Tonight: Jaguar’s supercharged XKR vs its twin sister. Why do road works take so long? (Cut to Clarkson shouting at a worker: Come on, put your back into it! You! Man! Yeah.) Also, tonight’s Star in the Reasonably-Priced Car, Jamie Oliver, has been cut. Darn the edits!
Back in the studio, Clarkson (standing on stage with May): Hello, and yes, we will also be showing you a very small man having a very big car accident. But even we (gesturing to May and himself) with our limited knowledge of television, realize that you don’t do that now, you have to do that later on in the show; otherwise everyone would just watch it now and then turn over and watch the final of Big Brother. So what we’re actually doing about that is saving you from yourselves, really. May: That’s one problem solved, but we do have another one, of course, because all the time we’ve been off air people have been coming up to me and Jeremy and they’ve been saying, “Will Top Gear go back to the way it was? Is it still going to be three normal blokes cocking about and arguing?” Clarkson: I mean it is actually a problem, really, because obviously one of us blokes has now become Princess Diana. (audience laughs.) May concedes: It’s tricky. Clarkson: Well, he really has! May: However, Princess Diana himself has said quite explicitly that he just wants to come back onto a show that was the way it was back in the summer. Clarkson: Exactly. Please don’t make any changes, please. May: Yeah, he actually said explicitly, “For Pete’s sake, don’t make a big fuss.” Clarkson: Absolutely. So it gives me really great pleasure, cause I didn’t think I’d be saying this at one point: Ladies and Gentlemen, would you please welcome Richard Hammond! The crowd goes nuts.
Curtains open, revealing aircraft stairs staffed with three pairs of Vegas-style showgirls in skimpy costumes and feathered headdresses, wiggling in time to Diana Ross’ Upside Down. Hammond appears at the top of the stairs as fireworks go off. He begins his descent, apologising as he encounters the feathers: Hello, girls. This is pretty awkward. Sorry, girls. I said ‘no fuss.’ Oh, sorry; sorry, girls. I did say ‘no fuss.”
He reaches the foot of the stairs, and having made it past the final pair of showgirls, exclaims “Mate!” as Clarkson walks to the edge of the stage and says, “Hammond!” and the two exchange a hearty hug. Hammond turns, saying “James May!” as May offers his hand and steps back from any impending hug. They have a heartfelt handshake instead.
Hammond: It’s great to be back. That…um…that whole stair thing –that was the most embarassing thing I’ve ever had to do. (Worse than driving the pink Micra? Just wondering.) May: Well, I wouldn’t say that to any of the people who just had to jump of a Boeing 737 at Luton. Clarkson: We were going to get some wider ones, you know, the big ones. Do you know how much they were going to be to build? 300 quid! We’re not Bill Gates. So no, the airplane steps. This is the big question. I guess everybody wants to know. You ready? Hammond looks alert. Clarkson continues: Are you now a mental? Hammond: No! (Smiles) I’m not! I’m fixed! I’m completely fixed! And normal and healed, thank you. (To May:) What are you doing? May offers a fistful of tissues from a box: Well, you know, it’s a tissue. For if you start dribbling. Hammond: That’s all I’ve had for four months. May: What, tissues? No! People hanging around just watching, waiting for my eyes to point in different directions! For me to go bonkers. I’m fixed. I’m normal. Clarkson: Are you the same person that you were before? Hammond (waving his hands around, and I must point out that the cuff links look strangely formal with the rest of his apparel but very nice nevertheless): Yes! I mean, the doctors were worried because it was brain damage, about personality change or what not, but no, really, the only difference between me now and me before the crash is I like celery now, and I didn’t before. Clarkson: So you’re still shouty, you’re still fighty– Hammond: Yes. May: And if I take you to a pub, are you still going to want to punch me in the face after fifteen minutes? Hammond: Yes, although that’s to be honest more your personality than mine. Clarkson agrees: I always want to punch him in the face after fifteen minutes, maybe less. OK, look. The most important thing, I think, really, is to make sure this never happens again. The crash, because you– (Hammond widens his eyes, cocks his eyebrow) the cat from Shrek 2, I mean, you have used up eight of your nine lives. So I’ve decided, in the future, all the really fast cars, the Lambos, the Astons, Ferraris, I will look after. Hammond: You’ll drive those? Clarkson: Yeah, I’ll drive those. Hammond (somewhat affectionately): No personality change for you either then. It’s business as usual. Clarkson: Absolutely. I’m still the same kind, thoughtful soul that I always was. Hammond: That’s quite moving. Clarkson: OK, brilliant. Hammond: Thank you. Thank you for that, and thank you as well for the — embarassing stairs thing. That’s…great. (More sincerely)There is one more thank you, please, if you don’t mind. The difference here is perhaps I mean this one. Um..I’d like to say thank you to all the nurses and the doctors and the staff in Leeds and in Bristol where I was when I was being stuck back together, and the people at Yorkshire Air Ambulance who got me there in time, and particularly, particularly right now, to everybody who wrote in: some of the people in here maybe and you perhaps, who wrote in just to wish me the best. It really meant a lot and it helped, and thank you for that. (audience applauds) May: Shall we resume normal service? Clarkson: Absolutely. Uh–good idea, because I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet. May: See what I mean? Hammond: Yeah.
