"Just what is the fastest way of getting a truffle, like this, back from where it grows in Northern Italy to London?" "Now, obviously, we had to find out by having a race." "Normally when we have these races," "Jeremy goes into the car and says, "Power!" a lot, and Richard and I will go on a ferry or a train or an airliner or whatever." "But this time it's slightly different because I've been learning to fly." "So you see, the scene was set, okay?" "It would be Captain Captain Slow and his Hammond hand luggage in a private plane versus me in a car." "And we would be racing from Alba, which is here, just south of Turin in Northern Italy, to a restaurant on top of the NatWest Tower here in London." "Now, sit back, 'cause this is a good one." "(SPEAKING ITALIAN)" "JEREMY CLARKSON:" "We began by sending a dog into a wood to find our truffles." "(SPEAKING ITALIAN)" "And while he was doing that, I went to get my car." "This is it." "The new £840,000 Bugatti Veyron." "It's the fastest, most powerful and most expensive road car the world has ever seen." "So you two really think you can beat that, do you?" "Yeah." "Well, we've got our truffles, 65 quid that cost." "Something that looks like a mummified testicle." "And now we've gotta get them back to London." "So, are you ready?" "Yep." "Confident man." "Best of luck." "Try not to crash." "See you there." " Have we really got our own plane?" " Yep." "Fantastic." "Let's go." "(LAUGHING)" "RICHARD HAMMOND:" "To get to the airport, we weren't allowed to use a car, so we went for a couple of scooters." "This is fast." "This is fast." "Never, ever, ever experienced anything like this." "You see, this time, because we're using a private plane, there's no check in, no queuing, no waiting around." "So this time, we are gonna win." "And we're gonna win well." "(LAUGHING)" "JEREMY:" "So, let's have a look at the route." "The Bugatti has got to head north from Alba, round Turin at rush hour, through the Mont Blanc tunnel into France, across car-hating Switzerland, back into France to Calais, through the Channel Tunnel and up to London." "Meanwhile, 633 Squadron have to ride to the local airport and fly to England." "Yes!" "This car is like nothing I've ever driven, nothing I've ever been in, nothing I even sketched as an eight-year-old in a maths book." "I mean, it has two four-litre V8 engines joined together to make an eight-litre W16." "And then they gave it four turbochargers." "The result is 1,000 brake horsepower." "(JEREMY LAUGHING)" "Forward to victory." "It does 0 to 60 in two and a half seconds." "That's now to now." "All right, that'll do." "Go." "Sadly, they have had to limit the top speed to 252 miles an hour." "That's 370 feet a second." "Hammond and May, you don't have a hope in hell." "RICHARD:" "Hang on a second." "Is that it?" "JAMES MAY:" "What?" "It's a Cessna 182." "James, it's pathetic." "It looks like something a builder would leave behind." "It's not." "Honestly, it's a good kite, this." " Kite?" " Yeah." "(MOBILE RINGING)" "Hello." "He's trying to make me go in the sky in something you see poking out of a skip." "What is it?" "What's it called?" "Cessna 182, whatever that is." "182 refers to the number of quid it cost, I suspect." "RICHARD:" "And that was only the start." "What are you actually doing now?" "What's happening?" "You have to do pre-flight checks, make sure the stuff's all working properly." " How long..." " So if you're really interested," "I'm gonna turn on the battery master switch and I'm going to check the landing lights, the stall warning vane, the pitot heat and the flap operation 'cause it's a Cessna." "They're likely to have broken since it was parked?" " Well, you don't know." " What, plane pixies came in and nibbled away at all the wires or something?" " How long do these checks take?" " Twenty minutes, half an hour." "Not today, mate." "There must be a way of doing this more quickly." "Why don't you shut up and go and do what aeroplane passengers do, which is sit in the terminal, have a cup of tea, complain how expensive..." "You don't go into seventh gear in the Veyron till you're going 215 miles an hour." "And at that speed, the engine is sucking in 10,000 gallons of air every minute." "I swear, he enjoys the checks more than the flying." "JAMES:" "Nice." "Very nice." "(MOBILE RINGING)" "RICHARD:" "Hello, how are you doing?" "If I tell you that I'm already within sight of Mont Blanc..." "God, we're really gonna have to get a move on." "James, James, I've just noticed the wings have come off." "Oh, no." "They're still on." "You can tick those, they're all right." " Yeah, that's on." "These are on, look." " Listen." " Tyres, are they all up?" " Yes!" "Go!" "God, I wish this was a late-night programme, 'cause then I could be honest about what this thing's like." "It's a beep, beep." "And it goes like a..." "Heaven is a place on earth." "'Cause it's been standing overnight, you have to make sure there's no sediment or water in the fuel..." "Is there any sediment or water in the fuel?" "You have to check it like this." "I'll show you." "These are drain points." "You use the special cup..." " Good." "Oh, look, it's clear!" " You take a sample out, and you make sure there's no water in it, which you would see as a separate layer." "See?" "Clear." "Good." "Go!" "In the sky." "There are five of these on each side and two under the engine." "Okay, I'm doing 80 miles an hour now, the limit." "And I'm, according to this, using 50 brake horsepower." "So that's 950 to go." " Got your seatbelt on, Hammond?" " Is this more checks?" " No." "Seatbelt, put it on." " Yeah, it's on." "Okay." "Hello, this is Cessna 182 Golf Bravo X-ray Zulu Mike, request taxi for a VFR flight to Lima Foxtrot Mike Hotel, please." "MAN ON RADIO:" "Roger." "Line up 03." "Report when ready." "I'm ready to go." "Are you happy in the back?" "To the skies!" "We're in the air, Hammond." " You love all this, don't you?" " I quite like it." "Yeah." "James, we don't seem to be going very fast." "Well, we're doing 80 knots indicated air speed." "80 knots is about 85, 90 miles an hour?" "Yeah, it's not quite that simple because we're now at a pressure altitude of nearly 7,000 feet." "So you have to consider the true air speed." "Indicated air speed is what you fly on." "That's the rate at which the air is hitting the aeroplane." "But because it's thinner up here, we're actually going through the air faster than the instruments..." "JEREMY:" "The pre-flight checks had taken so long that by the time they'd left Italian tarmac," "I was leaving Italy itself." "This is the Mont Blanc tunnel." "This is where they had the terrible fire a couple of years ago." "So now they've got ferocious speed rules in here." "And there's a million speed cameras." "(CAMERAS CLICKING)" "So, I'll put it into automatic and relax." "You should be able to see Mont Blanc behind you, Hammond." " That's Mont Blanc, is it?" " Yeah." "I don't know where Jeremy is in relation to that now." "You can't just put your foot down in this thing whenever the mood takes you." "Unlike any other car, you've got to prepare for it." "You've got to think, "Is there another car within a mile of me?" ""Is the road smooth?" ""Is it straight?"" "Only if you get a "yes" to all those can you really give it the bees." "Take it through Switzerland." "See what they make of it." "(IN GERMAN ACCENT) Nein, it is too noisy!" "Get it out!" "Get it out!" "RICHARD:" "While Jeremy was thundering over the Alps," "James was making my life a misery, again." "James, why can I see the Med?" "Because we didn't go over the mountains, mate." "I didn't tell you this, we had to route down towards Nice and go along the coast a bit, and then we'll head up towards home." "I'm sorry, we, the ones in the aeroplane in this race, can't go over..." " Over the mountains?" " No, mate." "Sorry." "So Jeremy's car can go higher than your aeroplane as well as faster." "RICHARD:" "This was a major blow, because while Jeremy had already cleared the Mont Blanc tunnel and was steaming towards Switzerland, we were heading south-west, over the French Riviera." "And, whichever way you cut it, that's the wrong way." "(ENGINE ROARING)" "JEREMY:" "Yup, car-friendly Switzerland, and sure enough, they'd sent a welcome party." "Come on!" "(MOBILE RINGING)" " Hammond!" " Hello, how are you doing?" "I'm fine." "How are you?" "We're going the wrong way." "We're headed south-west towards Nice, right now." " You're heading toward Nice?" " We had to go around everything." "Apparently, there's a big tree that could be a bit tricky for us, and..." "But, no, stop." "Richard, did you say you were heading for Nice?" "Don't laugh!" "Just don't laugh." "Is your car sounding like it might break down in the next 10 minutes?" "No, you've no idea, mate." "It's phenomenal!" "It goes like a (BLEEP)." "So, an update on the race for you." "I'm winning by miles." " James, I've got no fork." " Yeah, it's not allowed on the flight." "It's just as well because if I had any cutlery right now, it'd be sticking out of your neck." "JEREMY:" "The slow Swiss A-roads gave me time to reflect on the Veyron's difficult birth." "You know, when the boss of Volkswagen turned round one day and said," ""Look, we have bought Bugatti." ""Let's build a car that has 1,000 horsepower" ""and does 400 kilometres an hour." A lot of people said he was mad." "They were faced with a Herculean task and what they've created is something spectacular." "You can't really think of it as a car." "You've got to think of it in terms of Concorde or the Saturn Vrocket or the SS Great Britain." "It's a huge, giant leap forward." "It is an engineering hammer blow." "JEREMY:" "Certainly, the Bugatti is more of an engineering triumph than James'plane." "We've got no bloody forks." "Stop whingeing about the ruddy in-flight food, man." "God's sake." "And don't jig about 'cause we're climbing..." "We're struggling..." "I am not jigging!" "How rubbish is this thing if I can't even lift a chocolate bar to my face without it crashing into a mountain?" "Even though there are these huge cooling ducts here and the engine has no cover at all, that thing has 10 radiators." "Three to cool the engine itself, three for the intercoolers, one to do the axle oil, one to do the engine oil, and one to cool the hydraulic fluid used to raise that rear spoiler." "It's got more radiators than my house!" "RICHARD:" "With Jeremy storming through France," "James was preparing yet another lump of disappointment." " Hammond, we have to stop for fuel." " Well, why didn't you put more in?" "Well, I filled it up." "That's as much as it takes." "So we've got to pull over for petrol?" "Are you familiar with the basic principles of flight?" "No." "One of the problems we have, because the aeroplane is heavily loaded, is that we need essentially more lift, so we have to fly with the wings at a slightly higher angle of attack." " Oh, God." " So, obviously..." "JEREMY:" "With those two looking for fuel, I was busy using mine up." "That isn't so much a throttle that my right foot's on, it's a hyperspace button." "World's going backwards!" "Now we're moving." "This is fast." "Oh, yeah!" "Coming at you!" "Things were looking peachy for the car." "I was storming towards Dijon while the Wright brothers were being refuelled in St Étienne," "150 miles behind, which wasn't pleasing James." "How do we say," ""Stop being such a trade unionist and get on with it"?" "One day, those guys are going to find the means of transport that's better than a car, but I don't think today is that day." "Yeah, if you go through the small ads in the back of car magazines, you'll find they're stuffed full of ads for supercars which cost less than, what?" "A two-year-old Mondeo." "Now, this sounds incredibly tempting, but what are cars like this gonna be like to live with?" "So to find out, we were each given £10,000 and told to go out and buy a supercar that's mid-engined and Italian." "Yes." "And then we were told to take whatever we bought to Bristol, where we would be set a series of challenges." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "I think you can probably see where this is going." "Here's what happened." "RICHARD:" "I was the first to arrive." "I've just bought a Ferrari for 10 grand." "It's a 1979, 308 GT4." "Look, it's yellow." "It's got an engine in the middle." "It's got everything." "Right, wait for the others." "See what they've got." "Jeremy was next to roll up." " Behold, the Maserati Merak." " Yeah, it's..." "It's a Maserati." " Maserati Merak." " Is it not?" "Merak?" " Yup." " Right." "Possibly the prettiest supercar ever made." "RICHARD:" "Potentially." "JEREMY: £7,000." " That's about three grand less than me." " Than yours?" " And you've bought a..." " I've bought a Ferrari 308." " No, you haven't." " It is a Ferrari!" "It just isn't a Ferrari." "JEREMY:" "What Richard had bought was never originally called a Ferrari." "It was so slow and wet, it was actually called a Dino." "There's no point going, "I bought my shirt at George."" "It's from ASDA." "You've got a George car." " (LAUGHING) What's this?" " It's a spare wheel." "Hang on." "Is this a V..." "They're a V6, aren't they?" "Yeah." "But it's brilliant." "The engine in this, honestly..." "Really?" "Yeah." "The guy I bought it from just spent 10,000 quid rebuilding that engine." "Sold the whole car for seven." "Shows how much the rest of it's worth." "Watch the headlamps." "They work brilliantly." "Ready?" " There you go." "The headlights are on." " But they're..." "No, no, you can see they're on if you get down here." " There they are." "Can you see them?" " Yeah." "RICHARD:" "Oh, that's a shame." " There you have it." " Let go of it." " lf I let go?" " Let it go." "(RICHARD LAUGHING)" "JEREMY:" "You may have noticed we're waffling a bit, and that's because we're waiting for Captain Sense of Direction, who we assumed had got lost." "You fancy some lunch?" "But we were wrong." "James has bought an AA truck!" "(LAUGHING) He's bought..." "At least you made it to the end of our last one before getting on one." "Right." "James, we said a mid-engined Italian supercar, not a truck." "RICHARD:" "Have you had fun?" "Is that the best you two can come up with?" "Yes, it is." "What is your..." " That, gentlemen, is..." " Apart from was a Lamborghini Urraco." "Look at it." " It's not a very good example." " It's superb!" "JEREMY:" "But, James, let's cut to the chase." " Okay." " It's on a lorry." "It's an electrical problem." "The Italians invented electricity, as we know." "JEREMY:" "James decided the best form of defence was attack." "I know about old cars, as you know," "I can look at this and with my trained eye, can tell you immediately that that is a pup." "You've got a trained eye and you bought that?" "RICHARD:" "So, what had the production team got in store for us?" " Oh, yes!" " Don't do that to my car!" ""Your '70s supercar mission for today is to drive from Bristol" ""to Spearmint Rhino in Slough."" " That's a lap dancing club." " Is it?" "Oh, you don't know!" "No, that's what these cars are about." "Fair enough." ""You may not use the M4 itself."" "So we've got along the M4 corridor on the wiggly roads." " Bath, Swindon..." " All of that." "...Reading..." " Maidstone." "Your sense of direction!" "You mean Maidenhead." " Oh, yeah." " Maidenhead." "As long as he's got a sense of direction, he can get him there." "RICHARD:" "As usual, points would be lost for unforeseen stoppages, and, naturally, there would be a series of challenges along the way." "Bye." "What I love about this particular Merak is that it is the SS." "One of the..." "One of the later ones." "Very rare." "They only made 652 of them." "Now, this is kind of heavy A-road traffic through town." "Stop-start stuff." "I'd expect it to overheat