Tonight, I look at the future of sports cars.
James investigates the future of, quite literally, everything.
And Richard Hammond smashes up another the caravan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello.
Hello, everybody. Hello and welcome. Welcome. Thank you so much.
Now, we begin tonight with a tribute,
a birthday tribute, in fact, to Top Gear's favourite motor sport.
It's not Formula One. It's not rallying.
It's something more humble, and yet more exciting than both.
Yes, we're here to light some candles, 50 of them, in fact, for British touring cars.
And in that 50 years, show me another sport where there has been more close racing,
more overtaking,
and more amazing driving.
Nothing comes close for excitement. Oh, my goodness!
Touring car racing was created to help the motor industry shift metal in the post-war years.
Every car on the track looked like the one your dad drove.
And this, the mark I Jaguar, was one of the first real stars.
Tyres - they were skinny, very,
and also crossply, which means you went everywhere sideways.
Roy James, the getaway driver for the Great Train Robbers, was a particular fan.
When he was stealing a Jaguar for a getaway car,
he always made a point of taking one that had been prepared for touring car racing.
But then, in the mid-60s, the Jags had their noses put out of joint because there was an invasion.
The Mustang, the Falcon and Chevy Chimera.
Their massive V8s were a most unwelcome intrusion into this British sport.
But the Yank invasion did bring about
one of the best and most unique aspect of British touring car racing.
We call it a David and Goliath effect.
Basically, you had small engines, nimble Escorts and Mini's up against five-litre V8 monsters.
With the big boys fast on the straights,
but the minnows quicker through the corners, the racing was incredible.
He's challenging for the lead and Marsh is challenging for second.
What a race this is!
Naturally, the Mini's, being plucky Brits, were involved in quite a lot of this David and Goliath stuff.
And in their over-eagerness, demonstrated that other great trait of touring cars - crashing.
But BTCC isn't just about crashing. It has many other fine qualities.
It is the only sport where, over the years, we've seen loads of F1 superstars up close in showroom cars.
Graham Hill.
Jim Clark.
Nigel Mansell.
All F1 world champions who were fond of a good touring car race.
Mind you, even though they were racing at lower speeds than in F1,
that didn't stop them crashing.
Here, for example, is Mansell crashing.
And here is Gabriele Tarquini crashing.
Oh, it's Tarquini!
But let's not get hung up on crashing.
As I say, touring cars is about so much more than that.
Everyone agrees Ford brought motor sport to the working man, some say they did it through rallying.
But I disagree.
I say they started this social revolution through touring cars.
Escorts, Cortinas and Capris.
Over the decades, they had the lot.
But their crowning glory was this - the Sierra Cosworth.
Two litres turbocharged up to 550 brake horse power.
In the late '80s, it was invincible.
It won 43 races.
The Fords were hungry for wins and inevitably, in their over-eagerness, there were some crashes.
But let's not lower the tone of this film with gratuitous crashes.
Touring cars is, as I say again, about so much more than that.
Especially during the 1990s, a decade when all the engines were capped at two litres
and nearly every manufacturer was taking part.
Basically, every rep car in the high street was out there swapping paint.
In the last race of 1992, for instance, in the final two laps,
any one of three drivers could have won the championship.
And just look at the kind of racing that produced.
One of the contenders, Steve Soper, having been punted off
and now fighting his way from the back, drove out of his skin.
Soper goes through to fourth position inside the Vauxhall.
Tim Harvey in the second BMW is on the inside.
He's gone through. But John Cleland is attacking Soper. He's up on two wheels. Soper holds his line.
He attacks again as they... He goes into a spin!
That one race alone sums up everything that's so brilliant about touring cars.
And even though the '90s was the high budget corporate era,
naturally, there were a few spills along the way.
Here.
And here.
So, happy birthday, touring cars.
And I still can't quite put my finger on why we like it so much.
I love it. I love it.
The only problem is...
for the last, what, two or three years, it hasn't really been as good as it used to be.
It'll be worse next year because Seat has pulled out so it's just going to be Vauxhalls.
I've just thought of a way it could be rescued. Oh, God.
No! No, honestly, you'll like this.
I'm sure I will, but I bet it's not realistic. Let me run that past you.
You line all the cars up on the grid, and then just before the flag drops, set them all on fire.
Yeah, like I said...
Think, think, think! You can either drive slowly,
hoping that the car isn't completely engulfed before the race is over,
or very fast to try and put the flames out. Imagine, who here would like to see that?
CHEERING
That's 100% of British people
want the BTCC to become the Burning Touring Car Championship. Yep. Shall we do the news now?
Right, the news.
A lot of people are angry that Jeremy and I may have set fire to a Morris Marina we bought last week.
Yeah, we've got a shot of it here, look, actually on fire.
This has enraged the Morris Marina Owners' Club. The what?
The Morris Marina Owners' Club. Have you heard of an organisation you want to be a member of less?