Clarkson: For the last year or so I have been virtually cut off from London. Because they’ve been digging up the Oxford Ring road. At one point, they had it down to a single lane and you had to go down that being escorted by a van with yellow flashing lights on the roof at 10 miles an hour. (The rant kicks into high gear, and Clarkson’s voice pitches a little higher, too.) You’d have been better off and quicker on a horse! And the sign said you’re going this slowly to protect the work force, but there wasn’t a work force there. They were never doing anything because they were always in a hut having a health and safety lecture! May (more animated than usual, flashing the lovely red lining of his black sports coat): He’s absolutely right. He is absolutely right. These days, with road work, you never get that sense that they’re getting on with it, doing it quickly and efficiently for the benefit of those people who might be inconvenienced. Clarkson: Who pay their wages! Exactly! I mean, it’s really simple. Close the road. Slap some new tarmac on it, tell the health and safety people to get stuffed, and get the damned thing open as quickly as possible! I mean, how hard can it be? Hammond: Oh! How I’ve missed the pang of dread I feel whenever you mention the words, ‘How hard can it be.’ The audience laughs. Clarkson: We’re just about to find out. (Nods sharply in satisfaction.)
We cut to a road in peaceful green countryside that could, clearly, use some maintenance. Clarkson in voice over: This is the critically important D5481, just outside the village of Bidford-on-Avon in Warwickshire. The surface looks like a lunar teenager’s face. And the council said repairing the one and a half mile stretch would mean closing it completely for one working week. A massive inconvenience for the people of Bidford. (We cut to some shots of Bidforders going about their daily business.) But. We’ve taken the job over and by being efficient and hard working (Clarkson?) and organized, we’re going to try and get the job done in 24 hours.
Cut to the lads standing on the narrow lane by a sign that the road will be closed for a week. Clarkson: Are we ready? Hammond, rubbing his hands together: Oh, yeah! Clarkson: Let’s go! And Clarkson and Hammond scamper off, May ambling along behind. It’s 8:36. Clarkson: Immediately, though, there was a problem. Cut to the lads and their crew at a seemingly unending health and safety lecture. Clarkson: The safety lecture droned on for so long that we really had to get cracking. We cut to Hammond and Clarkson, sitting on a tailgate, Clarkson pouring hot water for their tea. Hammond is fetchingly attired in white hard hat, yellow hi-vis jacket, and orange pants with reflector tape at the ankles. Clarkson is similarly garbed, but his pants are down around his ankles. Hammond: Now, it’s a 1.5 mile stretch and we’ve got to dig it up, repave it, roll it, paint in the new white lines, the lot. Clarkson: Yeah, and because the road is actually going to be closed, we have to have a diversion set up and that’s what James is doing right now.
Who put him on this? Everybody knows the man has not much sense of direction. We cut to see May ignoring the signpost to his left, concentrating on his map. May: All right, this is very simple. He decides that Stratford is on his right (signpost says left) and plots out his diversion. He gets a load of the signpost and frowns, puzzled, at his map. Turn around 180 degrees, James!
The theme from Bridge Over The River Kwai is whistled as a group of men in hi-vis garments accompany trucks and a steamroller down the lane. Clarkson: Normally, for a job like this they’d use 14 men. We were using 32. Pants still not properly arranged, Clarkson gives what he obviously feels is a motivational speech to the men. It’s about as meaningful and insightful as the safety lecture, but finally it’s over, and the machine engines start up.