here, frankly, and nothing." "Water temperature, oil temperature, oil pressure, all perfect." "I wonder if James has got his alternator going yet." "JEREMY:" "He had, sort of." "Right." "Now, the battery is discharging." "The oil temperature is very high, the oil pressure is very low, the engine temperature is off the end of the scale," "I'm running out of petrol, but the clock is correct." "Right, we're out of Bristol." "No mechanical maladies to report." "(ENGINE REVVING)" "There's smoke coming out of the back of that thing." "That's smoke." "Eh?" "No, it's not a kit car, it's a Lamborghini." "Philistine." "I notice my speedo is a bit optimistic." "We were stuck behind a tractor earlier on that was doing 50 according to this." "Never mind, could be worse." "Yes, James had run out of electricity, again." "JEREMY:" "I just can't believe somebody's put a Ferrari badge on that when it isn't one." "But there you are, you know, if it makes you happy." "How can he say not a Ferrari?" "It was named after Enzo Ferrari's tragically dead son, and built to fit old man Ferrari himself." "What a marvellous day." "Sun shining, Maserati to drive, endless scope for laughing at Hammond for buying the wrong car, and James for buying one that doesn't work." "JAMES:" "Actually, I got my car working." "And what a car!" "Of course, in its day, the Urraco was one of the fastest and most exciting four-seater cars you could buy." "142 miles an hour, 0 to 60 in about 6.5 seconds." "That was ever such a long time ago, though." "RICHARD:" "Meanwhile, Jeremy and I were nearing our first challenge." "Castle Combe racing circuit." "You have got to be kidding." "Racetrack, that's when we see the Maserati come good." "I'm feeling confident." "JEREMY:" "So, why was Hammond nervous?" "You see, my car has a bit of a secret." "At the back of it there's a sub-frame, which on the 308 holds the engine in and the wheels on, keeps them attached to the body." "And it's just made of rust." "RICHARD:" "Still, could be worse." "Yes, James had broken down again." "JEREMY:" "Castle Combe is 20 miles from Bristol, and most of us got there." "It's a fierce track, this." "One of the fastest in Britain." "A real car-breaker." "Can we have the challenge?" "Find out what it is." " He can pick up later on." " Yeah." " I know what this is gonna be." " Go on?" "Stig'll drive them around the track, points for the winner." "No, it isn't!" "It's "Your supercars were built in the '70s." ""How super are they today?" ""To find out, the Stig's going to set a lap time in a Vauxhall Astra diesel."" "Right." ""You will then attempt to beat his time in your cars." ""You lose points for every second over the Stig's time" ""and gain points for every second under it."" "(ENGINE REVVING)" "JEREMY:" "The Stig was really on it." "But a diesel hatchback?" "Come on." "We've got a Lamborghini, a Maserati..." "And a Ferrari!" " I could see that coming." " Easily gonna be able to beat..." "And across the line in one minute 35 seconds." "Well, actually, I'd say we stood a..." "Hello." "May!" "May has joined us." "Hang on." "Have you come by bus or are you in your car?" " No, I'm in my car." " Is it on a truck?" " No, it's not." "It's fine." " Did it break down on the way here?" "No, no." "I just had to stop and fill it up with electricity." "JEREMY:" "Given that James' car was actually running, we decided to make hay and send it out first." "Three, two, one, go!" "This is a piece of cake." "(ENGINE DECELERATING)" "Oh, hang on." "Smoke." " Oh, my God!" " I got so excited, I wet myself." "Your car's done a wee." "Do you think if we get this going again, you will actually be able to do one lap?" "Yes, I do." "(STAMMERING) And a good one at that." "Go!" "It's a right-hander, I'm turning into the apex, snatching third." "One minute 18, he's not even in sight." "Ooh!" "Shit!" " Whoa, whoa, whoa!" " No, he's here!" "He's gonna make it." "The V8 Lamborghini is..." " Stig was 1:35." " Yeah." " 1:58." " Rubbish." "RICHARD:" "Next it was my Ferrari, so far the most reliable car of the day." "Oh!" "Me mirror's just come off." "Three, two, one." "Go!" "And with 255 horsepower, it was also the most powerful." "It's indicating 100 miles an hour, which is probably about 50." " He's very competitive." " He is very competitive." "And he's taking it very seriously." "It rolls!" "JEREMY:" "Hammond gave his all, but he was still slower than the Stig." "How long before Hammond blames a misfire?" "One minute 43 seconds." "Problem is it rolls so I thought I'll have to make up time on the straights." " The engine sounded pretty healthy." " And then it developed a misfire..." " I knew..." "I knew you'd say it!" " It did." "It did." "JEREMY:" "Finally, it was the turn of the mighty Merak." "Three, two, one, go!" "V6, I believe." "It may only be a V6, but remember, this is the SS version with 220 horsepower." "Four thousand rpm!" "And that's all the rebuilt engine has to give." "Nicely balanced, though." "That car is..." "Why won't you rev?" "...an appalling heap of junk." "Come on!" "Come on, car!" "I've got it." "Don't say it." "(TYRES SCREECHING)" "Got no brakes." "All the excuses are coming." "Here we go." "Oh, he's not stopped..." "I've got no brakes!" "I also had no coolant." "Do you know what would cure that?" "Spending £10,000 on an engine." " Yeah." " Oh!" "Somebody has." "Yeah." "It's a bit steamy." "I've no brakes." "The oil pressure has completely gone." "So, do you want to know or not?" "Well, tell me what I did with no brakes." "(CLEARING THROAT) 1:54!" " Fifty-four." "That is brave." " Slower than..." "JEREMY:" "To find out why our lap times were so woeful, we were given another challenge." "This is a rolling road, which are used to measure power." "Now what we're gonna do is put the cars on it and find out how many of the horses that were put into their engines when they were new have escaped over the years." "And, obviously, we lose points for every horsepower that's gone missing." "(ENGINE REVVING)" "Now, we weren't covering our ears because of the noise from Hammond's fake Ferrari, but because James was boring us to death." "Yeah, it measures the wheel horsepower and then, by letting it run down, it converts the mechanical drag into the extra horsepower" " in the flywheel." " Good." "Remember, the Dino had 255 horsepower when it left the factory 30 years ago." " So what's he gotta hit?" " And how much have you lost?" "Well, he said 194." "That's not bad!" "So, 194 brake horsepower is what it's actually producing?" "61 rampant Italian horses just... 61 horsepower have escaped." " That's how many a year?" " Think of it another way." "That's a VW Lupo has escaped from your engine." "Now, would the Lambo run long enough for the machine to take a reading?" "(ENGINE REVVING)" "This machine goes up to 450 brake horsepower." "RICHARD:" "Well, we're okay, then." "JEREMY:" "Yeah, I think we might be fine." " See?" "V8, 2.5 litres." " Yes." "220 brake horsepower to beat." "It's lost 103." " So it's got 117 left." " Is there enough power to get it off?" "JEREMY:" "Then it was the turn of the Maserati." "But first, I'd discovered something worrying in the service history." "Note please, item two." " "Badge." "Badge SS."" " JAMES:" "Oh!" "JEREMY: £38 for an SS badge!" "I've bought a car that's got a 38-quid badge on it." "There was some good news, though." "Because it turned out I only had an ordinary Merak, it meant I only had to reach 190 horsepower, not 220." "Oh, yeah!" "Here we go!" " Come on." "What is it?" " (MUMBLING) Eighty." " What?" " Eighty." " Eighty!" " Eighty!" "They've all gone away!" "There must be, like, a big gate open in the back and all your horses just got out." "Your car is garbage." "Very good." "Now, we're gonna be picking that up later on." "But for now, it's time to update our Italian mid-engined supercars for less than a second-hand Mondeo challenge." "Chart." "And first up, the lap." "Well, I won that in my Ferrari." "Just minus eight points there." "Can I just say I did only have 80 horsepower?" " Can I say that?" " Yes, exactly." "So, horsepower, I won that as well with my Ferrari." "Good." "Then we come to the unforeseen breakdowns." "That was none for you, Jeremy." "Ah, yes, none for me, but you knocked your rear-view mirror off." "Oh, rubbish, that doesn't count." "I did that." "It doesn't count." "Then there's James." "What were you?" "You were..." " Three." " No, you weren't." "You were four." " Rubbish." " You arrived on a truck." " Exactly." " We hadn't started then." "Don't be ridiculous." "It started for us at 9:00, you just turned up late." "RICHARD:" "We had started." "It's minus 20, so there you go." "Now, the next one is the big one, okay?" "Insurance." "That's the main problem with cars of this type, okay?" "We had to go out and get a quote to see how low we could go." "And mine was, for the Maserati, £300." " A year?" " Yeah." " For a Maserati?" " Yeah." " Don't be ridiculous." " No." "Well, the reason is very simple." "Unlike you, I'm a respectable middle-aged man." "Unlike you, I don't have any points on my licence." "It's kept in an alarmed, locked garage in one of the safest parts of the country." "But hang on a minute, because you are," " what, a journalist and a broadcaster?" " Yeah." "And I happen to know that those are two of the highest rated insurance risks on the book." "Yeah, you're exactly right, which is why I told them I was a doctor." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" " So you're lying." " Your doctorate isn't real!" "It just arrived in the post one day." ""Oh, I'm a doctor."" "A university made me a doctor." "I am a doctor, it's 300 quid." " How does it work?" "It was 500 quid..." " 500 quid is the benchmark." "You get a point for every £100 you are under it." "So, incredibly, you get two points there." " Two points for being a doctor." " That's ridiculous." " Yeah." " Go on, then, what was yours?" "Well, I said I'm an after-dinner speaker." " You see?" " I've done two." " Two hundred." " It is two." "It's every week." "Anyway, what was your quote?" "For a big corporate bank, five grand." "I suppose for a charity, I'll do it for three and a half." "No, you blithering idiot." " What was your insurance quote?" " Oh, a grand, £1,000." "That includes, presumably, the 800 quid" " to cover your new expensive teeth?" " I've not had my teeth..." "I just haven't." "So I actually lose..." "Oh, it's minus five." "Lose." "Englebert's going down with his new teeth." "RICHARD:" "That's bad." " And, James, you?" " Now, I was honest." "And I said I'm a journalist and a broadcaster." "And I bet you told them you lived in London as well." "Yes." "Single, car parked on the street, live in an area of London that's usually on fire." "So your quote was?" " Five thousand pounds." " Yes!" "Actually, we're laughing..." "I once had an Escort Cosworth, okay, years and years and years ago." "And I got a quote for that of £22,000." " 22 grand." " Hang on, the car wasn't..." "I know it's worth, like, 19,000." " Anyway, what are we up to?" " Right, now, I get to minus 20..." "No, that's you, Jeremy." "You're on minus 28." " I'm on minus 20 in my Ferrari." " It's close." "And, James, you lost another 45 there." " I'm on minus..." " He's on minus 99." " Minus 99, James!" " I was going for 100." "Well done, James." "Quite frankly, you'd have done better if you hadn't bought a car." "Oh, yes, the race." "We are taking our two truffles from the north of Italy, here, and we're heading for a restaurant at the top of the NatWest Tower in London, here." "So, we rejoin the action with James and me in the private plane, which is like a sort of toaster with wings on it, down here, and Jeremy and his amazing bullet car, about here," "150 miles ahead." "How they think they're gonna beat this..." "Look at that sky above us, it's fantastic." " This is a race." " And we're winning, overall." "Apart from in the sense that we're several hours behind Jeremy in his car." "Hammond, I ought to tell you I've only actually done two and half hours on this type of aircraft." "Right, so you're not entirely familiar?" "I know what all the major knobs and things do." "I have to say this is no harder to drive or more tiring than a Golf." "Or even a golf cart." "And the interior is such a nice place to be." "I mean, these stalks here are made from magnesium and aluminium." "And they cost £4,500 each." "The only thing that's wrong at the moment, really, is the smell." "The smell of my pharaoh's testicle here." "(EXCLAIMS)" "I don't imagine that Hamster and Slow are going to be having a refreshing cup of hot brown wherever they are." "I don't think light aircraft have tea and coffee-making facilities on them." "I'm guessing." "My smugness, however, was about to take a blow." "(MOBILE RINGING)" " Hello?" " Jeremy, it's Richard." " How are you doing?" " Hamster, how are you going?" "Well, we were in real trouble, but we've had a stroke of luck." "French air traffic control let us take a slight shortcut, which meant we could cut really quite a sizeable corner, and that's brought us back in the game." "So, we're over mid-ish France." "No." "Where..." "Come on, tell me." "Where are you?" "Well, keep looking overhead, mate." "(CHUCKLES)" "Right, so this is it then, our final leg." " We are on the way." " Yep." " Next stop, presumably UK." " Yep." "JEREMY:" "This was a disaster." "All my fannying about with coffee stops and calls to insurance companies meant that Maverick and Iceman were right behind me." "Now they're gonna overtake me." "Oh, this is torture." " A ground speed of nearly 145 knots." " That's about, what, 150 miles an hour?" "Corking speed." "Captain Slow." "He's up there in his washing machine." "I will not be beaten by a washing machine." "JEREMY:" "It was time to unleash the Bugatti's secret weapon." "At the moment, I'm in DEFCON 3." "I'm in handling mode with that rear spoiler up, which is pushing the back of the car into the road to give me grip in the corners." "But I'm on a motorway, and there are no corners." "So all the spoiler's doing is causing drag, slowing me down." "I therefore needed to pull over and lower it." "To make sure you don't put it down accidentally, you have to use the ignition key in this slot here." "So that now, when you get cracking, the spoiler doesn't come up and the whole car hunkers down on the road, makes it very slippery, and you can get to the top speed." "But before you can do that," "Volkswagen say you have to do some checks." "No idea what these checks might be, so..." "Seems fine." "I am now at DEFCON 4." "At this point, your big advantage about flying does start to pay off because we are in the sky, there's nothing in the way, we're going direct." "RICHARD:" "Jeremy was flying." "But 5,000 feet above him, we were flying faster." "We were about to take the lead." "But then, guess what?" "James delivered yet more bad news." "There is one thing I need to tell you about, Hammond." "What?" " This idea about "England here we come."" " That's the idea." "Well, the thing is, because we were a bit delayed, it's gonna get dark while we're still in Northern France." "You got lights, turn them on." "Yeah, but I'm not allowed to fly this thing in the dark." " What?" " I'm not qualified." "I'm really sorry, Hammond." " Right." "So what do we do?" " We land." "(MOBILE RINGING)" "Hamster, are you really hammering along now?" "We do have problems." "James has just told me that he hasn't done the test that allows him to drive the plane at night." "So, we're gonna have to land." "And I quote, "Somewhere, maybe Lille."" "He really hasn't thought this through, has he?" "He's gone." "The news enabled me to switch back to DEFCON 3 and reflect some more on the joys of driving." "That's the most marvellous thing, really, about the car, is that