will be people who want to be lyrical about it, and I’m looking forward to seeing it actually. I’m looking forward to watching people on TV and on YouTube and on vlogs, telling me about cars and me not knowing what’s going to happen next. I think that’s going to be great.”
Hammond reckons too that the future is at least as exciting as the history: “These are the most important machines we’ve ever made. They’ve enabled more things than anything else we’ve ever built. They’re not going away. Our love affair with them will continue, and it’s an exciting time for them, because we have to decarbonise, but the future will be a blend of fully electric cars, hybrid cars, hydrogen combustion cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars, synthetic fuels for the internal combustion engine cars, to keep 1.6 billion of them still on the road. It’s going to be a magnificent mosaic of stuff, because it’s all centred on the most important machine we’ve ever made. It ain’t changing. It ain’t going away any time soon.”
Here’s hoping, although there is, inevitably, a sense of closing doors about One For The Road. The fact that it’s an opportunity for the presenters to drive classic cars that they’ve always craved but never had. Clarkson used to stop and admire the shame of a Lancia Monte Carlo through a dealership window when driving to work. May had always admired the beautiful Triumph Stag from afar, but been reluctant to drive one because of its reputation for explosive unreliability. Hammond had long since lusted after an original Capri.
In crossing Zimbabwe, the three make a salient point that was first made 17 years ago when, for Top Gear, they crossed neighbouring Botswana in an old Lancia, Opel and Mercedes – proving that the car-buying public’s desire for huge 4x4s was a fallacy as you can convince even the most unlikely car to cross the roughest of terrain with a bit of gumption (and an attending crew with expert mechanics on hand). Sadly, the car-buying public remained unmoved, but the final Grand Tour again reminds us that even low-slung coupes are just as capable on all roads and none as a tricked-out Land Rover. If you’re brave enough …
The final episode continues the tradition of reliability pratfalls, arguing and bickering, but holds back (mostly) on the silly stunts and explosions. The decision was made to simply take three cars and drive them over and through some of the planet’s most stunning landscapes, and let the footage – some of it worthy of Lawrence of Arabia – do the heavy lifting. That decision was a good one, and as Mark Knopfler’s twanging guitar soundtracks the sight of the trio returning to an iconic location (no spoilers …) there will be few car nuts who won’t be choking back tears.
The legacy of Top Gear and The Grand Tour featuring these three is a complex one, over which perhaps even historians will one day argue. Simple entertainment? Petrol-head heaven? Or dangerous promotion of polluting machinery at a time of climate crisis? Who knows? All that really matters is that the adventure has ended.