The first task was to take up the old road surface with a planer. Clarkson and Hammond get the game plan straight. Clarkson: You’re going to drive that. Hammond: Yes. Clarkson: Teeth dig up the road. Hammond: Yes. Clarkson: Rubble goes up there (points to a conveyor belt on the planer) and into the truck. Hammond: Exactly right. Clarkson: Which… Hammond: Well, you can drive it.
Apparently May has made rather a mess of the diversion, judging from the honking and turning around going on. He tries to appease individual motorists.
Hammond: James was being rubbish, but then we were hardly ‘Employees of the Month.’ Hammond’s missing the truck with his conveyor belt and road parts are scattering on what’s left of the road. Clarkson (redundantly): Stupid idiot! It’s not the only problem; Hammond has gotten off on an angle and is ripping up the wrong bit of road. He tries explaining this to Clarkson, whose solution is to power through it. Hammond (rather snippily): There’s a Clarkson answer to a problem. Clarkson: Just–more power. So far, in 40 minutes, we have done…20 yards. Hammond: And you think this is helping?
May has apparently sorted his diversion problem in the village, and now drives along the countryside plotting the next stage. The planer problem has also been sorted, and Clarkson feels that everything’s going quite well when he backs into Hammond’s planer. Hammond (irately): You just hit me again! Clarkson, oblivious: I feel as if we’re working as a team well. The dump truck is now full; Clarkson would like to keep going, but Hammond points out the defect in this reasoning: Because the truck is *full* and *overflowing* and it might not be able to tip it out, which means we’ll have to do it with *shovels.* You pillock. Clarkson, to save valuable time, simply pulls off into a wide spot in the road and dumps the rubble there. A workman nervously wipes his face and the inspector guy is looking disapproving; it falls to Hammond to remonstrate. Hammond: That’s a gate! Clarkson looks blank: Whose gate? Hammond: Does it matter? It’s a gate! It’s somebody’s gate, and you’ve put several tons of…road in it. Clarkson, intuiting the gravity of the situation: And I can’t do a three point turn now, either, can I? Hammond: No, you can’t. That’s the only turning point. He pauses: You’re on your own, mate. I’m sorry. Clarkson: Can you get a digger? Hammond, walking off: NO!
May is seeking instruction for his diversion from a local shopkeeper. It is almost noon.
Clarkson: At this stage, things were going quite badly. So we handed the lorry and the planer over to the professionals. Richard was then given the simple job of tidying up and I went back to making motivational speeches. He’s using a megaphone as the men doing the actual work troop past him.
Soon the old road surface was taken up and the bitumen, sticky stuff that binds the new tarmac to the base, was sprayed down. Clarkson in voiceover: Some people then began to ask if they could have a break, but of course, the answer was no. He’s on the side of the road, picking berries out of the bushes, and says to the camera: This is how we’re managing to speed things up. Lunch on this job is what you can find in the hedge. I’m certain that this makes Clarkson one of the most beloved leaders in all of Britain.
In voiceover: Dickensian working practices alone though would not get the job done in a day. You also need to throw resources at it, something counsils seem unwilling to do. Clarkson’s way costs 7 000 pounds more than the usual way, and he can’t do the math to figure out why.
At 1:00, May finally returns from his diversion to find Clarkson having a power nap. May picks up the megaphone and informs the sleeping Clarkson from a distance of about a yard: Work sets you free. Clarkson starts awake and goes off to bother the safety inspector about reassigning the men who are walking alongside the machines. The inspector points out: It’s double protection, isn’t it. May, knowing this isn’t going to appease Clarkson, interjects: Well, did you hear, though, in fairness, one bloke got run over by that planer machine. Clarkson, attuned as ever to the suffering of others: How interested am I in that? May: They only found his hand. Clarkson: Don’t care.
With the bitumen spread, it’s now time to put down the new tarmac. Normally, they can lay 250-270 tons of the stuff a day; with the Top Gear road special, they’re planning on 1100 tons. Hammond is up at the tarmac plant/quarry place near Tamworth to ensure a smooth flow of tarmac to the road works. In voiceover, Hammond tells us that although the quarry is visually dominated by all the machinery and trucks, it’s the computers that really run the show. Cut to him gazing at all the data on the screens in a horrified manner: Oh, mother of god. We’ve got mixer and pumps, uh…ok, stay calm. Do emails, I can do this lot. That’s what I like about Hammond, his cheerful optimism. He gets the trucks going.