What I've got here are some of the things they've been saying on the Morris Marina Owners' Club website.
"Top Gear can eat BLEEP and die."
Bit strong. "Clarkson and his cronies should be hung, drawn and quartered, or is that too good for them?"
It should be T-O-O. Small point.
LAUGHTER
This just goes on and on. This is one of my favourites -
"I will send the BBC an e-mail and I don't care if they don't read it."
Well, they did! Ha!
These really are very, very angry, aren't they?
Joking aside, we don't like to upset any member of our audience, no matter how mad they might be.
So we undertake never to destroy another Morris Marina as long as we're on the air.
In fact, we've gone one better because we've been out and bought another Marina, OK,
and it's a beauty. It really is. Absolutely. Low mileage, leather seats...
No, there's no, "Ooh!" about it!
We've brought it down. This is live feed out to our track.
That's going to be preserved as an example of what? Oh, God!
God!
Somebody's dropped an old piano on it.
How unlucky was that?!
This is happening all the time.
It's always happening at our track. It rains pianos here.
It's that new helicopter piano removal company that moved in next door. Careless Airways.
They're rubbish. Yeah, slapdash services.
They've just dropped another... God, now what?
We'll have to get another one.
Let's be honest, actually. I'm sorry to bang on about this,
but the Gaydon Motor Museum, I'm sure they'll have a Morris Marina preserved.
You don't need to preserve two.
It's not like you need to preserve a breeding pair.
You need one as a warning from history.
Right... Now, in a tradition stretching back two years,
it's time for the annual Top Gear look at Christmas presents with a motoring theme bit.
Yes, I've got a bag here full of gift ideas.
Literally, more gift ideas in here than you can shake a stick at.
Go on, what have you got? Starting with this, it's an eco calculator from Renault.
Now, you charge it up by doing this.
I don't know what was wrong with solar power, personally.
I just think some people find this comes more naturally to them.
Renault think it comes naturally to their customers. So there you are. That's that.
Now, smokers, are you worried about the excess space around your existing pink metallic ashtray?
Are you a motoring enthusiast?
If so, worry no more because you can now fill that space
with this plastic disc brake and caliper-themed ashtray surround novelty.
What is that?! Look at that.
What's that? Who thought pink and red would be a good idea going together?
You think that's his biggest problem?! You're worried about the colour scheme?!
Look at these little remote-controlled cars we've been sent. You turn them on.
They make a bit of a din because, for reasons we can't work out,
they stick to vertical surfaces, and then you can drive them about.
Now, this is great, OK, this is fantastic.
Except, of course, we decided to see how big the range was.
Earlier in the week, we decided to try them out
by seeing how high up the side of the BBC we could get them to go.
So, if you were watching The One Show last night,
Supermarkets, along with every store, try hard to stop us counting the pennies in favour of...
LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
Sorry.
We'd like to say sorry to The One Show for ruining your show like that.
Now, is it me? Yes! We're so rubbish at Christmas.
Would anybody here like to hazard a guess at what this is?
AUDIENCE RESPOND OUT OF EARSHOT It's what?
How can you know that?!
Have you got one? Our friends bought us one as a present.
This lady knows the answer. This is a she wee.
They're with you!
The idea is if you're on a long motorway journey, desperate for a wee,
you undo your trousers... Ladies, this is. This is ladies.
It comes with a little bag... I'm disturbed by what I'm seeing! ..and you fill it up.
The only thing is, OK, the literature here, it says it can also be used
on airplanes...
on ski lifts and, look at this one, "while queuing".
Queuing? What, in the post office? Yes.
Do any girls want to see if they can have a wee in this bag without the person next to them noticing?
What I like is, if you read through the marketing on the box, there's a lot of, "Yeah, go, girls!
"Men have had this for ages," then it goes on about using this thing to wee in post office queues
as if they imagine that those of us who've had one for years, a natural he wee that we're born with,
I've had that for 38 years and I've never got it out in a post office queue to have a wee.
Right, I'd like to demonstrate this. It's what I like to think of as the perfect social leper kit,
partly because it's a belt-mounted leatherette smoker's pouch so you can put your cigarette and lighter in.
It's a double whammy because it comes in with a really big right hook.
Look at the badge... Oh, my God!
An MG smoker's pouch, which means you'll walk into your favourite pub and they'll say, "You, outside."
"I wasn't going to light up." "No, but you might talk about MGs. Get out!" It's shameful.
I have to say, as well, MG branding is out of hand -
MG socks, MG underpants, MG overnight bag,
which is full of all the MG things we could lay our hands on yesterday. We're going to play a game now.
We're going to see how much of it we can get on to Richard Hammond in 30 seconds.
Who would like to see that? Anybody? YEAH!
Start the clock. May, you're going to have to give us a hand.
Ready, steady, go! Let's dress Richard Hammond. Where's the belt?
