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The Grand Tour

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The topic of this page has a wiki of its own: The Grand Tour Wiki .

The Grand Tour is a motoring show on Amazon Prime featuring ex- Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson , Richard Hammond , and James May . The show's executive producer, Andy Wilman , also moved from Top Gear to work on the new show, alongside many other members of the cast and crew including directors Richard Porter, Brian Klein and Phil Churchward.

The Grand Tour was officially announced on the 30th of July, 2015 as "Untitled Car Show", after months of speculation, by the online streaming service Amazon Prime. The Name "The Grand Tour" wasn't announced till May 2016. An official trailer for the series was released fifteen months later, on the 7th of October 2016.

It was revealed that the trio had signed on for thirty-six episodes over three series of the show, although thirty-eight would eventually air during this contract, including two double-part specials. The first episode of the show premiered on the 18th of November, 2016. The show's second series premiered on the 8th of December, 2017. The show's third series premiered on the 18th January 2019. On the 15th of December, 2018, the show was officially renewed for a fourth series which premiered on the 13th of December, 2019.

As part of the show's renewal, it was revealed that the show would no longer film any studio segments, bringing an end to the studio-centric style of show that Clarkson, Hammond, and May had been working on together for seventeen years. The show's fourth season, the first to be produced under this new arrangement, began airing in 2019.

On November 30th, 2023, the series announced of it's finale. And then Clarkson, Hammond and May would depart upon it's conclusion The Grand Tour sometime in 2024 and focused of their personal projects and leave automotive TV completely. This statement ruled out a return to Top Gear, after the BBC went off-aired as being 'foresable future'. [1] However, The Grand Tour may continue with newer presenters. [2]

• 1.1 Announcement
• 1.2 Incidents
• 2.1 Series 1
• 2.2 Series 2
• 2.3 Series 3
• 2.4 Series 4
• 2.5 Series 5
• 3.1 Conversation Street
• 3.2.1 Celebrity Brain Crash (Season 1)
• 3.2.2 Celebrity Face Off (Season 2)
• 4.1 Lap Times
• 5 Locations
• 6.1 Studio Links
• 6.2 Standalone Segments
• 6.3 Special Episodes
• 8 References

Production [ ]

The show's first episode sees the presenters kick off with a festival in the California desert

The show officially began filming its first series on the 7th of October, 2015 when Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond published pictures from their first shoot in Portugal. The first set of studio segments for the show were filmed in July, 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The show has since filmed in the US, the Netherlands, England, Finland, Germany, Scotland, and the United Arab Emirates.

Announcement [ ]

Amazon announced that they had signed Clarkson, Hammond, and May for 36 episodes of a new show on the 30th of July, 2015. The show was left untitled for many months with promotional videos being released focusing on the presenters' struggle to come up with a name. However, on the 12th of May, 2016, the name was finally revealed to be 'The Grand Tour', reflecting the worldwide nature of the show. More details about the show were also revealed, most notably that the show's format would closely mimic that of Top Gear , featuring studio segments that were to be recorded in a tent that changes locations in almost every episode.

Incidents [ ]

In filming for series 2 , Richard Hammond was involved in two separate accidents. The first occurred in Mozambique, where Hammond was knocked unconscious after falling off a motorcycle. The second more serious incident occurred in Switzerland while filming the series 2 premiere. Hammond crashed a Rimac Concept car while competing in a hill-climb event. The car subsequently caught fire and was completely destroyed. Hammond, meanwhile, was hospitalised with a fractured knee. The accident, coupled with Clarkson's pneumonia diagnosis, delayed the second series premiere from October to December.

In filming for series 4, the crew were forced to evacuate in Vietnam after monsoonal rains flooded the boats of the production crew. In filming for series 5 , James May was involved in a deadly crash in Norway.