Back at the site, the paver machine is being driven by Captain Slow, a move guaranteed to irritate the speed-mad Clarkson. Clarkson walks up to the side of the paver: Oi! James! May: What? Clarkson raises his megaphone: If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing quickly. May corrects him: No. Well. Clarkson, arguing and therefore nobody’s getting anything done, quickly or slowly: Quickly! They go back and forth awhile. Things are moving along: the crew is foraging like bears for berries, the asphalt is going down, and Clarkson is congratulating everybody on his megaphone.
We cut to the studio. There’s a lovely red Jaguar XK8 on display. Hammond introduces it and says: We drove it on the last series and we loved it. But we always sort of knew it was a supporting act, really; a kind of warm-up man for the main event, the supercharged XKR, which I *haven’t* been driving. Jeremy has selflessly protected me from that one.
The car is spotlit in a dark warehouse. In voiceover, Clarkson: This is it. It has big wheels. Vents in the bonnet. Brushed aluminum gills and a sort of stubbly, coulthardy chin. So you can think of it as the standard car with cuff links and a nice watch. (The car is now dramatically backlit with a sunrise.) You’ve gotta say it looks good. In profile, especially, it’s just stunning. Sadly, I can’t say the same for the interior. I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t feel like a 73 000 pound car. I mean, Mercedes give you seats that massage you as you drive along; BMW gives you I-Drive, and all I’ve got in here is sort of five acres of tin foil.
There’s some nice car porn. We learn from Clarkson that the supercharged 4.2L V8 is a bit disappointing as well, since it’s pretty much the same engine they put in the old XKR. It generates 420 bhp, but so what? Mercedes is putting out engines that develop 520bhp. Fortunately, the Jag is quite light, so while it may not have a lot of power (relatively speaking, of course) it is still quite fast. There are shots of the Jag burning up the track. It gets 0-60 in 4.9 seconds and past 100 in 13, which is good. Clarkson: But imagine how good it would be if it just had more power! Now, you might think at this point, well, there you are. It’s a half-assed car made by a cash-strapped company and that it’s no match for its German rivals. But you’d be wrong. Because this car is brilliant! It’s got an absolutely fabulous chassis. It is the easiest car in the world to drive if you’re a lunatic (he’s understeering like mad through some corners) Honestly, I know of nothing else that’s this good for slithering about with smoke pouring off the back end. Look, ok, here we go, sliding, still sliding, still sliding, no danger, still sliding. I mean, that’s doing power slides at like 110 an hour. Easily. This is just–makes Mercedes or a BMW look like a piece of wood. (Makes a U-turn; the engine works and it sounds absolutely glorious.)
So it beats the German competition. But what about its British rival, the Aston Martin V8 Vantage? (A gray one just screams down the track.) Clarkson: It’s even better-looking than the Jag, and that’s just the start. It’s also even louder. It’s…harder, too, and much more aggressive. Much more taut and angry, and it’s an Aston Martin, which is a royal flush to the Jag’s two pairs. (The two cars are side by side going down a straight.) The weird thing is that the Aston isn’t pulling away and leaving the Jag in its dust; the XKR is hanging in pretty close. Clarkson: You might imagine that flat on a straight line the Aston would pull away cause the Jag’s limited to 155, but ha ha! We tested one the other day, and the Jag sailed up to 175. So while the Aston is more exciting, the Jaguar is even more powerful. It’s also 12 500 pounds less expensive. It’s more comfortable, it’s better equipped with goodies like full leather and satellite navigation. And it’s got two small seats in the back so it’s a bit more practical as well. Emotionally, then, this car beats anything from Mercedes or BMW. And on points, it beats its sister as well. It is quite simply…spectacular.