Where's the bloody belt gone? Shoes... Hammond. Slippers.
Hat, hat, hat. Belt, belt, belt.
Come on! Get the apron!
Shoe off. Give me the apron, apron, apron...
GASPS
It's all broken!
It's OK, it's OK.
Keep going!
Look what you're done to our tree? Look, it's our tree!
That might have happened. Look! He's done it.
I've hit you in the face.
Here, James, you can keep the fairy.
LAUGHTER
Christmas is saved. It is. We've saved that.
Right, back to it.
Actually, can I just make a point?
JEREMY LAUGHS
It's a serious one, actually.
Grandparents, if you have grandkids who like cars, what they like is cars, OK?
They don't like towels with car names written on them.
Apart from anything else, named stuff is often a waste of money.
You can buy a bottle of red wine for £2.99, £3.99 in the shops.
If you get a bottle of red wine with the Alpha Romeo logo on it, it's 15 quid. I can beat that, mate.
This is an ice scraper, OK? It's covered in Santa's pubes.
LAUGHTER
It's got Saab written on it. £38.50. What, for that?! It's given us an idea, this.
See this, this is a plate of sick.
GROANS
It is utterly worthless, but if I pop a BMW badge on it,
£13.80.
It does work, this sort of branding. This wizard's sleeve, for instance.
Absolutely worthless, but if it bears a Ferrari badge, £45.
GROANS This pork sword...
James, don't do the pork sword! This cock... Has it got four rings on it?
Yes, it has. Put this cock in your wizard's sleeve...
It's all gone horribly wrong.
OK, that is the end of the news,
so let's move it on now have to brown rice eco cars.
The trouble is that they're a bit like cod liver oil.
Very good for you, but you'd rather have a plate of steak and chips.
Take the Toyota Prius here and the G-Wiz - very earnest.
But there's nothing here to make an ordinary human being go, "Pwah, yeah, I want one of those."
Now, however, there is an eco electric car which does.
It's called the Tesla.
It's made in California, it's based on the Lotus Elise...
..and, as a result, it looks good.
However, you are going to look like a bit of a berk driving around in the low-slung convertible sports car
if you get burned off at the lights by a fat jogger.
The thing is, though, Tesla say it's pretty nippy
so what I've done is lined it up alongside a normal petrol-powered Elise
and now we shall see which is the fastest in a drag race.
BLEEPING Right, it's on...I think.
There's no noise at all, but put it into drive. There's a one speed gearbox.
They tried it with a two-speed - that kept breaking, so one it is.
We're in drive and I'm ready.
God almighty!
Wave goodbye to dial up
and say hello to the world of broadband motoring.
12,500rpm, I cannot believe this!
That's biblically quick!
This car is electric!
Literally.
The top speed may only be 125...
..but there's so much torque it does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.
Not bad from a motor that's the size of a watermelon and only has one moving part.
And even more not bad when you start looking into the costs.
Filling a normal Elise with petrol costs £40.
Filling this with cheap-rate electricity costs just £3.50.
It's not what you'd call quiet -
a fair bit of wind noise from around the roof and there's a lot of tyre roar.
But that's a small price to pay when you consider the upsides.
And I haven't even got to the really big upside yet.
An electric G-Wiz, with its old-fashioned batteries,
has a top speed of a horse and is out of juice after 40 miles or so.
This runs on the same sort of batteries that you get in a laptop,
but it has 6,831 of them.
So Tesla say, even if you drive quickly,
it'll go 200 miles between trips to the plug.
SCREECHING
Of course, putting 6,000 laptop batteries in a car does add a fair bit of weight.
Half a tonne, to be exact, and that does affect the handling slightly.
The chassis is aluminium and the body is carbon fibre, which, of course, is very light,
but with that big lump of batteries in the middle, it's kind of like me -
thin at one end, thinning at the other, and a big fat bit in the middle.
Couple that to wheels which are set up for rolling resistance rather than handling,
and the result is this.
The Elise will squeak past in a hammerhead.
Yes, come on!
Come on!
Hello! Bye!
The volthead has overtaken the petrolhead.
And yes, yes, I've just heard, it IS snowing in hell.
This car really was shaping up to be something wonderful,
but then...
ENGINE CUTS OUT Oh.
Although Tesla say it will do 200 miles, we worked out that, on our track, it'd run out after 55 miles
and if it does run out, it's not a quick job to charge it up again.
To fill the tank on a normal car takes what? A couple of minutes?
To fully recharge the batteries in this
from a normal 13 amp socket like that takes 16 hours.
So, to get from here to the top of Scotland would take more than three days.
And before green people say it's a price worth paying,
let's not forget where the electricity in this socket is coming from.
Of course, you could get yourself a little windmill, like that,
which generates electricity at no cost to you or a jolly polar bear.
But to charge a Tesla from something like that would take 600 hours.
That's 25 days. And that's assuming it's windy,
which it isn't.
