Tonight, we’re treated to the debate of Citroen C6: hovercraft or horse manure? Jackie Stewart teaches Captain Slow to drive real fast, and don’t bother watching the World Cup (on DVD or whatever) because they’ve got it sorted.

We start out with a really lovely looking car. Clarkson tells us that it’s not unusual for racing car companies to start making road cars, and cites Ferrari, Lotus, and McLaren as examples. And another one is having a go: the very famous Prodrive.

Now, I’d never heard of Prodrive before, but now I’m in love with this car. Honest to god, this is what the Mustang will be once it grows up. It is magnificent. It’s called the P2; the body done by the guy who styled the McLaren F1. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s all show and no go, Clarkson warns us.  The engine is from a Subaru Impreza but has a bigger turbocharger. You get 345 bhp (Clarkson is shifting determinedly) and a funny little noise from the wastegate when you take your foot off the accellerator. I like it, it sounds kind of cute, but this thought is smashed forever when Jeremy says  that “it sounds like squirrels are being pushed into the engine–that’s what this is, it’s a squirrel mincer.” What do these guys have against squirrels? He says that since the car weighs about as much as a human hair, it goes like one, too! (he’s got a delighted look on his face.) It does 0-60 in 3.8 seconds and tops out at 174 mph. One reason it can go so fast is that it’s got this thing called antilag, which he  says no one in the world can explain. The P2 is good looking, quick, and with a projected price of 40 000 pounds, a good value…and we haven’t even gotten to the really good stuff yet. The standard engine handles like a Subaru Impreza (surprise!) that has loads and loads and loads of grip and then snaps back into understeer. But if you switch a little dial between the seats, right by the ALS button (which is center and rear differential) , to setting three, then it switches on the electronic brain, and it is a very different animal.There’s no understeer at all thanks to a system more complicated than the antilag. Prodrive’s sent an engineer to try to explain how this works to Clarkson, but it’s a losing battle. There are too many edits for those of us scoring at home to follow along with the explaination, but Clarkson’s face is blank; he’s chewing a finger (his own) and it’s clearly gone right over his head. It’s simpler to show the difference, and he’s set up a circle of traffic cones. Without the differential turned on, his top speed circling the cones is 30 mph, and he’s swinging out wide due to understeer. Flick the magic button, differential’s on, and top speed is at least 45 mph and not a speck of understeer in the tight circles. Regrettably, however, this action makes Clarkson carsick, and he has to pull over to shoot his lunch on the track. Thanks for the sound, BBC!

Back in the studio, Hammond asks how he got carsick, since he was driving. Clarkson claims that he wasn’t driving, he was just sitting behind the wheel when all the technology summoned up the chunks. And that is a quote. Back to the car. The grip is phenominal, and Hammond says that since there’s been all this brouhaha about the demise of the British motor industry, what with 1000 jobs at Vauxhall gone, Peugeot and Jaguar closing plants in Coventry, Rover being gone, and TDR on its uppers, this could be the answer. I’m totally behind this because I want one of these cars. I would sell a kidney, part of my liver, probably bone marrow and blood, and both ovaries for one. Clarkson says it could be, but it won’t because the company isn’t going to make it. Bastards! They say this is what a Prodrive road car would be like if they could be bothered to put it into production. But they can’t. It’s just a technological showpiece that calls attention to how clever the engineers are.

“Some say that the outline of his left nipple is same exact shape as the Nurburgring and that if you give him a really important job to do he’ll skive off and play croquet. All we know is he’s called the Stig.” On ethe test track, there’s a bit of flame from the exhaust as he revs the engine. There’s the squirrels again! As he blows around the track, Clarkson narrates that with the active diff on, it makes anybody look like Michael Shumacher, which in Stig’s case makes him look worse than he is. Stig is still learning Italian; he takes Hammerhead well. “Stig and the computers working together–animal and machine in perfect harmony.” He blasts through Gambon and past the finish. Stig’s lap without differential was 1.29 seconds…but with the diff it was 1.24.3, which puts it just under the Koenigsegg without the wing.