when it starts to go dark, you don't have to park." "You just put your lights on and keep right on going." "RICHARD:" "If we could make Lille before night fell, we were in with a chance of catching the Eurostar to London and staying in the race." "They're 100 miles south of Lille." "I'm 90 miles south of Lille." "I'm going to see them any minute!" "Are we still all right for light?" "Yeah, I've gotta land before the sun goes down." "Ten minutes before it goes down, strictly speaking." "This is gonna be so close." "Please just carry on flying now." "Just drive the plane." "I can't let this, not the best car ever made, be beaten by James' flying washing machine." "JAMES:" "So am I clear to land at runway 18?" "That was probably the wrong order, but it's roughly right." " You all right, Hammond?" " Oh, yes." "Just land." "It's tricky, man." "It's windy." "RICHARD:" "We landed in Lille with moments to spare." "(MOBILE RINGING)" "Hamster, where are you?" "Are you down?" "You must be down by now." "We're down." "Yeah." "Where are you?" "Oh, well, I'm about 70 miles from Calais." " Right." "Okay, that's good." " Come on." " The train's fast." " The good thing is is this is gonna be seriously close." "Oh, you're..." "He's gone." "Never mind, I don't really care." "It's not that way, it's this way." " I'm running!" " Yes, you're running." "Go." "Just don't try and fly this, will you?" " Train station." " Train station, TGV." "RICHARD:" "We'd so nearly caught Jeremy up in the plane, but now we were on a bus going to the railway station." "His lead was increasing by the moment." "RICHARD:" "Now, train station." "Right, Eurostar." "That's us." "This bit of Northern France isn't half dull." "When you're not in the Bugatti, that is." "These things are getting worse." "They are." "It's like a dead dog in a bag." " Yes!" " This is a good thing." "Well, here we are." "I've made it to Calais." "Yes!" "I don't want to lower the tone or anything, but I haven't been to the loo since Italy and I'm gagging for it." "And the ones that way are out of order, and there's 42 British coaches through there and they all want my autograph." "(SPEAKING FRENCH)" "JEREMY:" "Oh!" "Oh, yeah!" "MAN OVER PA:" "Please ensure that your handbrake is on..." "(LAUGHS)" "JEREMY:" "I'd arrived back in Britain half an hour in front of Ginger and Algy." "But they were gaining fast." "(MOBILE RINGING)" "Hamster, how are you?" "We're on our train, and we're doing quite nicely." "We're 35 minutes from Waterloo." "It is down to the wire again." "Any minute now, we'll see your headlights sweep past the window." "May the best man win." "The race actually starts now." "Blackwall Tunnel." "Is that good?" "I don't know." "I just know time is tight." "This is the longest I've been stationary in 13 hours." " We've got to run now, haven't we?" " Yes." "Where do you get these night buses?" " Right outside." " Can you pay them in truffles?" "Way out!" "Come on." "RICHARD:" "Liverpool Street." "Aldwych." "JAMES:" "This is it!" " Excellent." " Hi!" "Go!" "Drive." "Oh, I see bits of London that I recognise." "It's Canary Wharf." "Yes!" " This is what public transport is about." " Drive!" " Drive!" " Waiting." "He's got a Bugatti, we've got a bus." "All those tunnels I've been in today, smooth and neat and big, and this one looks like a public convenience." "Whatever comes up behind us could be a Bugatti." " We're now..." " That was the Aldwych, yes." "This is the City." "This is the City!" "RICHARD:" "There it is!" " We're minutes away!" " Let's get down and get our bags." "Go, go, go, go, go!" "Another red light." " James!" " Yeah, I'm coming!" "That's it!" "(RICHARD LAUGHING)" "This is it." "It's the NatWest Tower, I'm here!" "Are they here?" "RICHARD:" "Come on!" "Oh, truffle, truffle." "JEREMY:" "The tower was a maze with no direct lift from the bottom to the finish line on the 42nd floor." "RICHARD:" "B to 21." "21, transfer to something to go to 42." " Yeah, that makes sense." "Look." "B." " Yeah?" "In." "Transfer to lift group D." "Why don't they just have a lift?" "Go!" " Arrows, this way." " Right." "No, hang on." " That's not it." " Oh!" "Excuse me." "Do you know how to get to 42?" " 41 's as high as you can go in the lift." " 41 is it." "41 and walk?" "Okay, thanks ever so much." "Bye." "What a stupid building!" " 34, 35, 36." " 35, 36." "(EXCLAIMS)" "Go!" " JAMES:" "Stairs!" " Oh, mate, I'm terrified!" " This is it, Hammond." " This is it." " Dignity." " Let's be composed." " Good evening." " Good evening." "Um..." "I don't know, I'm confused." "Does that mean we've won?" "Where is he?" "Well, I would say we've won." "We're here and he's not." "RICHARD:" "Little effort." "That's his shadow!" "JAMES:" "What's that reflection?" "In the window, the ghostly figure!" "Surely not!" "RICHARD: (LAUGHING) That's horrible!" "You unbearable man!" "I can't stand it!" " Dignity." " Yes." " You got your truffle?" " Yes." "Well, unfortunately, they've already got one." "So, I'm afraid you're 65 quid out of pocket." "JEREMY:" "Oh, marvellous!" "Pasta with my truffle on it." "RICHARD:" "Oh, truffle, good." "It's quite a hollow victory." " Is it?" " Mmm." "Because I've now got to go through the rest of my life knowing that I'll never own that car." "I'll never experience that power again." "And that is a really sad feeling." "Kind of the end of an era, in an odd way." "They're getting us something new but..." "Tiring day." "It's time to get back to tonight's challenge." "We've all bought supercars for less than £10,000, and we're doing a number of challenges with them as we go on one of our, frankly, epic voyages, from Bristol, here, to a lap dancing bar in Slough, about here." "Yeah." "When you look at like that, it's not exactly the most arduous" " journey ever undertaken, is it?" " JEREMY:" "No, no." "Nevertheless, it's taken us half a day to get to about here, and so far we've learnt that James' Lamborghini is rubbish," "Jeremy's Maserati is slow," " and my Ferrari..." " Isn't a Ferrari." " It is!" " It is not a Ferrari!" " Teeth, be quiet." " It's a..." "It is a..." "Let's get back to the action." "JEREMY:" "While you were away, the cars had their tanks drained and were then given 25 litres to get them to the lap dancing club in Slough, 96 miles away." "To get to Slough, with the fuel we've just put in, we have to average 17 miles to the gallon." "Apparently, yes." " Which in a normal car..." " No problem." " Piece of cake." " These aren't entirely normal cars." "JEREMY:" "To make matters worse, it had become obvious that the lap at Castle Combe had hurt my engine badly." "(ENGINE RATTLING)" "Now, this is a half-French, half-Italian car, and that's a worry." "See, when the French and Italians come together to do cooking, that's great." "When they come together to make a car run, then run for your life." "Now, I'm following Jeremy in his Maserati," "I'm doing 48 miles an hour, and I get the distinct impression that he's going flat out." "Look at that." "Overtake..." "For our next challenge, we had to go to a service centre in Chippenham." " No, don't do that." " Yeah, yeah, that'll help." " Right, challenge, I think." " JEREMY:" "It's just a bit tappety." " Yeah, yeah, from both ends." " In the way a dumper truck is." "Right." "I would... (GROANING)" ""You are now in a race." ""With no outside help, each of you must change the oil in your car..." " Oh, no." " "...and all the spark plugs."" "These are..." "Actually, come to think of it, you've got a V6, we've got V8s." " I've only got six spark plugs." " That's a good point." "JEREMY:" "But I've never held a spanner in my life." "RICHARD:" "He has, but that's on old British motorcycles..." "All I have to do now is demonstrate to you two why I'm a doctor of engineering, twice." "RICHARD:" "The good doctor then started work on his spark plugs rather than changing his oil, which was actually quite dim." "Well, no." "You'll need it to be hot for the oil to drain 'cause it's thin." "Otherwise you get lumpy bits, in your case full of metal, hanging around the bottom of your engine." "RICHARD:" "Oddly, James began by doing housework." "The bonnet is eating my head!" "So the good doctor came up with an engineering solution." "Meanwhile, James had got going, and got stuck." "I don't see how I'm gonna do that." "While Jeremy had resorted to shouting." "Come on!" "Come on!" "I sound like I'm in a porn film." "(GRUNTS)" "Their problem was inaccessible spark plugs." "Ow." "Ow." "Not something that was troubling me." "I actually dawdling." "I don't wanna win by too much." "Oh, I can't get at this one." "Oh, look, it's obscured by this lead." "You've got mechanics' butt cheek, do you know that?" "After a brisk 50 minutes," "Dr Clarkson had finished changing his plugs." "Yes!" "All six." "And set about making a mess of his oil change." "That went well." "Meanwhile, James was being pedantic, and I was hampered by height issues." "Seven!" "The race to the finish was between me and the doctor." "Yes." "Yeow!" "(GROANS)" "First to start their engine." "(ENGINE ROARING)" " We've got the times." " They're saying five seconds..." "One hour 13 minutes point two for you." " Yeah." " 13.25 for me." "Half a second." "I may have made a bit of a mess, though." "Meanwhile..." "I'm quite happy doing this if you'd like to sod off, you two." "JEREMY:" "As we left Chippenham, it became clear that the pit stop hadn't really done my Maserati much good." "(ENGINE RATTLING)" "That's a great sound." "Our next challenge was in the town of Marlborough." "All I had to do was get there." "Got all the dials here." "My oil temperature, minus 20." "Fuel." "Depends on what sort of corner I'm going round." "Time, wrong." "Battery, wrong." "Never mind, could be worse." "This time, James had broken down outside a school at lunch time." "(HORN HONKING)" "Won't it go, James?" "(PUPILS CHEERING)" "It's broken." " This is humiliating." " It is for you." "What has he done?" "The best thing we can do to help James now is just go." " Go, yeah." " Yes." "JEREMY:" "Eventually we made it into Marlborough, where the locals could sense the tension of an upcoming three-way duel." "Supercars are notoriously hard to see out of." "They also have very heavy clutches and very heavy steering." "So, which would be the easiest to park?" "Right, we have to park our supercars in this space against the clock." "And Hammond's first." "You ready?" "Go!" "This space is not big enough for this car." " Is he going to hit?" " I'm about right!" "That's a point off!" "JAMES:" "Hang on." "Are you, like, looking where you're going or using the Force?" " Yes, two points." " Two points off." "That's it, I'm parked." "JEREMY:" "Parked, have you?" "RICHARD:" "It's perfect." "I'll call a cab, and then you can get to the kerb." "Have a little walk down the kerb to your car." " Is there a time penalty as well?" " One minute 38.7." "Go!" "JAMES:" "Next it was the turn of the poorly Merak." "Eighteen years I lived in London, making this a piece of cake." "There you go!" "That's a touch." " That wasn't a touch." " Is it heavy, mate?" "Ooh!" "Will the engine last as long as this manoeuvre?" "There, finished!" "RICHARD:" "It's pretty good." "JEREMY:" "That is so neat." " One minute." " One minute exactly." "JEREMY:" "Then it was James' turn, and because his Lambo was very long and very hard to see out of, we waited for him to go and fetch it and then helped him out a little bit." "You evil man, that's brilliant!" "That's genius." "About that much?" " Ready, James?" " All right, mate?" " Three, two, one, go!" " Go!" "He's moving." "That's not a very good angle." "(CROWD GASPING)" "Sorry." "JEREMY:" "That kind of set the tone, really." " Touch!" " Kerb!" " RICHARD:" "Touch!" " Doesn't fit." "JEREMY:" "Another touch!" "Two minutes 14, and he's having another crack at it." "Another touch." "He's kerbed the wheel." "Another touch!" " Kerbed!" " Touch!" "Oh, God!" "Kerbed!" "That'll do." "(CROWD CHEERING)" " Did I do that?" " Well, James, three minutes..." " I'm really sorry." "...20 seconds." "And carnage brought to the town of Marlborough." "JEREMY:" "So far, we've only covered 50 miles, and things were going badly." "James had broken down more times than Sienna Miller, and the tappety noise in my Maserati was getting louder." "How can it be so difficult to drive from Bristol to Slough?" "Jeremy keeps banging on about the tappet, but that is something much, much more serious." "That's the whole bowels of the engine disintegrating." "The one dial that was working this morning, oil pressure, now says nought." "What genuinely scares me at the moment is if the engine stops, I lose all braking." "And I don't mean it gets worse, I mean, it goes completely." "So, would I make it to the finishing point at the lap dancing bar?" "Sixty miles to go." "I'm going for a gear change." "It's worked!" "But then... (ENGINE CHOKING)" "(ENGINE STOPS)" "I've lost brakes." "I've lost brakes." "Just a small technical point." "Your engine didn't cut out, it disintegrated." "James, could you not on my grief..." "It was like flying into a cloud in a small aeroplane..." "With bits of engine." "JAMES:" "Bits of engine striking the front of my car." " I think, gentlemen..." " RICHARD:" "You're out." "I'm out." " James, do you know what?" " What?" " Let's go, mate." " All right." " Mine's still working." " I'll follow you?" "Yeah." "I'm running out of fuel." "I can't carry extra weight." "Sorry." "JAMES:" "Get to town at the same time, we can go to a pub or something." "(CAR HORN HONKING)" "Jeremy has fallen spectacularly." "There's no way can James' Lambo make it." "It's mine!" "It's in the bag!" "All I had to do was drive economically, because, of course, we weren't allowed to refuel." "Don't overtake, you fool!" "That's brilliant." "That's put my red light on!" "Nevertheless, 20 miles later, we were still going." "I'm in the centre of Reading in a bright yellow Ferrari with no fuel in it that could conk out at any minute." "Right." "Please don't go ahead." "Please don't go ahead." "Traffic's building up." "Bad for Hammond's fuel consumption, bad for my electrical supply." "RICHARD:" "Amazingly, I made it through Reading." "But then it really was time to clutch at straws." "I've discovered something." "When I turn right, the needle moves up off the stop." "So, if I keep turning right, I've got more petrol." "Come on, Hammond, do the decent thing and run out of petrol." "Come on little Ferrari." "Be frugal, just sip." "Hammond's miracle-powered car was beginning to worry me." "But then, just 10 miles from our destination..." "What's that?" "What was that?" "JAMES:" "That's Hammond out." "Would you like me to keep a dancing girl warm for you?" " No, I'd like you to give me a lift." " You know the rules, mate." "Sorry." "I can't believe it." "JAMES:" "And so, with Top Gear presenters littering most of Southern England, the Lamborghini soldiered on." "The car that had started the day on the back of a tow truck, the car that had taken so much stick from Clarkson and Hammond, was the only one left running." "All I need is enough electricity and enough petrol to get me to this Peppermint Rhinoceros place." "Yes, I was just seven miles from gentlemen's club heaven." "Smoking like hell." "Just keep going, car." "I'll let you come in with me." "But then, just outside Slough..." "MAN ON RADIO:" "BBC Radio Berkshire." "WOMAN:" "BBC Radio Berkshire." "MAN:" "Travel." "REPORTER:" "And time for the latest on the roads now." "Some news just coming in of some huge tailbacks on the A4, just to the east of the junction..." "JAMES:" "And guess what was causing it?" "(GRUNTING)" "Yep, I was out as well." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "So..." "So, in the end..." "In the end, then, your car broke down as well." "Yes, it did." "And that means, essentially, in case you missed it, none of our £10,000 supercars could get us to a lap dancing bar in Slough." "No." "I must say, I was hoping to end the evening in a rather different sort of hedge, but there we are." "I have to say, great respect." "Your engine explosion was absolutely spectacular." "You're not joking." "I collected the pieces off the road." "Look at this, okay." "These are bits of the crank case which blew a hole in the side of the engine." "And look, that, my big end ended up in a bucket." "RICHARD:" "Ooh, that's not what you want at all." " It just showered your car, didn't it?" " I could hear it, bang, bang, bang." "You're looking a bit smug, but I don't think you ran out of petrol." " Did you?" " No, what actually happened was a complete and catastrophic failure of all the engine electrics." "All of them gone." " Yup." "So, therefore, this is..." " This is useless." " As useless as our cars, in fact." " Absolutely." "But no matter." "We did end up with a Top Gear top tip, okay?" "Yes, you can buy a supercar for less than £10,000, but for the love of God, don't." "JAMES:" "Here it is." "It's called the 207 and it's Peugeot's biggest small car yet." "As we can see, it's a very pretty car, but is it any good?" "Well, let's have a look on the inside." "It's got an iPod connector and a sat-nav and radio and so on, and it's all rather beautifully lit by this Californian-architect glass sunroof thing." "However, it does still look a bit like the inside of Jacques Cousteau's wetsuit in here." "It's also got this." "It's a built-in air-freshener." "It's something like Wang Chung or jojoba oil." "JAMES:" "So, you get more space and more toys but you have to part with more money." "This one I'm in, for example, it's the 1.6 diesel and it costs almost £15,000, which is a lot of money for a small car, even if it is quite a big one." "To see if it's worth it, I'm going to test this ginormous city car on the streets of Liverpool." "And to spur me on a bit, I'm going to have a race, and it's against the latest French development in urban transport solutions." "A couple of young men in silly trousers." "Are you ready?" " Ready." " Yeah." "Three, two, one, go!" "I should probably explain that these are not just any young men." "They are masters of something called Parkour." "It's a French invention and involves that sort of thing." "Running around the city leaping across buildings and benches." "You know, keeps them off the street." "Our race will run from the edge of Liverpool to the finish line at the Liver Building." "For me, it'll be about six miles." "Their journey, of course, is pretty much as the crow flies." "What am I doing?" "Ooh, 25 miles an hour?" "They'll have difficulty matching that." "So, anyway, the car." "Well, it's got a nice driving position, the steering's nice and weighty, the seat is excellent." "And there's quite a bit more room in here than in the old one." "But there is a problem." "Something you really feel in the city streets." "You see, because the 207 is bigger, and it's stuffed with more gizmos and more safety equipment, it's almost 300 pounds heavier than the old car." "And yet, it still has to haul itself around with the same engines as the 206." "The car I'm in has the 1.6 diesel, the best of the current range." "But it's still not great." "It's really sluggish low down and that's annoying." "Yes." "Right, we're off." "Not only were the Scouse Spider-men unstoppable, they also knew where they were going," "which I didn't." "Excuse me, sir." "Do you know where the Liver Building is?" "No, no, the "Lie-ver" Building?" "Why isn't is called "Lie-verpool", then?" "Well, er..." "There they are." "Look at that." "They look as if they've nicked something." "But I didn't catch them for long." "Oh, please!" "Meanwhile, the air-freshener device was getting up my nose." "That's great." "You can buy a brand-new car and they immediately make it smell like a 25-year-old minicab." "Come on!" "We're not all shopping!" "I had just two miles to go in the sluggish Peugeot." "I'm not gonna be beaten by some pre-pubescent teenagers in camouflage trousers." "I must have averaged 10 or 12 miles an hour." "I should win." "Right." "Go, go, go, go!" "I was close, but so were they." "Come on!" "That must be the Liver Building." "And they're not here." "They are not here!" "No sign of combat-trousers man." "That is a victory for beer guts over washboard stomachs, fashionable clothes from army surplus shops, stupid expensive trainers." "Here I am in my tatty jeans, and my old shoes with the broken laces, and I've won!" "Oh, for Pete's sake!" "Now, earlier on, you saw us buy some old cars and set about turning them into stretched limousines." "Next we were told to report to the Top Gear test track on a bitterly cold day, where we would be given a number of challenges." "Well, here it is." "My sports limo." "Proof that style does not have to be slow." "It is genius." "This time, once and for all, I am going to win." "I shall be victorious." "Oh, my God." "It's a giant Panda!" "Never before bred in captivity." " That is a big Panda." " It is!" "'Cause this is an economical limo." "One-litre engine, 40 to the gallon." " Can we just..." "Do you mind?" " It's my sports limo, mate." "The first thing I saw, obviously, was the spoiler." "RICHARD:" "It's proportional to the car." "You need downforce, do you, then, in this?" "No, but it's part of the image, and image is everything." " Can I also say, you've no roof." " I have." "That's it?" " Well, it was complicated." " That's it?" "There is a gap, there are tolerances here." "You can only work to so much." "JEREMY:" "Then May turned up and, boy, were we in for a shock." " Hang on." " Uh..." "Now, that, that I didn't expect." "I'm confused." "Well, can I just explain?" "It's all about choice, okay?" "At the front, it's a sensible Swedish Saab 9000, and at the front, it's a sporty and stylish Italian Alfa Romeo." "What kind of paint thinner were you sniffing when you thought of this?" "That theme, style, sensibleness, Sweden-Italy," "I've continued that on the inside." "Because at this end, it is a sauna." " JEREMY:" "Does it work?" " No." "And at the other end..." "Are you ready?" "It is" "the Sistine Chapel." " Can you drive it both ways?" " Yes." "That's the brilliant thing about it." "Because what is the problem with a limousine?" " What?" " Manoeuvrability." " No, I'm fine on that." " He may have an issue with this." " No, you haven't, you see..." " It's very thin." "JEREMY:" "Our first task was to test out each other's cars, and we began with the Panda's brilliant passenger entry system." "Have you two never seen The Great Escape?" "I mean, it's perfectly straightforward." "You've got this pulley." "You lie on this, okay?" "And Britney Spears is gonna do that, yeah?" "This is ideal, really, for people who used to be miners." "I thought you had sniffed thinners making that." "James offered to join me in the back." " Here he comes." " It's an ingenious solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place." "Next, I introduced Hammond to the in-car communications." "There's an intercom system, and it's hands-free." "So if you put that thing round your neck, it's like a one-man-band thing, so it's legal." "This isn't the most elegant solution." "I have literally thought of everything." "RICHARD:" "Right, I'm pulling away." "Hold on tight." "JEREMY:" "Here we go." "Give it the bees." "You'll notice as you swing around, it doesn't have quite that same responsiveness." "Running out of runway!" "Oh, no..." "I'm sorry, I'm on the field a bit." "You see, the flex takes some of the jolting out of it." "(SCREECHING)" "What have you done?" "You've gone over a runway light, you blithering idiot!" "Yeah, right." "You made the car a mile long." "It's hardly my fault!" "JEREMY:" "Even on our 160-foot-wide runway, manoeuvrability was an issue." "But we did at least find a new way of speeding up my passenger entry and exit system." " Here we go!" " Britney Clarkson is leaving the car." "Okay, we're arriving." "I'll brake." "You've got..." "It's an all-over carpet-burn." "How am I gonna explain this to my wife?" "JEREMY:" "Next we tried James'Alfaab." " James." " Yeah?" " Bit of an issue I've got here." " What?" "Headroom." "There's loads of it, what's your problem?" "He's put a sauna in this end, and he's put it on the roof!" " Your beer fountain." " Yes." "It's just making me want to pee." "But as problems go, that was nothing." " What does this do?" " No, don't pull that!" "Oh, my God, what's happened?" " Hammond's unlocked the steering." " Sorry!" "The wrong end, you idiot!" "Doctor!" "JEREMY:" "To try and regain control of the rear," "Hammond dived for the wheel of the Alfa." "JEREMY:" "Not that way!" "RICHARD:" "Is that helping?" " Well..." " I'll go the other way, hang on." "It's bad for the sauna." "(EXCLAIMS)" " James!" "How the hell..." " Stop!" "Stop!" "You pair of utter pillocks." "You've ruined my car." "If I was driving it like a limousine, and you two weren't just being yobbos trying to break everything, that wouldn't happen." "The engineering in James' limo hadn't fared well." "So, time to try out Hammond's convertible." "Where's the heater?" "Well, that is a problem because the engine, of course, is at the back, and the pipes..." " It hasn't got one!" " You're the stupidest man I've ever met." " I'll tell you what, though." " Your car's rubbish." " I'll tell you what, though." " Put the roof up, then." "Mind your head, mind your head, mind your head." "You see?" "It's no better with the roof up!" "If anything, it catches the breeze, I think." " Oh, now it's gone!" " That does happen." " How do I tell James to slow down?" " That's brilliant." "We call him on this." "(RINGING)" " What?" " Tell him to slow down." "Could you slow down a little, please, driver?" " JEREMY:" "James?" " Yes, what do you want?" " Can you see us?" " Yes." "Yeah, very funny." "To warm up a bit," "Hammond suggested we try some of his on-board sports equipment." "Go!" "Yes!" "The other thing that Hammond has done is that he's fixed the seat in his..." "Ow!" "With our test drives over, it was time for the challenges to begin." ""Not all limo drivers are drug dealers." "Not all limos are used for hen nights." ""Some have to be used for transporting political figures," ""who may be attacked at any time." "Your cars, then, should be nimble" ""and fast enough to get out of tricky spots."" "Well, that's you in trouble, isn't it?" ""For the first challenge, you arrive at a roadblock," ""the other two presenters are there armed with paintball guns." ""How many hits can they score before you've done a J-turn and got away?"" "He's in a convertible!" " Oh!" " Oh, no!" "I hadn't thought of that!" "I was first to drive into the jaws of death!" "Oh, no!" "A pathetic roadblock." "Now, a J-turn." "You reverse at high-speed, brake, spin the wheel, and as the front slews round, you slam it into first and roar away." "I must be honest..." "Oh, wait." "Now, this is the Panda wasn't much good." " It's actually quite tiring, isn't it?" " Just on the trigger finger." "Yes, I may be getting shot a few times now." " Ah." " Yeah, quite a lot." "JEREMY:" "Yeah, you may have..." "I mean, you could get more paint on it if you used a brush." "With my Panda having set the bar pretty low, the convertible went next." "Hope you don't mind the mask, but there is no roof." "Hope I don't meet any terrorists." "Oh, no!" "Terrorists!" "Do your J-turn then." "RICHARD:" "The speed was good." "The protection, not so good." "(GROANS)" "Oh, I got shot in the head!" "Well, I got one there and one there." " JEREMY:" "Did it hurt?" " Yes, like a, you know..." " Like a word you can't..." " Like a paintball in the head, yeah." "Unfortunately, I suspect..." " I think I've beaten you." " You have beaten me." " Right, James, good luck." " Good luck." "Instead of doing the tricky J-turn," "I planned to get into the Alfa end and reverse away forwards." "Oh, no!" "But that idea did have a flaw." "In fact, it had two flaws." "Oh, the wheel won't (BLEEP)." "Oh, look." "You, and I know it was you, you aimed at my gentleman's area." "That was chuffing agony." "There is far more on you than on your car." " Yeah, well, so in that case, I've won!" " No." "No, hang on, the rules said..." "In a real situation you'd be thinking," ""Never mind the mission, the car's not got paint on it!"" "The rules said hits on the car, not hits on the wedding vegetables." "JEREMY:" "It was time for the next challenge." "I just hope that that was the end of the evasive driving stuff." ""Evasive driving, part two." ""It's a test of nippiness against the clock." ""You break out from a terrorist trap," ""slalom down the runway between strategically placed cars" ""belonging to members of the public, which you may not hit," ""steer around the stinger at the hammerhead and pull up" ""once you're out of range of the water cannon."" "The what?" "JEREMY:" "With manoeuvrability being the key to every aspect of this challenge, James was feeling confident." "Watch this!" "Oh!" "Oh, hang on." "JEREMY:" "No, but it's still unlocked." "How is he going to do a slalom?" "RICHARD:" "It's not gonna help at all." "(RICHARD LAUGHING)" "It's the hammerhead!" "JEREMY:" "The water cannon kicked in to make missing the stinger even harder." "Whoa!" " Easy victory." " RICHARD:" "Well, maybe not." "My sports limo was like a greyhound out of the track." "Wheel-spin and everything!" " Well, that looks quite good." " JEREMY:" "I can't really see Kofi Annan ever having got into it in the first place." "It's the stinger next." "No, hang on, it's the water thing first!" "Convertible, as it turns out, not the best idea." "JEREMY:" "The Panda broke out with ease." "Yeah!" "Rock and roll!" "RICHARD:" "How's he gonna do the slalom with a car that long?" "Looking good." "RICHARD:" "He's gonna have to take the world's most enormous route!" "Oh, for crying out loud." "Oh, no, I'm not gonna make it." " JAMES:" "No, that is such a poor idea." " Oh, no." "Oh, there's some smoke coming out of it." " RICHARD:" "Doesn't that break your heart?" " Yeah." "The clock's still running." "My limo had become bogged down." "But the film crew kindly pushed me out, and I was on my way again." "No, you can squirt it as much as you like." "Sadly, I hit the stinger, which punctured the tyres, and then worse, my engine died." "Now here on Top Gear, as you know, we like a bit of a challenge." "We've made amphibious cars, we've made a convertible people carrier, but now it's time to see if we can conquer the final frontier." " Space." " No." " Well, what do you mean, no?" " No." "Now, you see, we wanted to find out if you could make a car into a spaceship." "Yes, and I thought this was the single stupidest idea" "I've ever heard in my life and refused to have any part in it." "Ah, you see, but you had underestimated the genius of our space-based plan." "RICHARD:" "One of the problems with space rockets is that they're jolly expensive." "The superpowers spend billions trying to get their hardware up amongst the stars." "But we thought you could do it for a lot less cash if you based your space rocket on a car." "That meant getting hold of the most rocket-shaped car we could think of." "Yes, it's been around for 30 years, and for 29 of those years, it's been a complete joke." "Now, though, we're gonna see if the Reliant Robin has the makings of a spaceship." "It's light, it's cheap and it tapers to a point, like a rocket." "So we're already heading in the right direction." "But we're not just gonna strap rockets to it, set it off and wave it goodbye." "Because we're gonna see if we can turn it into the most difficult of all spacecraft." "The one that has to take off and be used again." "A space