Perhaps, then, the best idea is to have two Teslas, so you can use one while the other is charging.
Unfortunately, that's quite an expensive solution
because Teslas cost £92,000 each.
92,000!
They're three times more expensive than Elises.
It's madness!
And it doesn't appear you get much in the way of reliability either.
Oh, I don't believe this. The motor's overheating and I've got reduced power.
While it cooled down, we went to get the silver car out again -
only to find that while it was being charged, its brakes had broken.
So then, with the light fading, we had no cars at all.
I did think that the Teslas would bring
a bit of peace and quiet to our track with their electric motors.
I didn't think it would be this much peace and quiet, though.
That is the sound of silence.
What we have here then is an astonishing technical achievement.
The first electric car that you might actually want to buy.
It's just a shame that in the real world, it doesn't seem to work.
I tried, to be fair. I did try, but it didn't work.
It's not good, though, is it?
I think the price will go down. Once... What's he called?
Brad Cruise and Leonardo Di Clooney - once they've bought 600 each, then the price will drop.
Once they've made a few, they'll get better at the reliability.
That's as maybe, but, as I aim to demonstrate later in the show,
battery-powered electric cars will soon die altogether.
We're looking forward to that. I am anyway.
Now, we have to find how fast the Tesla goes round our track.
That of course means handing it over to our racing driver.
Some say that he doesn't like to get his helmet wet.
A point that was proved last week, when he was caught in the back of shot by an eagle-eyed viewer.
All we know is, he's called The Stig.
There he goes, to the sound of...some sporty silence.
Its quite eerie. He's powering hard down to the first corner.
Eco-tyres squealing,
steady on umbrella boy!
MORSE CODE PLAYS
More Morse nonsense there to excite the internet.
He's looking very good through Chicago and it's the hammerhead next.
Hard on the brakes. The Tesla has a system that uses energy from the brakes to top up the batteries.
Feels a bit weird because it gives you more braking than would expect, but that hasn't fazed The Stig.
MORSE CODE PLAYS
Time to turn up the dimmer switch, through the follow-through, does he lift? Hard to tell, actually.
But that's fast. Shame it doesn't come with a CD of V8 noises, really.
Two corners left, he really slings it in there.
Here we are... Oh, look, maybe a few released G's.
And across the line!
OK...
It did it...
It did it in 1.27.2, on a mildly moist circuit so look at that.
Exactly the same conditions, exactly the same time as a Porsche 911 GT3.
That's incredible. But also, as James will explain later, completely irrelevant.
We all know the problems faced every day by the elderly.
At home watching TV, something comes on, they want to change channel, "Can't reach!"
momentum in the rocking chair until they can reach forwards and get it.
Ah! And that's hard if you've got arthritis.
However, you can now wave goodbye to the misery of being forced to watch Adrian Chiles
because I've connected this chair to a 6.2 litre V8 engine.
It's the same Corvette engine we used a couple of weeks ago to power the food blender.
Did you say you were going to use it to power a stair lift?
Yes, I did. Sadly the test went wrong.
I used an old lady and her spine came out of the top of her head. It was...
Let's not dwell on who killed who, because it's time now to test this one.
Yes, I think we'll use a dummy this time. Good idea with the dummy.
I should explain, normally the accelerator would be on the chair itself,
so the elderly person could simply push it there.
But, because we're using a dummy, I have the accelerator here.
The idea, we start up the engine, the chair begins to rock
and the old lady can effortlessly make Adrian Chiles go away.
Are we ready to try out? YEAH! Here we go.
ENGINE STARTS
ENGINE REVS VIOLENTLY
LAUGHTER
I think that didn't work very well because... No, listen!
It hasn't worked. There are a few issues.
The noise is so great you'd never hear the TV, would you?
There's that and the fact that the old lady has disintegrated!
Her head has come off.
I tell you what we'll do now,
we'll put a star in a reasonably-priced car.
My guest tonight has said that he doesn't like it
when women throw knickers at him when he's on the stage,
booming out in his big Welsh way to the audience.
He's never said anything about men.
So gentlemen, if you want to remove your Y-fronts, get ready to lob them.
Sir Tom Jones!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I can hardly believe it!
A legend! A legend has come among us. Have a seat.
I never thought the day would come when I'd be interviewing Sir Tom Jones. Ah, well! But we are.
Can I begin with your voice?
Yes. Is it true you used to be able to break microphones with it?
I still do. You still do?
Sometimes. It depends if I record with somebody
that I haven't recorded with before
and they don't know how much volume I use.
I remember that Perfect Day song, you remember, a while back?
The BBC got everybody to sing. You came right at the end.
It came on the radio, if you really liked it, you'd turn it up.
Then you always forgot Tom was about to come on, then he'd blow the bloody doors off the car!
Blood pouring out of my ears, so on. Does age diminish it?
