The Grand Tour special: Jeremy Clarkson and co on returning for a new series of globetrotting high jinks
āBuckle up, world, weāre ready to rumble againā
Steppe brothers: fraternity was in short supply in Mongolia, where Clarkson, May and Hammond had to build a small off-road machine to get them back to civilisation
To make the new Amazon Prime series of The Grand Tour we went to China, Sweden, Arizona, France, Doncaster, Finland, Detroit, Mongolia, Spain, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Georgia, Doha and Scotland.
China was the worst. It was a nightmare. The location was Chongqing, which, with more than 30m people ā if you count everyone in the metropolitan area, ā is the biggest city in the world. And donāt feel embarrassed: I hadnāt heard of it either.
Itās known as the furnace of China because in the summer the average daytime temperature is well above 40C and the sky is a constant, dripping-wet shade of grey. Itās like being in a hot bath and, hilariously, the air-con in James Mayās crummy old Mercedes S-class was broken. This made him very cantankerous.
Take the high road: the three plot the route for their Scottish drive
Richard Hammond was also cantankerous because he thinks itās weird to eat fish. So he was completely flummoxed by the local dish, which is a cowās tendon cooked at the table in a bucket of chilli-infused napalm. And lived for eight days on nothing but rice.
I was also cantankerous because in Mandarin thereās only one word and itās no. After six months you finally get a permit to film on one side of the road but when you arrive itās obvious that you should actually film on the other. It makes no difference to anyone. Nobody would care. But when you ask for permission the answer is no. God knows how they have a problem with overpopulation.
And thereās no point shouting because the Chinese regard us in the same way that we regard slightly fat insects. Three days in and I was tearing my hair out.
Iād love to say that despite the issues we came back with a gem of a film. A masterpiece. But the truth is itās a turd. Weāve polished it, of course, till it gleams and sparkles with handsome panache, and it is fun watching May literally melting. But itās still a turd.
Detroit is the opposite. Itās bloody great. All of us tear around that post-apocalyptic backdrop in three muscle cars. And muscle cars, as I say in the film, are like power-rock ballads. If someone asks if you like Journeyās Donāt Stop Believinā, youāll huff and puff and say, āNo, of course not.ā But if you are driving alone on your own and it comes on the radio, you will turn it up and sing along. Yes, you will. Donāt argue.
So it goes with the cars we were driving: a 700bhp-plus Ford Mustang RTR, a 840bhp Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and the 1,000bhp Hennessey Exorcist Camaro. Stupid cars. Stupid noises. And stupid names. I mean, RTR stands for āReady to Rockā, and how infantile is that?
Very, and I donāt care. I loved all those cars and I loved racing them in the derelict factories. Itās one of the best films weāve done in years. And one of the most enjoyable to make. Detroit is coming back. You can find a restaurant that serves dumplings in a goose broth right next door to a blood-spattered crime scene. And you can buy a four-bedroom house for Ā£1,800. I know, because we did.
And that was one of the lighter moments. In Colombia a spectacled bear ate my headlamp; in Arizona I was trapped on the roof of a moving and driverless recreational vehicle; in France I chased down a De Tomaso Pantera GTS ā and all thatās before we get to the track stuff and the McLaren Senna and the Alpina, and the Jaguar XE SV Project 8 and the new Lancia Stratos.
Itās been one hell of a year, and there hasnāt even been time so far to mention how we filled Lincoln Cathedral with anoraks or how I drove a Lamborghini Urethra up a ski slope. Not even Sir Attenborough does more in a series. And not even Tom Cruise travels further on his impossible missions. But the best bit, for me, was our trip to Scotland.
The idea was simple. In these days of escalating classic-car values, even a Ford Escort Mexico will cost you more than Ā£60,000. So we decided to see if there are any old, interesting and pretty cars out there that can still be bought for sensible money. Pretty soon we had a Fiat X1/9, a Lancia Gamma and an Alfa Romeo GTV6. And all we needed then was somewhere to test them out.
We settled on Scotland because one of our producers is from north of the border. Which meant we could show the rain and the heroin and the midges and heād be livid with us.
To begin with, everything went perfectly. It was terrible. The weather was miserable, my Alfa broke down, the houses looked as if theyād been deep fried in batter, there were speed cameras everywhere and every view had a rusting oil rig in it. āThis is not at all how it looks on the shortbread tins,ā dead-panned Hammond.
Off-road included on water in Mongolia
But then our plan went wrong, because we somehow ended up on the A835 from Inverness to Ullapool and, letās not beat about the bush, it was spectacular. Weāve travelled the world in search of the best road and weāve come across many contenders. Thereās the Transfagarasan Highway in Romania, the road from Davos in Switzerland to Cortina in Italy and the Hai Van Pass in Vietnam.
There were snow-capped mountains. There was sky the colour of an Icelandic girlās eyes. There were slate-grey lakes and linking it all together was a twisting and turning ribbon of grey with absolutely nothing on it.
Almost every great bit of road these days is ruined by cyclists huffing and puffing in one direction and coming at you like gristle missiles in the other. But not the A835. There were none.
There werenāt even any police patrol cars because theyāre all on the so-called āNorth Coast 500ā. Described by CondĆ© Nast Traveler magazine as possibly the best road trip in the world, itās become a magnet for Subaru and Mitsubishi Evo enthusiasts. And Plod, who likes to pull the cars over to look at their engines and fine the drivers.
Thereās none of that nonsense on the route we found and as a result the drive I had in that Alfa was up there alongside a trip on gravel roads through the Northern Territory in Australia in a BMW M6 Gran CoupĆ© and another through the Atacama desert in Chile in an on-its-last-legs Range Rover. I shall never forget it.
If this were the last series of The Grand Tour, Iād go to the vegetable garden with my pipe and slippers a happy man after a drive like that. But contrary to what you may have heard, it isnāt the last series. Youāve got us for a few more years yet ā starting on January 18.