shuttle." "If you're eight, you're probably gonna want to see what happens next." "RICHARD:" "Our first job had been to put a call in to the Rocketeers." "These were the men who'd helped to send a Mini down a ski jump for the Top Gear Winter Olympics." "...two, one, initiate." "James and I convened a meeting at their headquarters just outside the Derbyshire town of Glossop." "It's not exactly the Kennedy Space Centre, is it?" "Oh, I don't know." "RICHARD:" "Inside we'd assembled a motley crew of boffins." "Right, gentlemen, what we want from you is the most difficult type of space rocket," "a space shuttle." "This has to work properly." "It has to have the big fuel tank, it has to have the booster rockets." "They all have to separate." "And most importantly, we have to be able to bring it back down, under control, to a landing." "And it's worth saying, as well, that nobody is gonna go in this." " Yeah." " But it has to be landed." "Yeah." "The idea of this is that we will send it up to a few thousand feet." "What we're doing is testing the principle if you can make all this work and we can bring it into this controlled landing, we will probably get funding from the EU for a proper space mission." "So you want to launch it, jettison the SRBs." " Jettison the SRBs." " Jettison the orbiter," " and fly it down." " What's the orbiter?" " The Reliant." " Right." "Have you got a spare billion dollars?" "No." "You see, that's why we've come to you." "Because you're from Manchester and you'll be able to do it for 10 and six." "And they'll be as much tea as you can drink while you do it." "JAMES:" "Yep." "Chips in lard." "Everything." "Anything you want." "JAMES:" "The rocket men did some calculations on the back of a laptop." "How do we make this bloody thing work?" "Well, we've got the Robin." "They're giving us the Robin." "That's a start." "Whoopee, whoopee, whoopee, we've got a Robin." "JAMES:" "An hour later and it looked as though Jeremy might have had a point." "It is difficult in every single way." " Right." " You've got a Reliant Robin." "It's a car, so it's really, really heavy." " Yeah." " So rough numbers, we're gonna need about 12 times the amount of power that the Mini had." " Really?" " It's the largest non-commercial rocket launched in Europe." "It's the most powerful non-commercial rocket launched in Europe." " Right." " As a rocket, it's the most awful shape it could ever be." "But I thought the Robin was a good place to start because it's pointy at one end." "That's as far as I'd got with that." "It's pointy, yeah." "RICHARD:" "Nevertheless, they set to work with James in tow." "While May was in his element in the world's biggest allotment shed..." "Oh, look at that." "...I was trying to work out how to land a Reliant Robin." "Its rockets have deployed." "And we've got to somehow land it, like that." "I wrestled with the problem for ages before I had a brainwave." "Hello, is that Model Aeroplane Monthly?" "Great." "I need some help." "This, I think, is the answer." "We fit a more powerful version of whatever this is to our space shuttle then we can take control of it from the ground after it's jettisoned its rockets and fly it in by remote." "It's a good plan." "I've just got to get good at flying." "RICHARD:" "I thought it best to sack myself from this job and instead hired Steve Holland, a champion model aeroplane pilot." "Yeah." "Now, that is more like it, Steve." "How are you at flying cars?" " Cars?" " Cars..." "Small cars." "With Steve the pilot on board, I went back to check on James' build." "And I was in for a shock." "Well, James!" "It's enormous!" "That's a solid rocket booster." "There are two of those." "That hasn't even got its nose cone on yet." " It's actually a bit bigger than that." " But it's..." "I was thinking firework on a stick." "This is..." "I know." "So was I, but that isn't the biggest bit." "JAMES:" "No." "The external fuel tank was the biggest bit, complete with extra rockets in the bottom." "Then there were more rockets in the Reliant and explosive bolts to separate everything." "The whole construction was mind-bogglingly complicated." "What occurs to me now is the list of things to go wrong..." " Is enormous." " Yeah." "And if any one of them goes wrong..." "See, I've been worried about the landing." "The chances of getting as far as the landing on the day are now..." "How did you get on with your flying, by the way?" "Good." "JAMES:" "The next problem was a bigee." "The Rocketeers were worried that because of the Robin's odd shape, the whole shuttle would spear off-course during the ascent." "So we're happy we've got the power." "Yeah." "Eight tons of thrust." "RICHARD:" "And that thing only weighs one and a half, so it's gonna go somewhere." "It's not gonna work, is it?" "Well, it's got to work." "We're quite a long way into it now." "What's that?" "No, no, but if you look at it like this, it makes a lot more sense." "We've got to make sure it doesn't just launch its..." "I mean, it can't..." "It could fall onto its back in the sky or anything." "This isn't about power now, this is about the shape of it and how that will affect..." " Yeah, where it goes." " Where it goes." "It's..." "We need an aerodynamics expert to look at all of this stuff." "RICHARD:" "One grovelling phone call to the University of the West of England, and we secured permission to use their wind tunnel." "And because it was free, we assumed it was self-service." " Go." " What do you mean, go?" "I don't know what..." "Do that." "That's good." "RICHARD:" "No matter how hard he tried, James couldn't make himself into the shape of a Reliant Robin, even with help." "Thankfully, two eggheads arrived with a scale model of our shuttle." "You see a beard like that and you know you're in safe hands." "JAMES:" "Yep." "Well, basically we're looking for anything aerodynamic that could be nasty." "Yeah, the Reliant is a problem aerodynamically." "RICHARD:" "Well, they didn't really design it with this in mind, did they?" "Is there any wash out, or wash in, on the wings?" "It's basically simple, symmetrical..." "I don't know what you two are saying." " The aerofoil section of the wing..." " Stop." "Right." "So the big question, will it fly?" "RICHARD:" "I took it from his silence that he had his doubts." "And he wasn't alone." "Like the real thing, our shuttle would glide back to Earth without power." "And Steve, our pilot, had also built a model to show how well it did this." "RICHARD:" "What's it actually gonna feel like to fly, do you think?" "Well, it's gonna come down like a lift with the cable cut." "You're not filling me with hope, Steve." "Well, most normal aeroplanes, they sort of glide for about, you know, if they fly 20 feet forward, they lose about a foot in height." "Yeah." "I'm afraid the Robin, it's the other way around." "Three, two, one." "RICHARD:" "And when the model was released from its tow-plane..." "It's just plummeting to the Earth!" "Rather you than me, I tell you." "RICHARD:" "So there were doubts about our space shuttle going up and doubts about it coming down." "But it was too late to worry now because she was ready and on her way to the launch site." "Now, earlier you saw us buy three normal cars and turn them into stretch limousines." "Then we went down to our test track for a series of challenges." "And I have to say that, Jeremy, your Panda was rubbish, mate." " Absolute rubbish." " It wasn't brilliant, no." "What, it got the most hits in the anti-terrorist test." " Yes, it did." " Then it was knocked out by a hose pipe." "Anyway, for the final challenge, we were told to smarten ourselves up because we would be chauffeuring top celebrities to this year's glittering Brit Awards." "Yes, we would, and the winner would be the person who could get the most photographs of their celebrity in the following week's newspapers and magazines." "This is what happened." "JEREMY:" "Before being allowed on the road, each of our cars had to face a government inspection to make sure they were road legal." "Hammond's sailed through no problem at all, and so, amazingly, did May's." "Me, though, I had a problem." "For some extraordinary reason, the rules say you can't drive a 46-foot car on the public highway." "So I had to do some surgery." "I've had to lop seven feet out of the middle, which has affected rear leg room a little bit, but it is now quite nippy." "'Cause it's only eight feet longer than a bus." "JAMES:" "For my pick-up I had to go to a hotel in Chelsea to collect a Brit nominee called Lemar." "Hello!" " Mr Lemar." " Yes." "My name's May." "I'm your chauffeur for the day." " Okay." " How do you do?" "This is your car." "It's a..." "It's an Alfa Saab." "RICHARD:" "Meanwhile, I'd been sent to EMI Records in West London." "It's just got a big dent." "Most of it will polish put." "Everyone's a critic." "RICHARD:" "And my VIPpick-up was RB star, Jamelia." "Oh, my God!" "Okay, no expense spent." "JEREMY:" "Whilst Hammond got the glamorous singer, I had to pick up a fat man." "Oh, God." "It's Chris Moyles from Radio 1." "This is your luxury limousine transportation." "Not what I had in mind." "Right." "Here we go, sit back and relax." "(HORN BLARING)" "Oh." "Why's it doing that?" "(HORN BLARING)" "Okay, if you'd like to step in, that would be great, and we'll get off." "What?" " This is the intercom." " Yes." "You press that button if you want to talk to me." "If it starts to rain, don't press it 'cause you'll get electrocuted." "(HORN BLARING)" "(HORN STOPS)" "JEREMY:" "Eventually, though, all our passengers were on board and we were ready." " Are you comfortable?" " No." "MOYLES:" "Good, God." "JEREMY:" "We were all now heading for Earls Court." "The Brits is one of the biggest nights in the show-biz calendar with most celebs hoping to look impressive by arriving in a big, shiny German car." "We were gonna show them the error of their ways." "(CAR HORN HONKING)" "Well, it's better than an Audi." "This will get you noticed." "Look what happened to Dave Lee Travis." "He's on Three Counties Radio now 'cause he didn't think to use cars like this for going to awards ceremonies." "Now, I've chosen this route to demonstrate the brilliance of my car." "JEREMY:" "Meanwhile, in the Alfaab," "Lemar was riveted by James' conversation." "There is a small issue with the congestion charge because, as I'm sure you know, the camera records the rear view of the car." " Yeah." " But when they look at the photographs, it will give the registration number of a Saab, but the photograph will show the front of an Alpha." "So it will look as though somebody with the wrong sort of car for the number plate has reversed into London." "JEREMY:" "Back in the Panda, my demonstration of its brilliance wasn't going too well." "Oh, no!" "You're crunching it!" "CHRIS:" "Oh." "It's still standing." "Exactly." "There's nothing wrong with it." "Shush." "We can edit that bit out." "So when the digital camera takes a picture, it thinks, well, that's a Saab." "But when they look at the photo they'll see it's an Alfa Romeo and it's going the wrong way." "Hyde Park on the left, there, sir." "JEREMY:" "In the MG, poor old Jamelia was attracting a lot of attention from fans." "Not least because Hammond had had to modify his intercom to make it legal." "Sorry about the fan thing, trying to chat you up there." "That was a bit awkward for you, I'm sure." " I can't hear you." " Oh." "JEREMY:" "So Jamelia was embarrassed in the MG," "Lemar was bored in the Alfaab, and Chris had yet to appreciate the Panda's brilliance." "(HORN HONKING)" "JEREMY:" "That's..." "That is a catastrophe that's just happened now." " Is that car behind me very close?" " Yes." "JEREMY:" "And then Lemar woke up as he began to realise that James had no idea where he was going." "The car doesn't have navigation on it, I take it." "Well, it has navigation of sorts, in that it has a driver who's lived in London for 20 years. 21 years now." "Where are we now?" "Um, we're just coming onto, um..." "Uh, um... (HORN HONKING)" "JEREMY:" "To distract Chris from the fact that we were almost constantly stuck," "I engaged him in some musical small talk." "I once went to Earls Court, in 1976, saw Bad Company there." "Simon Kirk." "He did a drum solo like you wouldn't believe." "JEREMY:" "It was now 6:00." "Lemar was supposed to be at the Brits in half an hour, and James was miles away, stuck in the side streets of central London." "Actually, if you don't mind, sir, this is sort of where I need your help." "Okay." "Because the reason this car will go around these very small corners is because you can steer it from both ends." "But I'm afraid I would have to ask you to sit in the Alfa Romeo and steer." "JEREMY:" "By this stage Moyles was hungry and thirsty and because I hadn't thought to include any on-board catering, he'd been shopping for supplies." "What was that?" "I was getting on my seat." "JEREMY:" "Oh, sorry, I thought someone had run into us." "Turn left." " Right, left?" " Your left." " My left." " Yeah." " That's perfect, you see?" " Yeah?" "JAMES:" "Straight round that very tight bend." "Now, a normal limousine wouldn't go round like that, would it?" "Let's do another one." "Hard left, sir." "Okay, so this..." "The whole thing is not..." "You need to straighten up a bit, sir, we're crabbing." "Well, I can't because the whole, you know..." "The..." "The whole wheel thing is... (CROWD SCREAMING)" "JEREMY:" "Jamelia was closer to Earls Court than Lemar but no happier." "The accelerator's stuck open a bit." "But if you think about it, I had to link it to the back of the car." "There's Hydragas suspension, and the clutch and the brakes..." "JEREMY:" "Oh, hang on." "That doesn't sound good." "JEREMY:" "That's... (HORN BLARING)" "JEREMY:" "Whoa, sorry." "Road closed." "I've got to go right." "JEREMY:" "And then it got worse." "JEREMY:" "That's not gone well, has it?" "Where are you going?" "You're going that way." "Right, sorry." "Sorry." "(SCREAMING)" "Oh, my God." "Richard, you're the worst driver!" "Sorry." "JAMES:" "That's the famous Harrods department store on the left." "You know earlier when I was talking about circles?" "You know?" "So Harrods, I've seen it twice." "I don't really need to see it a third time." "JEREMY:" "The bus couldn't back up and I was stuck on a double mini roundabout." "JEREMY:" "I can't make this turn, Chris, at all." "Look where you're going!" "(CLANGING)" "Whoa!" "JEREMY:" "Thank you." "There, we're clear!" "JEREMY:" "Earls Court was now just minutes away." "What was that noise?" "RICHARD:" "At the Brits, the world's media were waiting for Jamelia's arrival." "I still don't think you appreciate the complexity of linking up a rear engine car when you've stretched it." "(PEOPLE CHEERING)" "Please just let me get out here!" "RICHARD:" "No, no, red carpet it is." "JAMELIA:" "I'm so embarrassed." "RICHARD:" "And she wasn't too pleased with my clever exit solution." "No, on the other side!" "On the other side!" "Sorry about the ladder thing." "The steps weren't ideal." "Whilst Jamelia regained her composure, I checked on the others." "Jeremy, how are you doing?" "Not well." " RICHARD:" "It's what?" " It's in two pieces on the Lily Road." "It's broken in half." "(LAUGHING) I'm sorry not to be more supportive!" "Sorry, Chris." "(CARS HONKING)" "I'll end up being like an hour late or something like that, at this rate." "It's the first time I'm nominated." "Best male, you know?" "Best male, Lemar." "Surely, sir, in the music business it's fashionable to be quite late." "Nobody ever turns up on time, do they?" "There's fashionably late, and there's stupidly late." "I can only apologise, sir, for this..." "I don't want to hear anything." "Just, please, just get me there." "Well, there's five minutes to go." "May is hopelessly lost." "Jeremy's