Not at all, not with me, anyway. Thank God. Do you maintain it?
Do you eat lozenges?
Yeah, Vocalzones. What are they called?
It's a Vocalzone. Is that one of those black things?
Tastes disgusting! No, they're great.
Made in England. Made in England? Didn't think you'd like that!
Well, I think they were originally made in Wales and then the English stole it.
Why do you think the Welsh are such good singers?
Maybe it's something to do with the Welsh air?
The Welsh water? But you're in Los Angeles now! Unless you import it.
Big pipe over the Atlantic! Piping it in from the valleys. From the valleys.
I was looking into Welsh things the other day. There's a type, isn't there?
Aled Jones, Harry Secombe, Max Boyce. Then you've got Duffy.
Duffy, quite right. Who isn't your daughter.
Not as far as I know.
LAUGHTER
You've got a new album out, which is why you're here, to tell us all about it.
So what is it, what have you got in store for us?
I co-wrote most of the songs. You wrote them?
I co-wrote, with other writers, but there's a lot of me in there.
Like, when I asked Bono to write me a song
and he said he'd write one for me, but he'd like it to be about me.
So, he asked me some questions, I gave him some information and he wrote Sugar Daddy.
That's the name of the song.
What questions did he ask you of Sugar Daddy?
He asked me what I did before I got into showbusiness.
He remembered when he was a kid and saw me on television and he liked the shirts and the shoes.
Those things are in there. The lines are in the song.
That's what led to this album.
We've got a clip which we'd like to show for you. We'll pop this on.
# It would be a crime to ever let you go
# It should be a crime to keep you very close
# No-one else can pass, you're a cut above the rest
# He'd be such a fool if he should ever leave you... #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
You are looking good.
How do you look that good? Have you had...? No. Nothing?
I had my nose fixed. What was the matter with it?
It was broken. Oh, was it? Yes.
Yeah, a lot of that. It was a Welsh kiss!
When you were a kid? Yeah, when I was a teenager.
What about the barnet, the hair? Yes.
If you were going to grow it long, would it be as dreadful as mine is?
I'd think so. Have you got the same... Curly hair. Pubes.
Pubic hair.
Might have gone off-topic here.
LAUGHTER
Chest hair, your chest hair.
Is it true that you once insured it for $7 million?
No, it's not true. I don't know why the rumour started,
but people were asking me about it, they thought it was true.
One thing that isn't a rumour - the knickers thing.
The girls throwing knickers at you.
You've been married to the same girl for 50 years,
did she get fed up with you coming home draped in underwear?
No, I never took any home.
I think the band used to eat it, or something.
I did ask, if any men want to throw any pants...
Uh-oh!
You're well to look frightened! I bet! Anything could happen.
Cars, OK? How long have you been driving for?
In Wales, there wouldn't have been any cars when you were growing up!
I don't mean to be rude, obviously, I just mean it to be a social commentary.
Horse and carts. It would have been, actually. There were some around.
What was the first car? A Jaguar, a 3.8 Jag.
And what became of that?
I crashed it on Park Lane.
But I was banned. I was banned, in Wales, from driving,
because I was driving without a licence and insurance and stuff.
I think you'll find the law in Wales is pretty similar to the law...
I had to wait until I got a driver's licence, and funnily enough,
that's the last time I drove a manual shift car. What do you drive now?
I have a Mercedes 55 SL.
I used to have one of those! It actually sounds like you!
It's funny, I heard you'd said that.
It does! Grr!
Grr! You start it every morning - "Is Tom Jones here?"
You actually live in the exhaust pipes! The lap, how did it go?
Great. But I hadn't been clutching and changing since the '60s.
That bloody car that I was driving, it grinds when you slam it.
Anyway, I was having a few words with it.
Yes. Stig says you were an incredibly diligent pupil.
You apparently were an hour and a half getting lessons.
I wanted to be sure how to do it, especially at that kind of speed.
There are a few places there where you're in fourth gear and flat out.
Follow-through. You know why it's called a follow-through?
Cos you follow through!
LAUGHTER
And then the tyres, because that's also flat out. Yeah.
I can't believe I'm sitting here talking cornering with Tom Jones, how could this have happened?
Anyway, who'd like to see Sir Tom's lap?
CHEERING
Let's play the tape and see how you got on.
It's a bright, crisp day. A very good start.
HE GRUNTS OK!
There we go!
That's first, first! Yeah.
There was one in there somewhere.
Tidy, nothing wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with the first corner.
BLEEP!
LAUGHTER
There we go. Swearing at his tools.
Brake!
Good plan, very good plan.
You can be proud of that corner.
Here's the fast one coming up.
Are they driving gloves? Yeah.
Look at this! Flat through the tyres.
Here we go. Looking nervous!
Whoa! That's very good!
Yeah. Hang on, you've slowed down a bit.
It's a good line through there.
A bit wide through there, but other than the last two corners,
that's a great lap.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, these are the people who have been here before.