Back in the studio, Hammond and May stand by an asphalt spreader. Hammond recaps the road-building satire thus far. May concurs that when we left off, it was all going quite well. We cut to the sight of May slowly laying tarmac while Clarkson harrasses the road crew. But all of a sudden it all goes south–they’ve run out of tarmac. We cut back to the plant, where Hammond tells Clarkson that he’s only got five trucks, and all of them are in the process of being loaded and sent off. Clarkson instructs him to divert any tarmac headed for other road works. Hammond thinks this is appropriately devious and says to the plant manager: Your next job, do you know where it’s going? Is it going to–see, that’s not our road. That’s useless. Send it to us. Just–don’t send it to them, we need it. Crank that up to the max and change the calendar (the picture shows boats serenely floating on the water.) It’s far too calm and relaxing. He sounds all commanding and in control until we spy him running after trucks, telling the drivers to get a move on. He even introduces an incentive plan: he’ll pay any speeding tickets. Clarkson says it still isn’t enough and the quarry’s an hour away. Tarmac dribbles in, however, and then…back at the quarry…an alarm sounds, shutting down the operation. Hammond (tensely): What’s killed it? Why’s it stopped? (points to the emergency stop indicator on the monitor. The cameraman has leaned on the big red and yellow button. Hammond looks at him reproachfully. There’s no help for it; he has to call Clarkson to deliver the bad news. Clarkson doesn’t take it well: Richard. Richard. Richard. I’m going to make a suggestion. Don’t come back here. Don’t come back. Go away. Go to Tierra Del Fuego and even–I’m going to hunt you down and kill you there as well. (There’s a shot of Hammond sitting on the curb outside the plant, alone and dejected.) Clarkson updates the crew in another crap motivational speech on the megaphone. He’s going on until May, in a heroic act, bounces his hard hat off Clarkson’s head and tells him to shut up.
We see the paver going slowly, and Clarkson tells us in voiceover: We buried the health and safety man while we waited for the quarry to restart. Only it doesn’t–it’s the end of the day, and the workers all kick off and go home. Hammond relays the bad news. May snaps: What, are you French, on a 35 hour work week? Clarkson boasts: Most jobs would stop at this point, but we used our initiative and found a new quarry that would stay open through the night…And then, just as we were getting on top of things…(thunder rumbles in the distance.) To May: In the immortal worlds of Basil Fawlty, “Oh, spiffing!”
A piano plays “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” the crew is dejected, waiting for the storm to break. Clarkson: Plainly, a speech was in order. As he’s shouting into the megaphone, May slips up, removes the megaphone, and tosses it directly under a passing steamroller and runs away. Clarkson looks down at the pieces.
Clarkson in voiceover: As night fell, the rain came, and on normal roadworks, that would be that. But I refused to let anyone stop because the second quarry had just started to deliver. We get a shot of a gorgeous orange-red moon, and steam rises from the new tarmac. Hammond goes into a shop in Bidford and orders “Cod and chips, 75 times.” He waits, looking embarassed, as the orders pile up on the counter and a long line of customers queue up behind him. He finally staggers out under the weight of two loaded boxes and arrives back at the site. May is pleased to see him. He’s hungry; he’s been foraging for berries all day and wants some real food. Hammond asks him to distribute the wet naps to the men, sure they’ll appreciate the thought; May takes the packet and tosses it aside. Clarkson has come up with a microphone and speakers from somewhere and continues his verbal torture; he finally shuts up and puts on some music–”Walking on Sunshine.” May and Hammond look around suspiciously; Hammond complains that it’s put him off his sausage. Clarkson gets revenge for his megaphone by tossing May’s dinner under a steamroller. “One all, James.” May looks crushed.
Hammond and May take over operation of the roller. Hammond drives, May walks alongside. Hammond is yapping at May when he hits something with a metallic ‘ping.’ Water fountains up. Hammond: Oh, god! Bugger! May (calmly): You’ve run over the stopcock. Hammond jumps down and they run round to investigate. Hammond offers: I heard it go clang. Ooh, that’s bad. We’re going to be in trouble. May: Who are we going to tell about this? Hammond: Ahh…what we could do is take the steam roller. May: And just keep going?
It’s now about 4 a.m. Clarkson: There was still 700 yards to go and the men were flagging. So I brought out the motivational big guns. It’s a recording of Margaret Thatcher. May seems to be the only one enjoying the speech: I liked that one! Hammond rolls his eyes at the camera. The men seem less than motivated, so Clarkson promises that the sooner they finish, the sooner he’ll turn it off.