car is split in half." "That means, by default if nothing else, I am the winner." "Yeah!" "JEREMY:" "Hammond may have been gloating, but I wasn't out of the competition yet." "(METALLIC SCRAPING)" "What time do the awards start?" "About five minutes." "(CROWD CHEERING)" "CHRIS:" "See you in a minute!" "Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." "With dignity, we've arrived." "Dignity, yeah." "Dignity." "JEREMY:" "So Moyles was happy, but Hammond wasn't." "You cheated." "You finished with half a car." "You're supposed to finish..." "It's still a stretch." "I got the man here." "JEREMY:" "Meanwhile, in a car somewhere nowhere near Earls Court," "Lemar, acknowledged as one of the "Gentlemen of Pop", had had enough." "Strictly speaking it's left, but I think if we go right," "I can go round the back..." " What do you mean, right?" " Well..." "Right." "Why?" "You just said..." "No, listen, you just said, "Go left."" "Well, most people would go left." "So most..." "So why don't we just follow what most people do?" " Because I think if we go right..." " Are you doing this intentionally now?" "This is..." "This is, actually..." "This is stupid." "Are you a jerk?" " No." " Have you come to mess up my day?" "You've picked me up, you've driven me round and round in circles in London." "We've passed Harrods 1,100 times now." "Left pretending to go right." "I'm not taking this any more." "Open the damn door." "For crying out loud." "This stupid door doesn't even open." "I've had it." "Forget it." "JAMES:" "The launch site was a military base whose whereabouts are a top secret." "The build began, and soon the main fuel tank was assembled and attached to the launch pad, together with the solid rocket boosters." "These parts contain the eight and a half tons of rocket power that will take the Reliant up into the heavens." "RICHARD:" "Here's what terrifies me." "As it is here on that, let's be honest, bit of scaffolding..." "Yeah?" "Just the tiniest, you know... (SQUEAKS) That's Birmingham." "Or that's John o'Groats." "Look, it's fine." "It's held down with some old concrete blocks and some straps that you use to hold furniture down in a removal van." "That's perfect." "Right, there must be something useful we can do somewhere." "RICHARD:" "As it happened, there was." "We were sent off to dig a bunker for Steve, the model aeroplane pilot who would glide the Reliant in." "But that wasn't easy because the launch site is littered with unexploded bombs." ""Thank you for choosing a Precision Metal Detector." ""With your metal detector you can hunt for coins, relics," ""jewellery, gold and silver just about anywhere."" " Does it say "bombs"?" " No." "RICHARD:" "James had bought his metal detector at Argos... (BEEPING) ...so I got myself some serious body armour." "(DETECTOR BEEPING)" "You've found my JCB." "I've just worked out something, though, from this." "It only works down to a depth of about three inches." "As it turned out, it all went rather well." "In the main." "Look at what he's done!" "You philistine." "JAMES:" "Finally our bunker was finished." "So that's it, then." "Good." "JAMES:" "With Steve now fully protected, we went back to the launch site where there was good news." "Bang on time for its date with destiny, the Reliant Robin had arrived." "You're all right." "You're all right." " Keep it coming." " You're all right." " On that line." " You're all right." " Yep." " You're all right." " Back." " Nice." "And stop." "That is the business end of a reusable Reliant orbiter." "Wow." "JAMES:" "Then we were entrusted with another job." "I reveal to you the legend." " You spanner." " That's where it goes, on the wing." "What do you think it's gonna look like when it's up there, pointing upwards?" " Brilliant." " Upside down." "JAMES:" "As night fell, the most delicate and risky part of the operation began." "Attaching the Reliant space orbiter to the rockets and fuel tank." "I'm not kidding, this bit is genuinely very scary because as they're mounting it up, and it's quite complicated, all the linkages, if the shuttle clonks it, and bends any of the release mechanisms," "it won't come off, and then the shuttle and the tank will come down and..." "Shall we go over and help?" "I think not." "Did you hear that really un-NASA thing he said just now?" "What?" ""Right, come on, lads, let's get this Robin."" "Oh, ladder's coming out." "Again, at NASA, they don't keep a stepladder on the launch pad." "One small stepladder... (BOTH LAUGHING)" "Stop laughing!" "They'll get really cross." "JAMES:" "Finally, the Robin was attached, and the completed space shuttle made for a truly awesome sight." "Everything was looking good." "But later, in our suite at the local Ritz Sheraton," "I was a worried man." "Hammond." "What?" "What do you think the chances are of it actually working?" "It'll work." "It's just that you know when we do these big things they usually end in some sort of massive disaster." "I'd quite like this one to work." "Well, it's up, it's built, but it's worth a quick reminder of exactly what is going to happen." "Absolutely." "We've got eight and a half tons of rocket thrust to push that thing off the ground." "At about 1,000 feet, the two solid rocket boosters will be empty, they will fall away and come down on parachutes, doing about 100 miles an hour." "Yeah, it'll continue accelerating to about 140, then at about 3,000 feet, the orbiter itself will detach from the main body." "That's when Steve the pilot takes control." "It's his job to glide it in." "He has the option of firing three rockets to extend that glide." "He'll then put it down on the deck on the landing strip and prove that it's a reusable craft." " Yeah." " Of course, all that we've just said is just words." " Words." " Let's be honest, who knows?" "RICHARD:" "The last few hours were taken up with final preparations." "And with such an ambitious project as this, the complexity of the on-board systems was simply staggering." "Each electronic component had to talk to every other electronic component at exactly the right time." "There have been one or two delays, most of these are of an electrical nature." "There's a long wire leading from launch control down to the rocket and unfortunately that had a break in it..." "James, a car ran through it!" "Yeah, okay, but that's all sorted." "We are now fuelling the bird." "And once that's done there can be no delays, it's full of fuels, they're gonna have to light that candle." "Yeah." "RICHARD:" "The tension now was almost unbearable." "You could almost hear Jeremy preparing some intergalactic smugness." "So would it stay on course during the ascent?" "Would the rockets and fuel tank detach?" "And would Steve, who by the way had refused our kind offer of a bunker, be able to pilot the Robin down safely?" "In just a few seconds, we'd know." "Oh, yeah!" "(YELLING)" "It's not come off." "Separate, separate!" "MAN:" "Set two, set two." "Separate!" "One thousand." "(ALL YELLING)" "Oh, no!" "That's why..." "How are we gonna use it again?" "RICHARD:" "This is Cyprus, near Greece." "And these roads make up the course for the Cyprus rally." "It's a mezze of rough, gravel tracks and sharp, blind bends." "A good place, then, to try out the Turbo S." "The other good thing about Cyprus is, well, the weather is not exactly what you'd call bad." "Sun and clear blue skies." "Which means this man can see where he's going." "He's a Red Devil." "One of the British Army's crack parachutists." "And today he's going to race me." "This isn't actually as daft as it sounds." "You see, I'm gonna set off from a start line about two and a half miles away, over there, in the mountains." "I'll then drive as fast as I can down the rally track to the finish point, here." "Meanwhile, Lance Corporal Mack McAuliffe will jump from 10,000 feet directly above me and race me to the target." "As the crow flies, Mack will also be covering about two and a half miles." "And that should take him two and a half minutes." "Which means, if I'm to have a fighting chance," "I'll have to average 60 miles an hour." "And that is a tall order on roads like this." "The Red Devil will be jumping from this helicopter which we've borrowed from somebody." "The challenge facing Mack is he needs to descend as quickly as possible to win the race, but stay high enough to cover the horizontal distance." "Which is why he'll be wearing the Phoenix-Fly Vampire V2." "It's a cutting-edge wingsuit, modelled on a flying squirrel." "And it allows the wearer to fly faster, over longer over horizontal distances." "Now, obviously he will have to open his chute at some point, otherwise he'll just fall to Earth like a..." "Well, like a man dressed as a flying squirrel." "Within minutes the Red Devil was 10,000 feet up, hovering directly over my GPS coordinate position on his start line in the sky." "Three, two, one, go..." "We're off!" "Whoo!" "RICHARD:" "Oh, my God!" "I'm gonna have it off at the first corner." "Oh, my God." "Come on." "All the off-road technology was working fine." "It was the tyres that were holding me back." "Normally it's 20-inch rims on this car." "Porsche don't supply off-road tyres." "If you go down a size to 19, they won't fit over the huge brakes that you need to stop the thing." "These tyres have absolutely no grip." "He's right now falling at just 30 miles an hour, but he's going along the ground at 100." "Boot it, come on!" "This is terrifying." "Come on." "A hairpin!" "Don't overdo it!" "Don't glide, don't glide." "Three tons of car, all the power in the world, how in the name of God do you stop it?" "I need his parachute." "Cliff, cliff!" "Ow!" "Oh, that sounded expensive." "I can see him." "He's going like a missile." "As we neared the halfway point, the Red Devil was well ahead, but soon he'd have to slow down." "Literally my only hope, once he deploys his chute, he's got a 90-second drop, that's when I'm gonna make up time." "It's never gonna come..." "Big bang!" "At 2,500 feet, only seconds away from slamming into the ground, the Red Devil has to hit the brakes by releasing his parachute." "He's got his chute deployed." "Come on." "Power, power, power." "God!" "Left turn!" "Big-time slapper!" "Come on." "No, no, no, no, no." "He's nearly down!" "Just give me a little bit more now." "This is it." "Where is he?" "I can't see him." "He's there!" "No!" "How close could that be?" "They've taken a tin opener to a Nissan Micra." "They've recently taken a tin opener to the Rolls-Royce Phantom." "In fact, these days you can buy a soft top version of just about everything." "But nobody has ever made a convertible people carrier." "Why not?" "How hard can it be?" "JEREMY:" "This is a Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers." "Not that that's much to shout about." "That's like saying, "Oh, good, I've got syphilis," ""the best of the sexually transmitted diseases."" "Look at that, Piddington." "Says it all." "I've got a people carrier, I'm a bit of a Piddington." "Behind the wheel of a car like this, you feel like you're drowning in wallpaper paste." "So we're going to see if we can liven it up a little bit, by cuttings its head off." "You see, the good thing about the Espace is because it's got a proper chassis" " and just a plastic body..." " Yes." "...we can take the roof off and theoretically it won't make it, you know, too weak and..." "Theoretically?" "'Cause you've done this before, anyway." " Yes, I have." "It didn't go well." " How not well?" "Well, I took the roof off and then the whole car split in half." " You see, that's very not well indeed." " Yeah, it snapped." "But this time he is going to be our project leader." " I'm gonna be in charge of..." " JEREMY:" "He had an ambitious plan." "This is my detailed engineering drawing of what I think we can do." "Because it's a very long car," "I don't think we can make a roof that all folds into that little boot area." "So what I've done is divided it up into two bits." "This bit at the back is on a frame, then the middle, I'm proposing this removable hoop." "Can this be put up and taken down in under, let's say, a day?" "Yeah, a couple of minutes." " Two minutes is too long." " Why don't I believe you?" "The modern convertible is a two-second job." "My SLK... (IMITATING MOTOR)" "You're talking about a camping holiday here." " Almost, but the point is..." " You said you were an expert." "No, I never said I was an expert, I said I had an idea." "What you've done is design an awning that you can put over your car." "JEREMY:" "The next squabble was over the pathetic cuttings tools that James had provided." "You're quaking already with fear." "I'm not quaking with anything." "Honestly, I..." "A chicken?" "Anybody for the leg?" "Oh, it's a bit tough." "JAMES:" "You'll be surprised." "JEREMY:" "With our nanny-state spectacles on, it was time to get cracking." "This mail-order carving knife that James has brought is useless." "So I left Hammond and May to it, and went to rent something a little more manly." "Now that's what I'm talking about!" " You know what I just thought of?" " What?" "I'm cutting through the roof and I'm standing on it." " Yeah." " We were hoping you wouldn't realise?" "JAMES:" "Now, the important thing when cutting through the pillars is to protect the glass." " I knew it!" " I broke the window a bit." "Yeah, I've done a bad thing there, haven't I?" " Well, it's still convertible." " Hammond." " Yes?" " You see, this window..." "That would have been fine." " We don't need that one." " You've broken one." "We do need that one, and you broke it." "JAMES:" "We now had to be extra careful not to break any more." "No." "You're gonna have to do this." "Ah, that was yours!" "I didn't touch it." " Yeah, you did." " I didn't touch it." "You did." "You had the saw at the time." "JAMES:" "With half the windows gone, it was time to remove the roof." "It's plastic, it won't weigh anything." "So you grab that side." "Ready?" " Yeah." " Yeah." "JEREMY:" "One, two, three, go." "RICHARD:" "It doesn't weigh anything!" "It weighs a ton." "That's like somebody's Espace has sunk." "That is cool." " That's excellent." " It looks brilliant." "You've sawn through the sun visor." "And one of the seatbelts." " You know what I'm thinking now?" " What?" " Yeah." " Yeah." "This is brilliant." "I'm not joking." "If anything, it's better to drive than the ordinary one because it still feels as stiff, but you've got, look, the world." "We have made something truly wonderful." "James doesn't look very happy." " What's up with him?" " He's a bit freez..." " Do you want the heater on?" " Shut up." "Put the heater on and see if it makes any difference." " I'll put it on "Warm"." " Oh, that's better." "Thanks." "JEREMY:" "Now, though, it was time for the tricky bit." "Building our roof." "RICHARD:" "Yeah, that's all right." "James was in charge of the frame." "Hammond was in charge of the fasteners." "And I had the tough job, cutting and sewing the canvas." "JEREMY:" "You know you want it 57 inches wide?" "The material you've bought is 55 inches wide." "No matter." "My sewing skills would compensate." "You never forget, really." "It's like riding a bicycle." "You never forgot how to sew." "JEREMY:" "Oh, damn and blast!" "What?" "What have you done?" "I've sewn myself to the machine." "(LAUGHING)" "James untangled me and asked me to help create a hoop for his frame." " You got that bit perfectly vertical..." " Yeah." "Yeah." "Here we go." "This is the critical component of the whole design." " And then that goes at right angles." " Yeah." "Oh, you utter clot." "Again, Top Gear, ambitious but rubbish." "JEREMY:" "This may take some time." "These are a few examples of various amphi-car attempts over the years." "They all work, sort of." "But not one has ever captured the world's