Last year, Clarkson went to California and drove a Honda NSX around a track to race against a time he’d set on a Playstation game. He hit 1.58 seconds and just couldn’t better it; he’d hit the wall of his talent and bravery. Hammond agrees with this assessment, and adds that after this frankly useless effort was televised, a Scottish lady called Jackie Stewart wrote to them to say that she could get any one of them to any racetrack in any car and get them to set a best time, which she could then get them to knock 20 seconds off. . Jeremy is bent over, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Clarkson: He. It’s a he. Jackie Stewart is a he. Hammond: Righto. They decided to accept the challenge and gave him the most difficult pupil of all: Captain Slow.

We find May in unfamiliar surroundings: a racetrack, with a small bag of “go faster” clothes for later. He’s there for his date with Sir Jackie, who arrives in a helicopter, a “typically understated racing driver’s entrance.” Stewart’s a legend; he won the Formula One world championship three times and (May is guessing here as we see shots of Stewart in a racing helmet with a tartan stripe) quite proud of being Scottish. Today Stewart is clad in a tartan jacket and cap. May politely lets the McLegend know just what he’s in for. May: they call me Captain Slow, you know. Stewart: oh really? I’ve seen the bigger guy drive quite aggressively. May: and not very well, I thought. James asks if he thinks he can actually do it, and Stewart says bracingly that although he hasn’t driven with May before, he would be surprised if he didn’t turn out to be a better driver than the other two. That’s nice of him. May: I like that.

The car for today’s challenge is a rear wheel drive–Stewart insisted on this–TVR Tuscan 2 convertible. It’s bright red and actually looks kind of like a bunch of Corvette models squished together. At any rate, this car was chosen because they’re very interested in it; TVR  claims that it’s the best-built, best driving car they’ve produced to date, and because the company is having problems, it might be their swan song. Stewart counsels May to take his time at the beginning, which may not be the wisest choice of words for Captain Slow. For the first few laps, Stewart, like Supernanny, says nothing and merely observes. His race engineer is monitering May’s performance from in-car telemetry. May’s best time is not so good: 2.26.45. May: Sod it! More times around the track and he can’t do any better; it seems as though he’s hit his talent wall as Clarkson did in Laguna Seca. Stewart begins to offer advice: May is overthinking too much about how he’s doing vs what’s coming up. The exit of a corner is far more important than the entry with regard to smoothness, and one of the biggest keys is that you never press the gas pedal until you know you won’t have to take it off. May notes wryly that this was a nice, soothing chat, but that on the racetrack, he does like to make his point. He certainly does: Stewart barks out commands nonstop. In! Brake! More power! Full power! May says that this is what will probably happen to him in hell: A TVR, a racetrack, and a pedantic Scotsman. Ouch a bit. But thanks to a mixture of bossiness and wisdom (Don’t gear early!) May tells us that his lap times start to fall. Power off–brake, down a gear–keep your head together–turn it in! Power on, full! “By midafternoon, the tartan taskmaster had knocked off 11 seconds and allowed me a tea break.”

This might have been quite nice, but it did seem to distract May. Stewart chides him: More power–stay with it! Full power! You’re not using the same road as before. Get your head together! (May waves irritatedly by his head) You missed that apex probably by six feet! Time was running out and they still had to find four seconds somewhere. They pull in for a final pep talk witht he engineers. The computers overlaid the telemetry from Stewart and May, which is something they do when Stewart is coaching current Formula One drivers. The differences are obvious.  Stewart goes into the Yoda part of the pep talk, and it’s back in the car.

More power! Steering angle off–stay left–gently off the power–on the power! Spongelike, May has absorbed all the master’s advice and now just has to have faith in the speeds he said the car can do. Roll it in! Power on! At last, the lap time is 2.06.74–he’s done it. Stewart congratulates him, and May is just delighted: Yes! I knew it!