It’s now 7:36. We’ve got shots of the roller, rolling along, men tidying up the edges. Clarkson: There was still much to do: the plants needed clearing, Hammond needed to get the signs back up (Shot of him trotting across a field) and James and I had the white lines to paint. Clarkson demonstrates his ineptitude with the lining equipment. May comes over to observe: It’s perfect. Clarkson (indignantly): It isn’t. May dashes off; he left his paint sprayer unattended and it’s gone off on its own, spraying white paint as it goes. Clarkson falls to the ground laughing as May wrestles the machine back up the incline. They’ve made an appalling mess, and the council guy doesn’t look impressed. They leave to find Hammond.
He’s put up the signs so that they’re informing the drivers of the conditions where they’ve just been. They run down the road to correct the signs. Clarkson’s pants are falling down. May presents an easy, elegant solution: rotating the post 180 degrees. Hammond and May run back, Clarkson laboring behind, and remove the diversion signs. Clarkson: So there you are, people of Bidford-on-Avon; in just over one day, your road is open. Glad to be of service.
Back in the studio, the audience applauds their effort. Clarkson: We have some Top Gear top tips for the construction industry. Work fast. Eat blackberries. Get 100 trucks instead of 5. Hammond: Yeah, and fit that paving machine with a turbocharger. Clarkson, pointing to May: And don’t let him drive it. Now. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Davina is live on stage. The Big Brother winner is about to be announced. (The audience laughs.) Here on BBC2, however, we’ve got the little fellow’s car crash. (Hammond makes a face.) So come on, mate, talk us through it.
Hammond: We’ve got some video of it, we’ll have a look. Here’s obviously before it happened. This is the car. It’s called the Vampire (shot of what looks like a little yellow cone with big wheels and and enormous silver engine on the back.) Basically, it’s just a socking great jet engine with a chair bolted to the front of it. That’s it…the jet engine comes out of a Red Arrow (the car also sports a bumpersticker: Real race cars have afterburners www.britishlandspeed.co.uk) the steering box is from a Reliant Robin (the good old Robin!) and the fuel pump is from a cement mixer. (There’s a shot of a straight road with lovely green grass on both sides.) That’s the airfield where I was going to be driving it. See, that’s Elvington, near York. There’s a clip of Hammond, in a white driving suit, holding a styrofoam cup.:There is of course one thing you really don’t want when you’re doing this sort of stuff up a runway like that one (gestures.) Crosswinds (the cup goes flying.) Next we see Hammond getting strapped into the seat and getting a briefing from the fellow who made it. He fluffs his hair and describes the challenge: to drive the car and hit the little button in the center of the steering wheel. When he does this, a flame shoots through the engine, igniting the afterburner, and increasing the horsepower from 5000 to 10 000–”And possibly the biggest accident you’ve ever seen in your life.” The audience laughs. Clarkson: I bet when you said that, it was one of those snappy lines to make this look a bit more dangerous than it was. Hammond: That’s exactly what I thoguht when I said it.
In the clip, he’s got his helmet on and is having his arms strapped into the frame. “What are they for?” Owner: They’re arm restraints in the event you go upside down they will stop your arms from coming out of the cockpit. Hammond: I don’t want to go upside down.
He starts it up. The engine screams. “Bloody hellfire! That’s a jet engine. Holy crap! This is terrifying! Oh my god here we go…the thrust is unbelieveable! My head’s vibrating. Holy crap, holy crap! (some comments covered by the sound of the engine) I’m prepared to pull the chute! (It deploys, the car slowing down.) That is–oh, it was amazing (panting) I just want to go faster! Full speed! That was 220.
In the studio, Clarkson: So next time, it was the afterburner. Hammond: Yes, absolutely. Clarkson: And you can see that in the film? Hammond: Yeah, you’ll know when it’s lit because there’s flames coming out the back of the engine.
On the tape, Hammond’s standing beside the car: Although I wanted to do this and now I am, um, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t quite scared. However, I think it’s the fact that once you’ve started that’s it, you don’t mess about with the throttle. Once you go, you go and that’s–you know–commitment. The tape jumps to him in the car, starting the engine. You can see flames from the engine. Hammond: I’ve got to keep going. (Car takes off) Yeehaha! This time through the trial, his comments are unintelligible until he deploys the chute. Hammond: Holy mother of God! Oh, my God! Yes! I can’t describe–I think I’m going to cry. I’m not joking. Every part of my body is full of adrenaline. Oh, yes. I’m so alive. I’m so alive. (deep breathing)
Back in the studio, he tells us that he reached 314 mph, which is an unofficial land speed record in Britain, because you have to run it both directions and then average the speed. It wasn’t Hammond’s intent to set a record; he just wanted to go really fast. Clarkson: So why didn’t you just get in your car and go home? Hammond: I don’t know, really. The thing is, that was at 5:00, and we had the runway until 5:30, and– I know now, obviously.