imagination." "Well, we're going to try and change that." "All three of us have gone our separate ways." "We've each bought a car." "We now have two days in which to make them amphibious." "At the end of that, there will be of course be a mystery challenge of some sort to see who's done the best job." "JAMES:" "I bought this, a Triumph Herald." "And here's my idea." "Instead of using the engine to power it on the water," "I'm going to fit it with a mast and some sails." "How brilliant is that?" "I have no idea what James is doing, nor do any of us have any idea what kind of water we'll be tested on." "I think it will be some sort of river, or maybe a canal, which is why I have bought a camper van, which I'm going to turn into a houseboat of sorts." "RICHARD:" "Yes, it'll be my very own home from home, on land or on water, and there'll be a warm welcome waiting inside wherever I go." "It's the most multi-purpose multi-purpose vehicle ever." "JEREMY:" "Me?" "Well, I've come to the Solent to see an old friend." "His name is Steve Curtis and he's won the Class 1 Offshore Powerboat World Championship seven times!" "Here's the thing, okay?" "Amphibious cars, for me, the problem has always been is they're too complicated." "You've got to get the power to the wheels, then when you go in the water, you've got to stop the power going to the wheels, pull a lever, and make it go to a propeller." "So why not just get a car, and then put an outboard motor on the back?" " Yeah..." " I mean, it would work." "Yeah, for sure, it depends." "What sort of car have you got?" "JEREMY:" "Yeah, it's a Toyota Hilux pickup truck, which I chose for two reasons." "Firstly, as we have proved with a number of tests on Top Gear, it is completely indestructible." "And secondly, that rear end is the perfect mounting point for an outboard." "STEVE:" "This is a great little outboard because everything is in it." "What you do..." "Top in there, put this down..." "Might need to be a little bit longer." "Look, I was thinking more, Steve, in terms of this, to be honest." "In fact, I'm thinking more in terms of two of these rather than one of these." " How many horsepower is that?" " It's 2.3, which will get you along very nicely." "2.3 is a small amount of horsepower." "Honestly, I want this." "But don't you just want it to go?" "That's 225 horsepower." "So two is 450 horsepower." "That's half the horsepower of a Formula 1 car." "There'll be water..." "I mean, it's going to be very..." "You can't put two on it." "It's going to be all over the place." "You'll roll it." "It'd just be unstable." "RICHARD:" "Now, Jeremy chose Steve because he's an expert on hydrodynamics, and then set about arguing with him." "I chose my expert on the strength of his accent." "(WEST COUNTRY ACCENT) We'll extend the stern onto here." "So it'll give you somewhere..." "For the summer days, you can get out and steer the boat on the back." "Unlike Jeremy, I was going to run a single small propeller from the van's engine, even though it was only a 1.6 diesel." "It doesn't have to be fast." "This isn't a speedboat." "I just want it to be..." "Well, like a canal boat." "Wood, aluminium, bits of rope, clink, clink, clink in the wind, all that, you know, a little telltale on the top." "So you're more after your Russell Crowe, Master and Commander style." "Yes!" "JEREMY:" "I was adamant that my pickup truck remain as car-like as possible, apart from the two big engines, obviously." "But Steve insisted it had to have a hull." "What does he know?" "This is complicated." "Well, it's a case of do you want it to go forward in water or not?" " Yes!" " Then you'll need that little bit." "We might have to do a bit to the bottom." "I don't think we can leave the wheels..." "I think we got to lock off the suspension." "We're not doing that." "Because it's going to be an amphibious car, that means a car that goes in water." "If you start locking the wheels off, it isn't." "But when we go in the water, they are just going to drop just like that." "JEREMY:" "Meanwhile, James had a much more basic problem." "Looks like I'll get the lads for a push." "Would you?" "JEREMY:" "Hamster!" "How is it going?" "Very well, thank you." "Very well indeed." "What are you doing?" "What have you got?" "It's pretty..." "I don't want to tell you, really." "But it's pretty sleek." "As a road-going vehicle and as a boat, I think it's going to be a winner." "I bet it's a Lotus Esprit, isn't it?" "Well, it's a monocoque." "So it has sort of sporting pretensions." "And what are you doing in terms of propulsion?" "Uh, well, now, the..." "A lot of power." "I'm going to fully utilise the on-board power." "JEREMY:" "Hammond was keeping his cards close to his chest." " Hello?" " May." " Clarkson." " Have you heard from Hamster?" "Well, yeah, I did, but I can't get much out of him." "He's now saying his car is rear-engine but not a 911" "I think he's bought a Hillman Imp and he's making a submarine." "Put it there and then another one there!" "I just can't tell you how dangerous and ridiculous that..." "Why would it be dangerous?" "JEREMY:" "To try and prove that one motor would be enough," "Steve took me out in a single-engine race boat." "And guess who we ran into..." "Hey!" "...brushing up on his sailing skills?" "There's a boat there called Hey Presto." "Oh, there's a boat right here called Puffin." "Hello, Puffin." " James!" " Clarkson!" "What are you doing?" "He's trying to show me that one engine is sufficient." "Where are you going?" "Wherever it goes." "I'm just relearning my sailing skills." "How long is it since you were in a sailing boat?" "31 years!" "(JEREMY LAUGHING)" "JAMES:" "You utter pirate!" "JEREMY:" "Even in this baby racer, we hit 70 miles an hour and caught some air, and it was all jolly exciting." "But..." "I still think we need two engines." "Sorry, but I do." " Flip that over with your left hand..." " Oh, yes." "JEREMY:" "To make way for Steve's pointless hull, the bull bar had to come off the Toyota." "But this being a Hilux, it put up a fight." "Now, I'm taking the exhaust through a pipe, through the van and out the roof." "So I think..." "You see?" "A little finishing touch, a chimney there." "Rope thing, yes." "That can go on the front quite well, maybe with those." "And perhaps a duck." "I'm on fire!" "Oh!" "Ow!" "(BLEEP)" "(STEVE LAUGHING)" "For God's sake!" "Right, that's got it." "JEREMY:" "We had one day left to get ready, and our vehicles were far from being sea-worthy." "Mine was still on fire." "Behind these doors, we had created a masterpiece." "As you can see, Hammond has done a very thorough job along here of anchoring the roof at the front." "We've replaced the glass that was broken and that obviously does tuck under there." "This..." "This..." "That's not a safety feature." "There's James' folding arrangement that gets it all down." "But it's the back where we're really pleased because what we've done is we've cut the tailgate in half, so you come back with heavy shopping, you undo all these, takes no more than five or 10 minutes," "and then we've hinged it here so you can pull the whole thing open and load up the boot." "I mean, yes, there are one or two rough edges, here, for example, but on the whole, we are very proud of it." "JEREMY:" "To see how good our roof would be in real-world conditions, the production team came up with a number of tests." " Our first challenge." " Yes, indeed." "Let's have it, Professor." "Right." "No idea what this is." ""Challenge 1." "You must drive the car with the roof up" ""at a speed of 100 miles per hour" ""without anything breaking or falling off."" " Well, it won't." " Good." "Let's do it." "JAMES:" "Obviously we couldn't do this on the road so we went to the Millbrook proving ground in Bedfordshire where there's a two-mile banked circuit." "It's been nice, chaps, working with you." "Normally, I wouldn't wear a helmet for this..." "No." "But on this occasion..." " JEREMY:" "Are you ready, boys?" " Yeah, braced and ready!" " Here we go!" " Do it!" "35, 36 miles an hour." "There's a bit of a draft here from these windows, and we may have to look at that." "JEREMY:" "Things were going well until we blasted past the 50 mile-an-hour barrier." " Guys?" " What?" "There are issues happening back here." " What's this?" " JEREMY:" "Oh, no!" "RICHARD:" "Your stitching is rubbish!" "JEREMY:" "Oh, no!" "JAMES:" "It's fine." "Keep going." "(BOTH TALKING AT ONCE)" "That's because your stitching came apart." " RICHARD:" "Oh, no!" " Uh-oh!" "What was that?" "It's all collapsed at the back!" " JEREMY:" "It's still on!" " My head's holding it up!" " JAMES:" "That's fine." " Just stay where you are." "JEREMY: 65... 66!" "JAMES:" "Here we go." "JEREMY: 69!" "Yes!" "The motorway speed limit." "JEREMY:" "Buffeting." "She's breaking up!" "She's breaking up!" "JEREMY:" "Come on, you useless piece of junk!" "I am now part of it." "I'm structurally integral to the roof." "RICHARD:" "It's really not good back here!" " JEREMY: 96." " It's not good!" "It's not good at all!" "JEREMY: 97." "(ALL CHEERING)" "ALL: 100 miles an hour!" "JEREMY:" "I'm easing her down now." "I'm easing her down." "JEREMY:" "So, we'd survived that, just." "And Richard and I decided to get the roof down." "James said this would take but a moment." "JEREMY:" "Lift them off the poles." "RICHARD:" "Surely if we..." "And where does that go?" "It's easy." "We can work on it." "(JEREMY LAUGHING)" "See, from a distance, it actually looks quite good." "Look at that!" "Look at that!" "This isn't its best side 'cause you've got the hinges on it." "It looks better from the other side." "Right-o!" "Next challenge." ""You must now go to Woburn Abbey Safari Park" ""and drive your convertible through the wild animal enclosures."" " Right-o." " Fine." "JEREMY:" "Well, there are lions." "You don't want to worry about the lions, it's the monkeys you got to worry about." "What?" "Have you seen a lion?" "Massive, pointy teeth!" "Monkeys..." "They don't scare me." "Don't, they're Barbary ape monkeys, and they're really, really vicious." "They've got really, really, really vicious teeth." "All right, put it this way." "If you were to be locked in a phone box for half an hour with A, a monkey, or B, a lion..." " Exactly." " What would you go for?" " The lion." " What!" "No, because monkeys in confined spaces, those Barbary monkeys, they panic and they get really, incredibly violent." "JEREMY:" "I just love the way that James thinks that monkeys are in some way the greatest peril we're facing in the next hour of our lives." "JEREMY:" "Normally, Woburn does not allow convertibles into its dangerous animal enclosures." "But they were so impressed with the structural integrity of ours, they made an exception." "JAMES:" "Coming to some big gates." "I'm scared!" "Look!" "It's like Jurassic Park." "JEREMY:" "Oh, shall I film it?" "It is Jurassic Park." "JEREMY: "Please keep your doors and windows closed,"" "and under no circumstances go in in a homemade convertible Renault Espace." "RICHARD: "These animals may bite"!" "JAMES:" "The African lion, six tons of muscle and teeth." "To anyone from Woburn, have these lions been fed?" "MAN ON RADIO:" "No, it's a starve day today." "Excuse me, it's Jeremy again." "Did you say they were on a "starve day"?" "Yes, we feed them twice a week, which is more similar to the feeding regime they'd have in the wild." "So when did they last eat?" "Two days ago." "JAMES:" "Yeah, but..." "If you mention monkeys, I'm throwing you out!" " Oh, stop!" "Stop!" " RICHARD:" "Holy Mama!" "JEREMY:" "Eating the spine of..." "That's the last person who came through in a convertible." "To him, we look like a sort of sandwich box with the lid half-off." "RICHARD:" "Fortunately, the lions had other things on their minds." "JEREMY:" "Oh, look what's going on!" "JAMES:" "Oh, no!" "He's..." "RICHARD:" "That's lion porn." "JEREMY:" "Oh, what are you doing, man?" "RICHARD:" "What if he tries to do that to us?" "JAMES:" "With my point made, we left the lions and headed for the peril of the monkeys." "Oh!" "Ah!" "Monkeys!" "Ah!" "Some of them are, like, a foot tall." "He's eating a carrot!" "Look what he's doing to it!" "JAMES:" "But then, a really big one rocked up." " An attack monkey!" " Get off!" "JAMES:" "That's a Barbary ape." "(JEREMY SCREAMING)" "You got to stay there after you mocked me." "JEREMY:" "Bugger off!" "There's another one on the front." "(ALL LAUGHING)" "Please can we go?" "JEREMY:" "We had to leave with our roof mascot still in place because it was time for our final challenge." ""Modern convertibles are capable of driving through" ""automated carwash machines." ""You must now do the same with your car."" "JEREMY:" "The carwash selected for the test was brand new." "It had cost the owner a million pounds and featured the latest technology to deliver the cleaning power of a category five hurricane." "JAMES:" "Has anyone else suddenly become slightly nervous?" "RICHARD:" "Yes." "I'm terrified." "Yeah, I'm scared." "It is quite cold this evening as well, isn't it?" " Yeah." " JAMES:" "It's ruddy freezing." "Let's have the heater on a bit." "Yeah." "Oh, here we go." "I'm not nervous." "But it's fine." "It'll be good." "It'll just, you know, flap around a bit." " RICHARD:" "My confidence is waning..." " I'm dry!" "JAMES:" "There's a light mist coming into the car." "No, that's just condensation." "No, there's a bit of mist through the gap, but that's fine." "JEREMY:" "I'm dry still." "I'm wet now!" "JAMES:" "I've suddenly got a bad, bad, bad feeling about this." "There's a great big roller coming up the window and it's going to hit the roof, isn't it?" "(ALL SCREAMING)" "JAMES:" "Get out!" "Get out!" "JEREMY:" "It's going to hit us!" "JAMES:" "Get out!" "RICHARD:" "I can't get out!" "JEREMY:" "Get out on this side!" "RICHARD:" "I'm out!" "RICHARD:" "Run, man!" "JEREMY:" "I can't watch!" "RICHARD:" "We have to go through there!" "JAMES:" "Get out, get out." "JEREMY:" "Just get out." "(CLANKING AND GRATING)" " Keep running!" " Run!" "RICHARD:" "Over there!" " That's bad." " That was bad." "It's on fire." " It's what?" " What?" " It can't be on fire!" " It's on fire." "It's on fire." "(EXPLOSION)" "JEREMY:" "Just run." "Just run." "Now, earlier on, the three of us embarked on a noble quest to build ourselves an amphibious car each." "And I'm happy to say that after some swearing and a good deal of knuckle scuffing, we did it." "Yeah, and then we were all asked to meet up at the Keel services on the M6 motorway where we were set a challenge." "JEREMY:" "I was the first to arrive in my Toybota Hilux." "Which, as planned, still looked and worked like a car except for the welded-up doors and the outboard, obviously." "(GRUNTS) Morning." "Now, as you can see, I lost the battle to have two engines on the back for three very good reasons." "One, weight." "This is 600 pounds and that's the same as having a whole American sitting on the tailgate." "Two, space." "There really isn't room to get two side by side." "And three, cost. 13,000 quid this costs." "JEREMY:" "Richard was next to turn up." "I thought he had a Lotus!" "What in the name of all that's holy is that?" " You said it was sleek." " Ah!" "Where's he gone?" "His door's..." " I love that!" " What do you think?" "It's my narrow boat." " Has it got all the..." " It's all in there, yeah." " It's got a cooker and everything?" " Yeah, I can cook me tea." " Look at this!" " This is my prow." "So it cuts through..." "I'll be honest with you, I've added a bit of weight." " But it..." " How much weight?" "A couple of tons." "But it looks..." " A couple of?" " Tons." "JEREMY:" "If you look at my car from the front." " RICHARD:" "It's a car." " Unaltered." " Is it going to be fast?" " 40 knots." " That's really fast." " Really fast." "Yeah, you