Where do you think you've come?
I don't know, I've no idea.
I was concentrating so much, I wasn't thinking much about time.
You weren't thinking about time. Let's have a look, shall we?
The last two corners weren't fast, so I'm not anticipating...
You did it, Tom Jones,
in 1.52.2, which puts you...there.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Let's look for some good news in that. OK.
Has anybody who has ever performed in Vegas been faster than that?
Will Young, has he ever performed in Vegas? I don't think so.
He's a nice chap.
LAUGHTER
I don't think there's anybody there who has ever performed in Vegas.
You're the fastest man who's ever performed in Vegas to go round our track. Sir Tom Jones!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, you may remember that last year,
Fifth Gear broke into our warehouse,
where we keep all our stuff, and they burnt it.
Our chairs, the telly, the cool wall, the lot.
Well, the Chinese say revenge is a dish best served cold.
So we've bided our time and now, we're about to get our own back.
Hopefully.
Our payback will be carried out here, at Bentwaters in Suffolk.
This is the Top Gear test track we don't mind getting all messed up.
And the man making that mess will be our old and indestructible friend, Top Gear's stuntman.
Today, he'll be doing something which appears to be straightforward - a jump.
And it should be one heck of a jump.
This stunt is, in all seriousness, the biggest, the fastest and most dangerous he's ever done for us.
You see, a few years ago,
Fifth Gear set the record for the longest jump by a car whilst pulling a caravan.
Now, with a fair wind and hopefully enough bottle
from out stuntman, we'll snatch that record off them.
The distance he has to beat is a whopper -
187 feet and eight inches - which is why this jump is so dangerous.
He's got to be going fast enough to get a good launch
and offset the weight of the caravan hanging off the back.
By someone else's calculations - not his, or mine -
he's got to be doing 90mph when he leaves the ramp.
At that sort of speed, there's a real danger that both car and driver could be wiped out.
Which is why we haven't spent much on the car -
400 quid, in fact, on this 16-year-old Jaguar XJ6.
Then there's the issue of crosswinds.
If one of those hits the caravan at these speeds, it could drift off course
and smash into the concrete, rather than land on the cars.
That could ruin the result.
And the result we're looking for is that he lands somewhere beyond the yellow and black pole.
This is the distance Fifth Gear achieved with their jump.
All we've got to do is beat that.
Easy...probably.
With the crosswind measuring a manageable 12mph, Top Gear stuntman
did some final technical checks and was then strapped into the Jag.
He needs a long run-up.
Well, if you look where the pole is, he failed.
But to make sure he failed, let's see it again from several angles.
Yep. Fifth Gear are still better than us.
Sorry, we let you down. Well, he did.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well done, professor. Another triumph, it really is.
But it wasn't, actually. So let's move it on to the glittering,
star-studded Top Gear Awards For Motoring Achievement 2008.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
This is the award for the Best Noise We've Heard All Year.
These are the nominations. The V8 bellow of the new Mercedes CLK Black.
ENGINE ROARS
The V8 bellow of the Ferrari Scuderia.
ENGINE ROARS
And the V8 bellow of the Alfa Romeo 8C.
ENGINE ROARS
The winner of this category...
You're going to love this, Jeremy. Is it the Black?
No, actually. The winner is...
Will Young's new single! YES!
Yes!
He wells up when he hears this. Those are real tears in his eyes.
These are tears of rage.
You love him, just admit it.
No. You do. It is a good single, actually. Have you heard it?
See? He goes on about it all the time!
Because his boyfriend sung a little song...
Just let's... Does he sing it to you? Does he?
Can we get on with our awards?
And now, the John Sergeant Award.
This is awarded to the celebrity who performs the best dance
on learning their time in the Star In A Reasonably-Priced Car Lap.
There is only one nomination, and it's Jay Kay, for this -
And the winner is...Jay Kay! Yes!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Tell you what, mate, since you're actually here...
Merry Christmas. Nice to see you. Merry Christmas.
Since you're actually here, Jay, we can give you your other award.
James has it and it's for...
It's the award for the Fastest Lap and it goes to Mr Kay. Thank you.
The fastest man round our track, ladies and gentlemen...Jay Kay!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
That's lovely. You actually spent some money on that.
No, we didn't. No, we haven't. A couple of weeks ago,
were you watching when Kevin McLeod came here and I sat and went, "You did it in 145 point..."?
What that the shape of your bottom when you thought you were going to be beaten?
I have to say, I started off on the sofa like this, and ended up...
Could you tell it was a quick lap?
Yeah, you could see it was. Where did he come from?
He came from Grand Designs and damn nearly... Unbelievable!
He says he's not done any driving before, so it's just raw talent.
That's a load of bollocks!
Ladies and gentlemen, the fastest man round our track, Jay Kay.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Moving on. This is the award for the Most Painful Injury To A Motoring-Related Body Part.