Then we’re back in the studio, for tonight’s Star in the Reasonably Priced Car. Clarkson lets us know that the last time the guest was here, he was so spectacular they named a corner after him, and introduces Sir Michael Follow-Through! Clarkson admits he’s frankly surprised that Michael Gambon was back after his last outing. Gambon: I thought I was a huge success. I’m a household name now because of that corner. Everyone knows me. Judi Dench is after me. There’s a clip of him going through his corner on two wheels; Clarkson recalls thinking that they’d just killed the Singing Detective. Gambon: Bout time someone did. They chat about the Harry Potter movies and Gambon’s role as Dumbledore as well as other roles, and he tells us that he’s doing his best play ever; a half-hour long play by Samuel Beckett in which he doesn’t speak. He’s also not moving because there’s a camera on his face the whole time, so the acting ability needed is stellar. We find out that his passion is engineering; he trained for it before acting took off. Clarkson asks him if he understands the Prodrive thing; Gambon says of course,, everyone does. Except for Clarkson. It’s just two cogs, rotating. One goes faster than the other. Clarkson: yes, I know, but… Gambon: It has electronics inside it. Because Gambon is a good actor, I can’t tell whether he’s genuinely trying to dumb down the explanation for Clarkson or whether he’s just kind of winging it. Clarkson says he should be a presenter. Gambon: (Sternly) I’m surprised you’re presenting this program and you don’t know about the Prodrive. Clarkson: I don’t know how it works! Gambon: Everyone here does. Ok, yeah, he’s blowing smoke. Clarkson makes a recovery and asks how the old car compares to the new; Gambon says that the Lacetti is easier to drive. Clarkson, having regained the upper hand, says cheerfully that we’re going to find out. Gambon: Oh, god, no, please don’t show this. Clarkson: (cheerfully) Who’d like to see Michael having a practice? The crowd, quite politely, assents. The tape shows the corner before Gambon, where he spins out. Gambon: I was so frightened–look at that poor old man! The audience laughs, and we get the full lap. He’s off in a screech of tires. It’s an aggressive start, but then he has some trouble finding the gear–probably third; lots of people seem to find it difficult. Clarkson calls it a relaxed driving style. He swings wide around his own corner, onto the grass, and past the finish. In the Liana, his time was 1.55. Dramatically, and possibly rather vengefully, Clarkson tells us that his time is one minute…”Due to the unique way BBC is funded, the pen doesn’t work. Increase the tension… no no no no, I shall manage…” 1.50.3.

Hammond says that the car he was looking forward to testing the most was the Citroen C6, but regrettably so was Jeremy, and since he’s bigger…Clarkson tells us that the old Citroen CX was completly  mad in a variety of weird ways, like the vertical mounted radio, but he loved it because it was so different. The C6 still has pillarless doors, a concave rear window, and a suspension that lets it move even when it’s standing still. The interior is a nice, if bland, cream leather. Clarkson wails for eye-swivelling lunacy.The windows are double glazed for quiet and there’s a heads-up display, as well as a drivers’ seat that vibrates if you pass a white line: “Nice–if you’re a bachelor.” He wants it to feel completely different from other cars, and provides a slightly disturbing list of wants: to start it by licking a patch on the steering wheel, rhubarb for the gear selector, and to have it sticking out from the visor. In short, your basic Salvado Dali painting. But because everything is where it’s supposed to be, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong! Costing 29500 pounds, “It’s beginning to look like the cheese-eating surrender monkeys have bottled it.” Most disappointing of all is the handling; instead of flopping around like a boat, like any decent big Citroen, this one corners rather nicely. He asks if the engineers tuned the “oleo hydropneumatic complicated suspension” for cornering rather than comfort, and claims, grimly, that this would be the final nail in its coffin if they did.