will look quite good" " to a point where you're killed." " Throttle, obviously." "See?" "Look, look." "How have you kept the water out of the vehicle?" "Keep the doors shut, weld the doors up." " You've welded the doors." " Yeah." " I welded the doors." " Now, you see, Richard..." " What?" " Well, if you..." "I've done quite a lot of that." " That's foam, to give it buoyancy." " No, I haven't done that." "So, you think that left to its own devices, a Volkswagen camper van will float?" "It's like a narrow boat in shape." "A narrow boat is just a big box," " isn't it?" " Goodbye." "JEREMY:" "We were then interrupted by the arrival of Dame Ellen May." "RICHARD:" "Oh!" "JEREMY:" "James May!" " What has he done?" "He's a rubbish..." " Avast, landlubbers." "What's that?" " It's a sailing boat." " It's not, James." "It's not a sailing boat." "It's a Triumph Herald with a twig sticking out of it." " JAMES:" "Yeah, it's..." " Is this teak?" "No." "JAMES:" "Yeah." "JEREMY:" "No, it's not." "It's plywood with Biro marks on it." "You can mock it all you like." "It's going to work." "Right." "The one thing you need in a sailing boat, I know this, is a keel." " Yes." " Where's your keel?" "If I put a keel on, you'd have to cut grooves in all the roads of Britain" " so that I could drive on them." " So you have no keel?" " I have no keel." " He's going to put up his sail, the first breath of wind, and he'll just go..." "JEREMY:" "But this wasn't James' most immediate problem." "...I just drove under a tree." " Oh, God." "Have you broken it?" " Yeah." "I've got to go back up there and find the bit that fell off." "JEREMY:" "While James mended his mast," "Richard and I settled down in the damper van for a nice cup of tea." " Thank you very much." " Lovely." " What's that?" " It's Tow Path Talk." "Is it interesting?" "More interesting than watching him fix his mast." " You got more?" "What's this?" " There's probably a..." "Your Place in the Country, a caravanning magazine." "What I did was stock it with a library that says everything about this vehicle." "What you've got is camping and caravanning and canals all in one..." "One bit of travel, that's what it's about." "You've got this one, then, as well, have you?" "Yeah." "You wouldn't be doing this on the back of your ridiculous pickup, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "No, I wouldn't." "Do you know the amazing stuff about all this decoration, canal decoration?" "Well, no, I'm more interested in why you bought this." "What is this?" "Pair of useless, scurvy dogs." "JEREMY:" "Finally we were ready for our challenge." "This is the challenge, gentlemen." ""You must drive your amphibious cars..." Yours isn't." ""...to Rudyard Reservoir." ""It's a reservoir near Leek."" "So we've gone from Keel to Leek." ""And drive them all the way across the two mile stretch of water."" " Two mile stretch of..." " Two miles." "If it's two miles, it could be choppy." "Yeah." "Doesn't bother me, I'm doing 40 knots." "Doesn't bother me," "I've got infinite wind-power and a very stable craft." "JEREMY:" "Mount up, gentlemen." "(ENGINE SPUTTERING)" "(ENGINE STARTING)" "Oh, yeah." "(ENGINE STARTING)" "(ENGINE STARTING)" "Yeah!" "And we set sail, or set road." "JAMES:" "It was only 20 miles to the reservoir, what could possibly go wrong?" "Now's the time I can be quite honest, really, about some of the aspects of this car." "The ride is appalling." "I told Curtis, "Don't weld the suspension up."" "So he hasn't, he's just fitted solid shock absorbers." "RICHARD:" "I had other issues." "(ENGINE STRAINING)" "When it was new, it had 70 horsepower, or thereabouts." "Let's assume it's now got about 40, with the additions I've made, this now weighs two and a half tons." "This is the slowest thing in the world." "But not as slow as James." "There we are, in top gear, 35 miles an hour." "I'm sorry, I don't have time for this." "That's 50." "JEREMY:" "In the traditional spirit ofTop Gear comradeship, we left James behind." "Jeremy appears to be having one bouncy ride." "RICHARD:" "Meanwhile, my lack of power really was becoming a problem." "(ENGINE SPUTTERING)" "Help!" "I'm trying to get up the hill!" "I just went under a very low telephone cable there, so I suspect James could easily plunge the whole of Stoke-on-Trent into the Middle Ages!" "JEREMY:" "To miss overhead obstacles, James had lowered him mast." "But this was cheating, and soon he was punished with engine failure." "The other problem is" "I can't actually open the bonnet because I've had to seal it in an attempt to keep it floating without the nose going down." "I didn't tell the others this because I didn't want them to mock me." "JEREMY:" "Meanwhile, back at the convoy... (ENGINE STALLS)" "No!" "Not now!" "RICHARD:" "Wait, I've died, I've died!" " Goodbye." " No, come on!" "They've failed, frankly." "Maybe their cars will work on water, but we'll never know 'cause they'll never get there." "RICHARD:" "I managed to get it going again, but not for long." "Engine stalled, no brakes, limited steering." "I'm gonna have to ditch it." "I think we've overheated, we've lost oil, water, diesel, blood, pus, the lot really." "(JAMES HUMMING)" "RICHARD:" "James, rather thoughtfully, chose to have his second breakdown right next to me." "JAMES:" "What is it, me hearty?" "RICHARD:" "Engine issues." "That's the front, the radiator is sort of there, but then it goes down a bit further, and there's the grills and..." " I'm beginning to understand now." " What we've done is..." " There's no cooling at all." " Blocked it up." "I've made these buoyancy aids around here, made out of this foam, but I've also done it under the front, and I think it's blocked the radiator." "Right, we've both done the same thing because were stupid." "JAMES:" "So we each had a cup of tea and waited for the engines to cool." "RICHARD:" "Soon the damper van was as good as new." "(ENGINE RUMBLING)" "It's fine!" "It's fine!" "Ha!" "JEREMY:" "James had been told to put his mast back up, and was running well, too." "And so, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, our convoy regrouped." "God!" "I can't smell my own car overheating because of that." "Trees." "James, watch out for the trees." "Trees, tress." "Trees, James, trees!" "Uh-oh, trees." "JEREMY:" "Then the inevitable happened." "JEREMY:" "Where's May?" "RICHARD:" "James, you've just gone the wrong way." "JEREMY:" "Then more inevitable happened." "JEREMY:" "Hammond, you've got big smoke coming..." "No, no, stop." "JEREMY:" "Never mind, things could be worse." "Oh, cock." "That is..." "And I've stalled, and I've overheated." "(CARS HONKING)" "Sorry, mate, I'm sorry." "JEREMY:" "Meanwhile..." "JEREMY:" "One person breaks the speed limit and we've got the best shot." "Come on!" "RICHARD:" "This could take days." "They're a very law-abiding bunch." "They are." "I've never seen anyone drive so slowly." "They're all doing 29." "JEREMY:" "Eventually, we were back on the road and in the Peak District." "That's "peak", as in "hills"." "And hills were a big problem for Hammond." "The really embarrassing thing is, it's slightly faster like this." "The gloating will be endless." "I wonder how James is doing." "Well, this is more like it." "Performance has improved dramatically." "I'm really bowling along." "JEREMY:" "Finally Hammond and I arrived at the reservoir." "Now, while we're waiting for James, I should explain it's March." "It's the coldest March for 20 years because of global warming, and that means the water into which we shall be driving is..." " Well, how would you..." " I'll tell you." "(HIGH-PITCHED YELPING)" "JEREMY:" "The big question was, which would arrive first, summer or James May?" "JEREMY:" "Where is he?" "RICHARD:" "I don't know." "I mean, he's got to show up at some time." "RICHARD:" "Can you see the mast!" "(LAUGHING) It's just the mast!" "Have you had a few problems?" "No, I just had to make a bit of a detour." "Low bridge, you know, mast." "Where's he going?" "Watch this." "Brace!" "Brace!" " It works!" " That is really annoying." "I've got a rudder." "JAMES:" "It did indeed work, for a few moments." "But before I could hoist my sails, I drifted into some weeds and got stuck." "JEREMY:" "Then it was my turn." "Life jacket." "JEREMY:" "I was grateful when I saw the waterline" "I'd insisted on only having one engine." "JAMES:" "Can you give me a tow before you sink?" "No, I can't give you a tow, I'm leaking." "RICHARD:" "I, however, was about to launch into a world of issues." "Right-o!" "I'd bolted my propeller to the flywheel." "There it goes!" "And as I drove in, it hit the ramp and broke." "So I was in the water with no drive, but that was the least of my problems." "RICHARD:" "Oh, no!" "It's sinking!" "(GRUNTS)" "(GRUNTS)" " Yeah, mine hasn't worked." " JAMES:" "Can you come and give us a tow?" "No, mate, my engine doesn't work!" "Those incompetent co-presenters I have." "JEREMY:" "With James still in the weeds and Hammond going down fast," "I opened the taps on my outboard and went for a test drive." "Oh, yeah, this is nice." "Manoeuvrable, comfortable." "It just works!" " Did you want tea or coffee?" " Tea please, mate." "It works, but really, this is top speed." "That's annoying." "JEREMY:" "Richard wasn't going anywhere unless he found some power." " I've got a spare outboard." " RICHARD:" "You are joking?" " I have." "How much will you give me?" " A million pounds." " A million?" " And a leg." "Take you pick." "Either leg." "Oh, yes." "Now, what do I do?" "Oh, God!" "JEREMY:" "So, could he get the engine on and working before his damper van sank?" "How do I start it?" "JEREMY:" "Could he make it to the other side of the lake?" "RICHARD:" "Pull!" "Please!" "JEREMY:" "Could James?" "By this stage, he'd got his sails up." "He was out of the weeds and underway, just." "JAMES:" "Ow!" "JEREMY:" "Mind you, he was going faster than Hammond." "Yes, it's moving!" "I'm moving!" "It's a boat!" "JEREMY:" "Morning." "JEREMY:" "Finally, we were off." "Two miles?" "Frankly, I've won this." "RICHARD:" "Come on, baby!" "JAMES:" "Come on, wind!" "JEREMY:" "Sadly, my exuberance with the throttle was causing some problems for the Toybota." "No, no, no!" "I've got a massive bow-wave at the front!" "JEREMY:" "But Hammond had bigger ones." "No, no!" "No!" "Yes!" "Come on, baby!" "This is the moment." "Look, it's the Titanic!" "It's going." "It's going." "(LAUGHING NERVOUSLY)" "Oh, no!" "Oh, no!" "JEREMY:" "Hammond, how much?" " For what?" " A lift." "I'll give you a million quid, or this bucket." " What do we think, viewers?" " Come on, I'm going down." " Where's May?" " I don't know!" "What do you think I'm worried about right now?" "I'm aboard." "JEREMY:" "Now get in there and get bailing." "Oh, bollocks." " I've come up with a problem." " What?" "You have..." "You owe me a million pounds!" "JEREMY:" "While I was on my perilous rescue mission," "James had powered ahead." "JAMES:" "I need more wind." "Here we go!" "My toy submarine is off!" "That's full power." " It's working!" "It's not working." " No." "It's slow but certain, and I'm not sinking." "RICHARD:" "Even though we were racing someone travelling at the slowest speed ever recorded by man..." "JAMES:" "Oh, come on!" "...Jeremy still insisted on going at full tilt." "Up!" "Up!" "Rise!" "Rise, Toybota!" "It's coming over the side!" "RICHARD:" "And boats don't do emergency stops." "Ah!" "Jeremy!" "We're going in!" "Relax!" "JEREMY:" "Our bailing session meant the tortoise was catching up." "I can see the finish line." "It's about, I don't know, a couple of hundred yards away." "Or about four-and-a-half hours." "JEREMY:" "So this was it." "The final assault." "Coming in hot." "We're nearly there." "Come on, you..." "I'm gonna make it!" "JEREMY:" "I just had to turn round the pontoon and park." "But I turned too hard and too fast." "(LAUGHING)" "JEREMY:" "That was a mistake." "RICHARD:" "You may have just overcooked it." "Richard." "Richard!" "(RICHARD LAUGHING)" "RICHARD:" "It's going over!" "(RICHARD LAUGHING)" "RICHARD:" "Oh!" "(BLEEP)" "JEREMY:" "That's pretty cold." "(RICHARD LAUGHING)" "That's pretty bloody cold!" "I can't believe it!" "Two miles and it goes now!" "No!" "No!" "No!" "HMS Clarkson has capsized, by the sound of things." "That is fantastic!" "Oh, yeah." "Well, it was a good idea." "It had only one major flaw." "What?" "I think I may have won my second Top Gear event." "I simply... step off." "If he drives out of the water, I'm gonna kill myself." "Fair enough." "JAMES:" "Is that your car?" "JEREMY:" "Yes." " It's the wrong way up." " Don't give my technicalities." "Would you agree I made it to the pontoon?" "JAMES:" "No." "Watch this for a perfect about." "JEREMY:" "We'll give you a hand." "JAMES:" "Reverse!" "Can you pull it?" " That's annoying." "That's annoying." " That is irritating." " Can he do it?" " JAMES:" "The clutch has gone." " The clutch's gone?" " Oh, he's failed." "JAMES:" "No, I haven't failed." " You have." " No, I'm out." " You're not out." " I'm on the slipway." "Can I just say, chaps, that one observation I would have..." " RICHARD:" "Yes?" " Sailing..." "Really boring!" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "JEREMY:" "My favourite thing..." "My favourite thing, did you see, as he was trying to get off the Toyota, he grabbed hold of the back wheel like that." "You'd have thought as a hamster, he'd know a wheel was gonna go..." "Yes, all right." "What gets me is I'm 36," "I've never sunk in my life, and then in one day I sank twice." "But that does answer the question, doesn't it?" "How hard can it be to make an amphibious vehicle?" "Very, very hard indeed." "Well, hang on a minute, I thought I did rather well." "Well, not quite as well as me, though." "No, I'm sorry, James, I'm sorry." "The idea was to build an amphibious car." "Land and water." "On the road, you overheated, it was confused by bridges and trees, you had to get a lift on a tow truck, and then when we got to the reservoir, I rescued the hamster twice," "and still made it to the other side before you." "I knew you were gonna bring that up, but nowhere in that challenge did it say it was a race." "And, let's be honest, when you got to the pontoon, you were the wrong way up." "And if you booked a holiday on a cruise ship, and it came into the harbour upside-down, you'd want your money back, I think." "RICHARD:" "He has a point there." "He does have a point." "It is a fair point." "Okay, the challenge was to see if we could capture the public's imagination." "So, I tell you what we'll do, we'll have a vote." "Who thinks which one of us did best, right?" "So, in the interest of fairness, who thinks Richard's damper van was best?" " I do, okay, just me." " Hands up." "That's, uh..." "All right, it's just me!" "Move on!" "All those who think that my Toybota was best?" "That's a smattering of hands there." "And all those who think James' Herald-yacht was best?" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" " I guess you win." " Thank you." "It's a fair victory." "It's a fair victory and it's not like I'm a sore loser or anything, it's just that for going home tonight," "James won't be using the Herald because the clutch has gone." "Richard won't be using that because it was ruined in the accident." "Whereas because I bought a Hilux, and as we know from here, they are indestructible, I shall be driving this home." " So..." " JAMES:" "Yes, all right." "Yes, thank you all very much for watching." "It's been a... (ENGINE STALLING)" "You have broken the indestructible!" "It's not working!" "RICHARD:" "No, it's not!" "And on that bombshell, it's time to end the show." "Thanks very much for watching." "Good night!" "RICHARD:" "It's going over!" "RICHARD:" "Oh!" "(BLEEP)" "JEREMY:" "That's pretty cold!" "(RICHARD LAUGHING)"