The final episode of “The Grand Tour” has been broadcast, and the three men who piloted one of the world’s most popular motoring TV shows in the form of the BBC’s “Top Gear” shall be a trio no more
Internet automotive content was in its infancy in the mid-2000s when the modern Top Gear we’re all familiar with rose to prominence. Sure, Top Gear had been on television since 1977, but it was a fairly straight-laced automotive program built around consumer-advice segments and run-of-the-mill road tests. Top Gear as we know it came about in 2002, when Jeremy Clarkson began co-hosting the show with Richard Hammond. James May would join a year later in 2003, and director Andy Wilman would oversee the group’s adventures from this rebirth all the way until the airing of the final episode of The Grand Tour, which aired September 20, 2024.
And then you have Top Gear. TG was the first car show that was about more than cars. The trio of Clarkson, Hammond, and May still chatted about camshafts, horsepower, and test-track lap times, but they also introduced wholly new concepts to the automotive-media space: self-deprecating humour, penis jokes, and the idea of just going on car adventures with your mates. Top Gear was the first car show you could watch with your mom. It was a car show devoid of machismo, or braggadocio. It was just three blokes enjoying cars, and showing you the places you could take them.
I remember watching that trailblazing episode with my friends in a Calgary basement in 2007. I was 16 years old, with a brand-new driver’s license. In those days, the BBC wouldn’t broadcast full Top Gear episodes in Canada, so we had to download them via Limewire, or find an illegal upload on StreetFire.net. We watched enraptured as these three dorks took their ailing cars across beautiful landscapes that none of us would have been able to locate on a map. It showed us where cars can really take you, and the simple joys of taking big trips with your friends. I was hooked.
The Top Gear crew has been all over the world. They’ve trekked all the way to the North Pole by car (well, truck); they’ve soldiered through the Amazon jungle in worn out 4x4s; and they’ve blasted through the Middle East in lightweight sports cars. We saw them fail and triumph in almost equal measure as they turned cars into boats, boats into cars, and constructed scratchbuilt vehicles of their own. They pitted themselves in races against steam trains, bullet trains, fighter jets, animals, and even the sun.
They fought, argued, and bickered on-camera, even sabotaging each other’s cars occasionally. When one of them broke down by the side of the road, it was standard practice for the other two to simply leave him behind. And yet, the three of them have an odd friendship, forged by years of travelling the globe. During the final Grand Tour episode, May asks rhetorically if it’s “mandatory” they all go to the same retirement home.
Seventeen years after that Zimbabwe Top Gear special, in that final Grand Tour episode, the three retraced their wheel tracks across the sun-baked ancient dry lake bed of the Makgadikgadi Pan. It marked the last time they’d film that TV program together, and there won’t be another. No more cheap-car challenges, no more adventures through exotic jungles, and no more supercar tests with coastal vistas. The three members of the team will still be making their own solo video content in the future, so it’s not like they’re disappearing. And yet, it still feels like waving good-bye to your best friend as they move to another continent. You’ll still be pals, but you also know it’ll never be the same.
An entire generation of fans grew up watching Top Gear, and later The Grand Tour. Those two shows converted many people into car fans. You may even remember downloading episodes illegally yourself, so you could watch them in full 480p glory at home. And as sad as it is to see them go, it’s time for the trio to hang it up. They’ve given us 22 full years of laughs, after all. As May put it with slightly wet eyes, “I hope we’ve brought you a little bit of happiness.” They certainly have.
Finale spoilers: The Grand Tour Zimbabwe film ends with the trio ascending a rocky hill to an ancient and withered baobab tree in the middle of the aforementioned Botswana Makgadikgadi salt pan. As the three graying men ascend the rocks with some difficulty, the film flashes back to the same trio bounding up the rocks in 2007 with childlike excitement. They gave us everything they had. At the top of the hill, Jeremy unplugs his mic for the final time, and after sharing a few unheard words, he, Hammond, and May each shake the others’ hands. It’s the end of an era. Thanks for everything.
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