Now for a little-known fact: Citroens have been used at horseraces to film them because the oil-filled suspension provided a very stable platform. The challenge: Can this one compete? Off we go to Towchester Races (pronounced, somewhat bewilderingly, as Toaster) . The first eight furlongs will be filmed by the C6; the second eight furlongs by a BMW 5 Series. The road is rough, potholed, broken, and wet. Clarkson tells us the ride is unbelievably smooth, like driving on silk. The announcer is calling the race using only the feed from the cameras, and is having no trouble describing the action. It’s now the BMW’s turn. It’s bouncing along so hard the announcer can’t see anything and can’t tell who won. Well, the C6 did.

Back at the Cool Wall, the Citroen C6 is supercool because it looks like something an assassin would drive. The Peugeot 207 is small and French, and should be cool, but Hammond says it isn’t. Clarkson, disputing this, says who’s got his shirt tucked in? You can’t discuss the cool factor with your shirt tucked in, obviously, but Hammond retorts that at least he can see underneath. Clarkson would go on, but the audience oohs for a comeback. Hammond concedes that it was a low blow–or a high one, for him. Clarkson is texting the muse of the Cool Wall, Kristen Scott Thomas, for arbitration. Hammond: So you’re going to text her? Clarkson: How do you text? Hammond: So somewhere in the world, a glamourous actress is going to receive a text from an old man on a car show asking about a French hatchback. He leans over to observe Clarkson’s progress: God, you’ve got her number. How drunk was she when she gave you that? Clarkson: she was tied up, actually. Oh, dear, now that’s an image I won’t easily forget. Eep. The Skoda Fabio VRS: deeply uncool. Saab 95: uncool. Hammond claims it is a Vectra in a fashionable suit with no collar. Clarkson’s text has not been returned. Clarkson frets that perhaps he should have signed it Jeremy Clarkson. Hammond: Off Top Gear. The Tall One. As she still doesn’t respond, we move on…

Car soccer! Last time they used the Toyota Aygo, and now it has a challenger. “The gauntlet thrower in question is a VW Fox.” It’s the smallest VW you can buy and you get more for your money. It costs 6600 pounds. It has a nice spacious feeling interior, but a dire black plastic dashboard. The engine is a 1.2 L and goes from 0-60 in a rather numbing 17 seconds. It’s got loads of grip, though, and is comfortable, but nothing about it suggests that it can beat the mighty Aygo at car soccer. However, the Fox is made in Brazil, which as everybody knows is good at soccer, so perhaps there’s hope.

It’s the yellow Foxes against the blue and white striped Aygos. The Aygos are apparently made in the Czech Republic, which is also supposed to be good at football. Hammond, team captain for the Foxes, loses the toss to May and has to kick off into the wind. The other drivers are stunt and race drivers. May is going in for a goal but is tackled, loses possession of the ball, and calls for a foul, which I don’t think he gets. The Aygos score anyway. May gloats in triumph, while Hammond cries out in dismay. He gives his team a little weak-tea ”pep talk”, which consists of the following: Don’t worry, Brazil, let’s not be downhearted. We have good qualities, but perhaps speed off the line isn’t one of them.” The Aygos score again. The play gets rough, with cars crunching into each other. Hammond drops an f bomb. At the half, the Aygos are up 2-0. Hammond and May compare car damage, and Hammond accuses May of ramming him. May says that it was just a superb sliding tackle and lets the air out of one of Hammond’s tires.

Things are looking bleak for the Foxes, but the Hand of God intervened and sent a heavy rain. This gives the heavier Foxes an advantage and they score. Hammond laughs. Then the equalizer is scored, and the scoring driver dets out and does a little happy dance thing. May: No! Then, due to a foul on an Aygo, the Foxes get a free kick and score. May: No! With full time approaching, the Aygos score another goal, but can’t get the winner despite aggressive play and good chances. The game is really bottled up and there’s some big body damage to the cars. With time running out, the Foxes score. May: Oh, no! Hammond: Oh, yeah! (cackles with glee) The horn sounds, ending the match. May: (bitterly) Odious little man. Hammond gloats: We are the winners!

And with that, time has expired on the program and that’s the match for tonight.