Jeremy's neck in the Nissan GTR.
Whoa! Yes!
Aagh!
Quite a powerful contender. The next nomination - Jeremy's neck
in the "driving a truck through a brick wall" bit.
LAUGHTER
Sorry, Different response. Very different reactions there. Yes.
Obviously different, the reactions to that.
Because we need a third nomination, Jeremy's flick on the ear just then.
I'm sure that was very nasty. That hurt! That was the third nomination.
Actually, it isn't the winner, because the winner of the award
for the Most Painful Injury To A Motoring-Related Body Part is...
Max Mosley's bottom.
LAUGHTER
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
We might be in the law courts!
Moving on to our next award.
It is now the Most Embarrassing Flirting On Television award.
LAUGHTER
In third place, James May, for this fantastic, sonorous approach
when presented with two girls during our Alfa Romeo trip through Warwickshire.
I have been rescued and I haven't even broken down.
Well, then you don't get... Hello.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
James, what was that? That's the worst, it really is. I'd forgotten how bad it was.
You have to start with "Hello".
What's next? In second place, Jeremy Clarkson,
for this inept charm offensive on an American girl
in our studio, only the other week.
American. You're American?
You can't be. You're nowhere near fat enough!
It was direct. It was a compliment. Is that flattering?
It was a compliment. But that's not the winning entry, because the winner is...
Jeremy Clarkson interviewing Will Young. Here he is.
Let's have a look.
Let's remind ourselves of when the magic first bloomed for us all. Here it is.
I've got arms like pipe cleaners. You're trim. No, not trim.
Fit. Not fit! I'm saying all the wrong things!
Strong. THEY LAUGH
You giggled! You're giggling. That was a giggle.
Who here would like to see Richard Hammond strangled on television?
You giggled! You did giggle.
Time for our Coveted Car Of The Year.
We're not just looking for a car we all like, because then it would be a Range Rover...again.
So this year, we decided to award the award
to a car that does things better than cars which cost a lot more.
So the nominations are -
the Nissan GTR, which goes round the Nurburgring
faster than a 911 Turbo, but costs half as much.
The Ford Fiesta. Makes a perfect landing craft
and for a lot less than the £1.2 million jet boats the Royal Marines use at the moment.
And the Fiat 500 Abarth,
for being everything you want in a £100,000 car for just 13,500.
But we've awarded the ultimate Top Gear prize to a £35,000 car
that came here and smashed the Bugatti Veyron's £1 million face in.
It's dweeby, geeky, ugly, old and none of us would have one in a million years.
But it is our Car Of The Year. Ladies and gentlemen, the Caterham R500.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The marvellous thing about awarding this car our top prize
is that we can now look, once again, at that incredible lap
it did last week at the hands of the Stig. Here we go.
Look at the way it corners!
This is proper, old-fashioned racing car handling. It's not grip.
Look at that. You actually have to drive that car.
If the Stig feels happiness, I don't think he's ever been happier.
That is the perfect Stig car. Look at it.
You're steering on the throttle, you're steering on the wheel.
My favourite is when he comes out of Hammerhead.
Coming out of Hammerhead, just watch - a four-wheel drift. Ready?
Look at that. That's like an old-fashioned racer. Brilliant.
So there we are, everybody. Top Gear's Car Of The Year.
A wonderful thing.
I'm delighted. I think it's all right.
A horrible car. To look at, it is. But it's brilliant.
This has been a little bit of a mad show, ladies and gentlemen.
So I thought I would introduce a note of sensibleness.
In the last series, we talked about a car which we said would be the most important one for 100 years.
Back then, we could only show you a picture of it.
But now, it's ready for driving, so I've been doing just that.
First, I had to fly to Los Angeles, which, as we know from the song, is a great big freeway.
That makes it the perfect place to test the most important car since the car was invented.
Here it is. It's called the FCX Clarity,
and, I'm afraid, it's a four-door Honda.
But if Raymond Baxter, God rest him, were here with us today,
he'd be wearing a perfectly cut suit and he'd be saying that this is the future of motoring.
That's certainly not because of the way it looks, because it looks just like a car.
There's more normality, too.
It doesn't drive itself. It doesn't levitate.
This is remarkably like driving around in a Honda.
What the Clarity is is an electric car, but it's nothing like the Tesla that Jeremy drove earlier.
In fact, it's nothing like any electric car we've ever seen before.
The front wheels are driven by a perfectly normal electric motor.
But there are no batteries.
Instead, this car has its own on-board electricity generating station.
That takes the form of a hydrogen fuel cell.
Now, viewers, you'd better brace yourselves -
either that or turn over to the soft porn and Nazi sharks on Channel 5 -
because I'm about to explain all this.
At the back of the car is a fuel tank exactly where you'd expect it to be, but instead of
filling it with petrol or diesel, it is filled with compressed hydrogen.
