The Grand Tour

Jeremy Clarkson Has a History with Crazy and Funny Cars

During his career as a car- and motor journalist, Jeremy Clarkson has driven quite a lot of cars. Small cars, big cars, fast cars, very fast cars, and also some slower cars. Browsing through some of the vehicles Jeremy has actually laid his hands on, we asked ourselves: What are the craziest and funniest cars Jeremy has ever driven?

We present you a selection of cars that fall into this category. We do not, however, make any claim to be complete. Also, we will not include any cars that Jeremy built himself.

#1: The KTM X-Bow | Top Gear season 18

The KTM X-Bow is a Roadster build by the Austrian motorcycle-manufacturer KTM. Jeremy is driving it in episode six of Top Gear’s season 18:

#2: The Monster Truck | Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld season two

Before Jeremy Clarkson began working on Top Gear, he had his own car-show called “Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld”. In episode five of this show’s second season, he test-drives a giant Monster Truck. After he cried out how scary this vehicle felt, he declares it the greatest car he’s ever been in:

#3: The vintage Bentley with an airplane engine | Top Gear season 18

Although this is not a car that ever entered mass production, we thought it should be on this list anyway. In episode six of Top Gear’s season 18 Jeremy reenacts the Battle of Britain by facing off against “The Brutus”, 46-liter BMW v12, with a vintage Bentley he provided with an airplane engine:

#4: The self-driving BMW | Top Gear season ten

Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t think much about self-driving cars – we already know that. But where does this antipathy come from? Maybe it’s rooted in episode eight of Top Gear’s tenth season. During this episode, a self-driving BMW 330 “learns” the Top Gear track and then drives around it without a driver – well, almost: Jeremy takes a seat within the car to make sure nothing goes wrong. As you can see for yourself, this probably wasn’t a very pleasant ride:

#5: The Ariel Atom | Top Gear season five

Almost as much as Jeremy dislikes self-driving cars, he dislikes motor-cycles. That is why in episode nine of Top Gear’s fifth season he drives an Ariel Atom to prove it is more fun than driving a motor-bike:

#6: The Reliant Robin | Top Gear season 15

The Reliant Robin is probably one of the most infamous cars Jeremy has ever driven; it even made it into Top Gear’s opening credits. It was featured in episode one of the show’s 15th season. Although the Top Gear team later admitted that they assisted the car to fall over in certain scenes, it still deserves its place among the other vehicles in this list:

#7: The P50 | Top Gear season ten

The P50 was immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s smallest car. It later inspired Jeremy to build his own world’s smallest car, the P45. You can watch Jeremy drive the P50 in episode three of the tenth Top Gear season:

#8: The Peraves EcoMobile | Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld

One of the strangest car-motorcycle-hybrids Jeremy ever drove was the Peraves EcoMobile from Switzerland. He presented this funny vehicle in an episode of Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld:

#9: The (russian) Hover-Van | Top Gear season 22

When Jeremy, James, Richard and the Stig did a race in St. Petersburg to find out what form of transportation proved the fastest, Jeremy drove a serial version of the Hover-Van. This car-boat-hybrid turned out to be very hard to control for a distressed Jeremy Clarkson:

The BAC Mono was one of the cars that catered for one of the funniest looks ever seen on Jeremy Clarkson. After all, driving it almost blew his face away, because it had no windshield:

 

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One Comment

  1. My favourite episode was the one were he claims a dog could drive it. And then there is a dog driving said car.. Top gear.
    My favourite quote of his was about the bugatti eb 110. he said that the car was on a constant mission to headbutt the horizon, describing it’s acceleration…

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