He’s in the car for the third run. The engine is roaring, it looks like the other two runs. Footage from the camera shows the front tire shredding off the wheel; the car veers off, rolls; the in-car camera shows Hammond wrestling with the steering for control. The car rolls, the engine shuts down, the dust clears, and the ambulance races up. A shot from the driver’s perspective shows the right front tire popping and peeling off. It was 0.4 seconds from tire blowing to accident. It’s still at 288 mph when the car rolls when it digs into the grass, still going 230 when it flips; the roll bar digs into the ground, which is what stops it.
Clarkson: The tragedy is, that would be the fastest car crash ever in Britain, but the Guiness Book of Records people are saying that you’ve got to do it going in the other direction. The lads discuss how Hammond’s got no record at all. Clarkson: The thing is, though, can I just ask, you can see it again in the crash run, ok, your last run, that the tire is starting to come apart…look, you can see it…look, there. Now I’m sorry, mate, but why didn’t you spot that? Hammond: Well, I was doing 288 mph! Clarkson: if I can–a lot–I’m in the office, the kids are shouting, I’m writing a story, I’m on the phone; If a lion walks in, i’m going to notice it. Hammond: It was 0.4 seconds from the tire starting to go and the accident starting. Clarkson: Oh, I could have held it. Hammond: What, the world’s longest power slide? Whilst telling us about the price and there’s no room in the boot. Clarkson: Have you read the highway code? Because it quite plainly says here that when the car goes out of control, *steer into the skid.* Hammond retorts: The experts who did the telemetry said I had the reactions of a fighter pilot. May: He didn’t say it was a WWI fighter pilot. Clarkson: Here I am in my Sopworth Camel, wooden controls fighter pilot…I think we could sit here as we have done for the last few months and take the mickey out of you. Fact is though, I would just like to say you were very brave getting into that thing, and it isn’t something I would have done, and it certainly isn’t something (May) would have done. But more than that, I just think you’ve performed a miracle, really brave, getting well and getting back on the show.
Hammond: You’ve just been nice to me. Clarkson: I promise I’ll never do it again. Hammond: Talk about things that are never going to happen again, can we never mention the crash on Top Gear again? Clarkson and May agree. Clarkson: There you go–we will never mention that crash. That’s a promise. We won’t mention it again tonight (Checks his watch) Cause that’s the end of the show. Think is, though, we’ve learned an important lesson today thanks to Richard. Do please remember–speed kills. (Hammond looks down at himself, spreading his hands.) Clarkson: See you next week, take care. Thanks for watching.
Now, time for a little discussion and/or information. Following the uproar over the crash, this is Clarkson’s column in Top Gear Magazine: http://www.topgear.com/content/features/stories/2006/11/stories/13/1.html and here is May’s as well: http://www.topgear.com/content/features/stories/2006/11/stories/15/1.html
It’s interesting to note how they’ve addressed the situation. It’s a two-pronged strategy for addressing the fallout from the crash. Clarkson takes the broader topic: attacks on the show. People have been complaining about Top Gear for some time for a variety of reasons, and Hammond’s crash enabled them to step up the criticisms. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=406197&in_page_id=1770 Clarkson seriously defends the show–and by extension, Hamond–and discusses why Top Gear is not to blame for each and every road fatality. May takes the more narrow topic: Hammond. He gives us a more personal look at the fellow who was at that time in the hospital and showed us why, despite the bravura that is prized on the show, Hammond is neither witless nor careless, and does it with genuine affection. Although Clarkson said at the end of the show that May wouldn’t have driven the Vampire, it’s revealed that he was first in line for the test but had to decline. I felt that the clips they aired during the episode showed that Hammond was respectful of and aware that the power in the car was a pretty dicey thing. There wasn’t any indication that anybody was just laughing off the safety issues. The BBC conducted an internal investigation in which it faulted the production team for missing the tire damage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/pdf/topgear.pdf The government investigation declined to press charges regarding the accident, but also blamed the BBC for lapses. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6230382.stm
