The Grand Tour’s ultimate particular, One for the Street, is a poignant farewell to certainly one of tv’s most profitable, and endearing, male friendships. And it’s not laborious to know why it is perhaps time to say goodbye to the format that presenter Jeremy Clarkson and producer Andy Wilman invented all these years in the past: they’re previous now. As you grow old, issues get tougher to do. Even on the comparatively spritely age of 40 I can attest to that.
However there are extra tangible considerations than the imperceptible march of organic decline, and quite a lot of of them have been listed on Tuesday night time’s Q&A, An Night with The Grand Tour, a particular occasion that was half press junket, half celebration of three lives effectively lived: in addition to us journalists, many of the crowd have been household and buddies of the primary three. Lisa Hogan, Clarkson’s long-suffering accomplice who has change into a fan favorite on sister present Clarkson’s Farm for giving pretty much as good as she will get, was in attendance, alongside the manufacturing crew they’d labored with for years. The temper of the night time was laborious to pin down: sombre, however jubilant. Extra Irish Wake than Statey Funes.
Clarkson, by his personal gleeful admission, is getting “too fats” to suit into supercars. A sensible actuality that may absolutely put the kibosh on any hopes to see him do one final lap in an Ariel Atom. Extra urgent, and regarding for anybody hoping to proceed the format sooner or later (be they Amazon producers casting for a subsequent technology of Grand Tour or BBC Studios heads surveying the smouldering wreckage of what was as soon as Auntie’s largest export), is the sense that Clarkson & Co have merely exhausted the listing of issues you are able to do with automotive, wanting efficiently firing one instantly into area, just like the notorious Tesla stunt from just a few years again.
And it’s maybe Tesla who ought to really feel most aggrieved by Clarkson’s feedback within the particular itself, giving the ultimate purpose why his days as a motoring presenter want to finish: electrical vehicles are, frankly, garbage.
For as soon as, I discover it laborious to disagree with him. And this isn’t the kind of anti-Greenpeace rant he used to go on throughout Prime Gear’s heyday. Certainly, environmentalism is a subject that he’s had one thing of a Damascene conversion on following his rebranding as a celeb farmer. It’s a easy matter of aesthetics. Ardour. Drive.
Throughout an in-car piece to digital camera (one thing which they make look straightforward, however which is definitely bloody laborious to do as I found earlier this yr), Clarkson feedback on the attribute engine purr of his beloved Lancia Montecarlo: “that’s a sound you youthful technology received’t develop up listening to”, he laments. “I hate electrical vehicles. They may as effectively be white items”. It’s true: for all their lack of poisonous emissions, BEVs are bloody horrid, sterile issues. I wince each time I see a Tesla or a Polestar on the street. They seem like regular vehicles which were overinflated. Cartoonishly outsized to accommodate the stacks of battle minerals wanted to drive their super-silent electrical motors. In fact it’s nigh on unattainable for an previous petrolhead to get obsessed with one thing that’s primarily a dodgem automotive crossed with an iPhone.
And so, Clarkson should step apart. And his comrades should step with him, as they loyally have prior to now, for the motoring leisure format as we all know it’s nothing with out him, and everybody is aware of it. Following the euphoria of their unbelievable ultimate outing, which is good by the best way, it can fall to a brand new technology of producers and presenters to reinvent the automotive journal present, and as we’ve seen with the varied disasters that adopted Clarkson’s departure from Prime Gear, real ardour for the subject material is of absolute significance if the format is ever going to succeed once more.
Everyone knows this instinctively. How many people take pleasure in Bake Off, with out ever having made a cake? How many people love Bob Ross, with out ever having taken up the comb? Half of the individuals who watch Grasp Chef in all probability microwave most of their dinners. Enthusiasm is the important thing driver in all of this stuff: it’s enticing. It’s endearing. By way of this beloved trio, it made family names of the Aston Martin DB9 and the Pagani Zonda, vehicles which the overwhelming majority of human beings can be fortunate to get inside 200ft of, not to mention drive. We’re a nation of Mondeo drivers, however all of us have fond recollections of Clarkson’s exploits within the Bugatti Veyron.
If The Grand Tour is to proceed, as is outwardly the plan, its presenters have to be real automotive nuts. Mike Fernie, at present the primary presenter of Drivetribe, would absolutely be an excellent shout. Gamer Community’s personal Mike Channell – who I as soon as labored with on Prime Gear’s ill-fated gaming spin off – can be on the brief listing if I have been these guys. An surprising and daring selection can be Chris Harris, a fan favorite of Prime Gear’s post-Clarkson period who’s genuinely good. Izzy Hammond, Richard’s daughter, has additionally confirmed herself succesful on Drivetribe, and her ardour for the topic is obvious for all to see, accusations of nepotism be damned (that is Britain, the entire thing runs on nepotism, it determines who will get the particular golden hat that claims you are head of state).
I’m simply spitballing right here. Who is aware of the way it’ll shake out – or who with. So long as it’s not Chris Evans, whom the British public have lengthy been gaslit into believing is a well-liked broadcaster regardless of none of us really understanding anybody who likes him, we’ll be off to an excellent begin. However whoever it’s must have an infectious enthusiasm for all issues motoring within the twenty first century: which suggests giving us all causes to like the electrical automotive.
