The Grand Tour presenter Jeremy Clarkson has issued streaming service Amazon Prime a stern warning about the future of the show as many fans eagerly await the last episode – aptly titled One For The Road.
Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have bowed out after eight years on the show and ended their 22-year career with one another earlier this year – dissolving their Grand Tour producing company W. Chump and Sons on July 11.
The synopsis for the final episode reads: “In their last ever Grand Tour adventure, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May ignore the instructions of Mr. Wilman and head to Zimbabwe in three cars they’ve always wanted to own.
“A Lancia Montecarlo, a Ford Capri 3-litre, and a Triumph Stag, for a stunning road trip through beautiful and sometimes challenging landscapes leading to an emotional ending on a strangely familiar island.”
Despite the trio’s reign over the series coming to an end, fans were pleased to hear that it isn’t the end of the series altogether after production company Studio Lambert won the contract to make more episodes with new presenters.
Few details are known about what the new format will be alongside who will be in the driving seat, with Hammond previously noting to Yahoo UK: “The key thing on that whole issue, [is] we had decided years ago that we wanted to be in control.
“Having set off on this incredible adventure that none of us thought would ever come our way, we all wanted to be the ones — and I don’t just mean us three, all of us— to decide when where and how we landed it, and we have done.”
May added to Radio Times in June last year: “I mean, some people have said we’ve been cancelled. But really we’re getting quite close to the end of our contract, but we didn’t really have any particular plans to keep going because we’re all really just getting a bit old. It might be time to let someone else have a crack at it.”
Clarkson has now weighed in on the future of the series they put their heart and soul into, and issued a stern warning to Amazon Prime over how it will continue their legacy.
He recently said: “My advice to Amazon would be – and I’ve given this to them already – for heaven’s sake, do not get well-known people who ‘like’ cars.
“Because when you do that show it has to be your life. No, you can’t open supermarkets. No, you can’t appear on another show. If you’re not actually filming, you’re thinking about what the next thing is that you’re going to film. It has to be all-consuming,” The Sun reported.
“But there’s no point hiring, you know, somebody who ‘likes’ cars. Because that’s not enough. I would get three complete unknowns. Start small, like we did. They’ve got to be absolute petrol heads.
“I’ve got to be able to show them a picture of a quarter of a door mirror from any car ever made, and they’ve got to know what it is. I’d go to motoring journalists. James, Richard and I are all motoring journalists.
“That would be my advice if you want to continue with it, and I would hope that Amazon does continue with it.”
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The Diddly Squat owner recently explained his thinking behind wanting to drive the “unreliable” Lancia for his final car, and revealed: “The premise of the original Botswana film was: why, when you leave London and move to Surrey, do you always buy yourself a 4×4? You don’t need one.
“To prove this, we decided to drive three perfectly ordinary cars across Botswana. I’ve always liked the premise that cars are much tougher than you think they are. They can take so much punishment; people don’t believe how much their car can take before it expires.
“So, we did a similar thing this time: the three that we took to Zimbabwe were, on the face of it, ridiculous, but as you can see in the film, they survive. The concept was just driving cars we liked.
“The car I drove was a Lancia which I found amusing because everybody knows Lancia’s are the most unreliable cars ever made. So, I really wanted to do the Lancia again for the last film, an even more stupid Lancia.”
