End of the road for Grand Tour – Jeremy Clarkson

An emotional end to 2 decades of Top Gear and The Grand Tour with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will air on September 13 on Amazon Prime.

According to Clarkson, he’s now getting too old and too fat to get into the type of cars he has loved talking about over the last 36 years. Brainchild of Clarkson, the trio was formed 22 years ago as part of a revamp for the long-running BBC Top Gear car review series, making their naughty schoolboy-antics in cars a worldwide hit.

Following a fracas when Jeremy Clarkson punched Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon in an argument over sandwiches, he was fired from the BBC and the boys moved to Amazon to continue their own structure of car-driving high jinks and a show more focused on them enjoying doing what they do best.

On the BBC’s Top Gear, Clarkson, Hammond and May used to fill a hangar with glitzy supercars and hundreds of spectators while making jibes about each other’s driving abilities. Then they would put a fast car to the test on a converted airfield at the hands of mystery driver The Stig, recording best track times against previous cars on a weekly updated leader board. There were top celebs too, including Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz and Rowan Atkinson pitting their times against each other in a ‘reasonably priced car’ go of the circuit.

However, what was constantly grinding the gears of Clarkson was what he termed ‘the leftie management at the BBC’. The lads deliberately pushed the boundaries of the acceptable, on one occasion infuriating the Mexican Embassy in London by joking about ‘lazy Mexicans’ having produced a good sports car. But to quote a hackneyed PT Barnum comment, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ and these kind of politically incorrect interjections along with the sporadically public spats between the Beeb and Clarkson, just fuelled more interest in the show. Top Gear peaked at 350 million viewers a week worldwide and more than 8.4 million viewers in the UK alone turned in to watch an episode that guest starred Formula 1’s Lewis Hamilton. The show eventually entered the Guinness Book of Records for being the most popular programme in the world, ironically, ‘in the world’ being Clarkson’s own go-to catch phrase.

Top gear replacements never made the grade

When he punched the show’s producer Oisin Tymon in 2015 in an alleged row over food, the BBC were left with no option but to end Jeremy Clarkson’s contract, and Hammond and May walked out with him. The BBC tried replacing the trio with various who would attempt to replicate the naughty schoolboy charms of the original 3, including Chris Evans, Paddy McGuinness and Friends actor Matt LeBlanc, but the magic was gone. In 2023 after presenter Freddie Flintoff was injured in an accident during filming, the BBC decided to call it a day on Top Gear. 

All the while, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond’s capers on The Grand Tour continued on Prime. Amazon said the show has been receiving ‘unprecedented customer and critical acclaim’. Indeed, the show is the top rated TV programme or movie on IMDb with an overall rating of 9.6 and over 10,000 votes, is rated 4.9 out of 5 stars by over 15,000 customers on Amazon, and has a score of 97 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘The chemistry between Jeremy, Richard and James is what makes The Grand Tour so entertaining,’ commented Jeff Bezos. ‘Their creativity, along with the amazing production quality and 4K HDR streaming, has Prime members responding in a big way. Kudos and congrats to the whole team.’

End of the road for the trio

But, in November 2023, reports came out that Clarkson, Hammond and May had finished filming their final episode, with the series finale set to be released on September 13, 2024, ending a 22-year partnership between the trio. In September 2024, Hammond confirmed speculation that the show would to continue with 3 new presenters taking over, although whoever they are, they have the toughest of acts to follow.

Jeremy Clarkson, having moved on to other projects more fitting for his 64 years, including his ‘Diddly Squat Farm’ and subsequent series ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ along with his new pub, ‘The Farmer’s Dog’ in Oxfordshire, has traded in Lamborghini supercars for Lamborghini farm tractors.

For the final instalment of The Grand Tour, ‘One For The Road’, the boys drive across Zimbabwe in another 3 terrible old bangers, something that would have been impossible on Top Gear as the BBC is banned there. They finish up on the Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana which had been featured in their favourite episode of Top Gear together 22 years before. One For The Road features three old classics from the 1970s, not unlike their drivers. Jeremy takes a Lancia Beta Montecarlo, Hammond a Mk1 Ford Capri, and May a Triumph Stag.

James May will continue with his own side project, Channel 5’s The Great Explorers, as well as a new programme on Quest called James May and the Dull Men’s Club. Richard Hammond, meanwhile, has a fourth series of Richard Hammond’s Workshop starting in late September, and his mental health podcast, Who We Are Now. All busy with their own individual shows, there’s little chance of a come-back reunion. The Grand Tour: One for the Road is released on Prime Video on September 13.