This hydrogen is combined with oxygen from the air in the fuel cell.
In a rather complicated and boring way, that makes electricity.
That electricity is then used to drive the electric motor,
which turns the front wheels, like it might do in a perfectly normal front-wheel-drive car.
The whole process is controlled... Ahem!
The whole process is controlled by a box of electronics under the bonnet where the engine would normally be.
That really is all there is to it.
It's the fuel cell and the hydrogen tank that goes with it
league to every other electric car.
So far, most electric cars have been appalling little plastic snot boxes
that take all night to recharge and take half a minute to reach their maximum speed of 40,
and then run out of juice miles from anywhere.
Prius? Sucker!
But when the Clarity runs out of juice, you just pull into a hydrogen filling station.
The hydrogen is compressed into a liquid, so it's a bit like petrol.
You fill it just like a petrol car.
The only difference is, because this is under pressure, you have to lock it with this lever.
Terribly important, that. If you don't do that, you get hydrogen all over your shoes.
In America, hydrogen costs roughly the same as petrol.
But unlike petrol, it'll never run out, because it's the most abundant element in the universe.
That whole process has taken somewhere between two and three minutes
and has given me another 270 miles of driving.
And there's another bonus with hydrogen.
The only emission from this car is water, because that's what you get when you mix H and O. H2O - water.
Of course, I'm not going to pretend that a four-door saloon is as much fun to drive as that Tesla.
But that said, the Clarity isn't bad.
I mean, it develops 136 horsepower.
So this is an electric car that will do 100 miles an hour
and 0-60 in just over nine seconds, which is right on the money for a family car.
We're belting through the mountains, accompanied by a little "whoo" sound!
This is making my blue ball go all orange. I should probably explain that.
On the dash, there is this little blue circular symbol, which grows, the more vigorously I drive.
The bigger it is, the more hydrogen I'm using. If I put the hammer down...
..it turns orange.
At the moment, the Clarity is only available in California.
So I decided to ask an ordinary Californian motorist what he thought of it.
Mind you, this chap does seem to like his cars.
He's American talk-show host Jay Leno.
This is my favourite ad.
D'you notice, the car is skidding off the road in their own ad? That's how bad handling a car it was!
I'm trying to come up with a bit of a set-up like this next to my house, albeit quite a bit smaller.
'It turns out that Jay, like me, is a fan of the Clarity, not just
'because it's clever, but because it might just be the saviour of all the amazing gas guzzlers in here.'
Car enthusiasts would think, "This'll be awful." No, it'll save the petrol.
It'll save your MG or your Sprite or your Midget or whatever you have.
You go out on the weekend and have fun and put this in the car park during the week.
Much like the automobile was the saviour of the horse.
In the cities, at least in America, horses were being whipped and they'd drop dead.
When the car came along, it freed up a horse to be used for recreational purposes,
just the beauty of the animal, whatever you want to call it.
I think these type of cars will be the saviour of our sports cars - our MGs, Porsches, things like that.
You know how the Toyota Prius is the sort of darling of Hollywood? It's a fashion statement.
Do you know why? Because it has the moral superiority.
With the Prius, you can go, "Look, I am driving an unattractive car because I'm saving the planet."
In America, we like everyone to know about the good work we're doing anonymously.
I'm absolutely convinced that the Clarity is the most important car for 100 years.
There's a very good reason for that. One day, we will, sadly, run out of oil,
and then we'll need something else.
Electric cars have always seemed very promising,
but as long as they're powered by batteries, they don't cut it.
Think of all people down there, driving around.
We've built our lives around the car as we know it.
You get in, you drive as far as you want to go, you fill up, you drive some more.
That is the freedom that a petrol-powered car gives you.
If it's replaced with something that goes for ten yards
and then takes four hours to bring back to life, we'll have gone backwards.
The Clarity, though, is different.
It fits the life we already have.
The reason it's the car of the future is because it's just like the car of today.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So we can think of that car as a normal car.
But instead of filling it up with petrol or diesel, you fill it with hydrogen. Exactly.
And all that comes out of the exhaust pipe is water.
Just water. In fact, the only problem with it, really, is producing the hydrogen.
It is the most abundant thing in the universe, but it's always stuck onto something else,
and it's difficult to scrape off and get to the filling station.
Actually, it isn't really any more difficult than drilling oil from under the sea, and we did that OK.
I presume when they make these things, they won't cost any more
than what we think of as a normal car.
No, possibly less. I actually think they'll be much more reliable
and won't need to be serviced, because there are no moving parts.
Just one moving part, in the engine? It's very simple, mechanically.
So while everyone worried about Honda pulling out of Formula One, They've saved the world!
It would appear so. That is all we have time for.
We're back on 28th December at 8pm - it's a Sunday night - with a Top Gear special from Vietnam.
In the meantime, though, we hope you have a very happy Yule.
Take care. See you soon. Good night.