Seasons [ ]

**For a list of episodes, see here **

Series 1 [ ]

The first series of The Grand Tour aired from 18th of November, 2016 to the 3rd of February, 2017. The first series featured thirteen episodes, which saw the presenters journeying to Namibia in Beach Buggies for the show's first special , to Portugal for a test of the 'holy trinity' of hypercars , heading across Morocco in three roadsters , attempting to build an artificial reef using old cars in Barbados, and more.

Series 2 [ ]

The second series of The Grand Tour aired from the 8th of December, 2017 to the 16th of February, 2018. The second series featured eleven episodes, which saw saw the presenters testing three supercars in Switzerland , journeying across Mozambique to feed the poor , racing three old Jaguars in Colorado , building an amphibious car , and more.

Series 3 [ ]

The third series of The Grand Tour aired from the 18th of January, 2019 to the 12th of April, 2019. The third series featured fourteen episodes, which saw the presenters heading to Scotland in three old Italian Cars , visiting Colombia in used 4x4s , driving three Muscle Cars in Detroit , building and driving a car across Mongolia , and more.

Series 4 [ ]

The fourth series of The Grand Tour launched it's first special on the 13th of December, 2019, with the second airing on the 17th of December, 2020, the third on the 30th of July, 2021 before the series final special concluded on the 18th of December, 2021. Throughout the four specials where the trio have visited Vietnam and Cambodia using Boats and Madagascar and Reunion Island using Modified Cars. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, they had to film specials in and around the UK, with the first in Scotland involving a huge array of American Cars and the second between Wales and England involving the theme of French Cars.

Series 5 [ ]

The fifth series of The Grand Tour launched it's first special on the 16th of September, 2022, with the second airing on the 16th of June, 2023, the third due to be scheduled on the 16th of Feburary, 2024 before the last ever Clarkson, Hammmond and May production will be aired in mid-late 2024. The series featured a range of specials across Scandinavia (originally Russia ) using Rally Inspired Saloons, Eastern Europe using cars no-one's thought of, the Sahara Region in Modified Exotic GT Cars and Zimbabwe in classic 70s cars. This will be the last series of the Grand Tour and the subsequent last series done by Clarkson, Hammond and May.

Segments [ ]

Conversation street [ ].

A still from episode 1's Conversation Street

In this segment, usually around 10 to 20 minutes into the show and lasting 5 to 10 minutes, the presenters often discuss the motoring news/topics and the recent events. The segment is always introduced by Richard Hammond and is accompanied by a 10 second title which features black silhouettes of the presenters against a white background. The title screen varies from episode-to-episode; for example, the title screens have, in the past, featured Clarkson in high-heels, Hammond with a bird on his arm, and the presenters with sombreros.

Celebrity Segments [ ]

For each series a new celebrity segment would be introduced however, they proved to not last long. Series 1 featured Celebrity Brain Crash , which was replaced in series 2 with Celebrity Face Off .

Celebrity Brain Crash (Season 1) [ ]

In this segment, usually around 30 to 40 minutes into the show and lasting from one to five minutes. The presenters introduce a celebrity to arrive into the tent for an interview. The celebrity always begins outside of the tent and mostly were 'killed' before they enter the tent. Guests on Celebrity Brain Crash have included Simon Pegg , Jeremy Renner, Charlize Theron, and Armie Hammer. The segment always ends with James asking, "So, does that mean he/she/they isn't/aren't coming on then?" then Richard implies.

Celebrity Face Off (Season 2) [ ]

In series 2, Celebrity Face Off was introduced. In the segment, two celebrities had their similarities. It is interviewed by Clarkson before competing against each other in a timed lap around a circuit located near the studio tent to determine whosever had their fastest lap. Participants use a Jaguar F-Type to complete their laps. The guests include Dominic Cooper, David Hasselhoff, Hugh Bonneville, Kiefer Sutherland, Paris Hilton, and more. Most said celebrities lapped with the automatic gearbox with other also use the flappy-paddles.

The Eboladrome [ ]

The Grand Tour's test track, which is the venue for most car reviews and the track around which lap times are completed, is nicknamed the Eboladrome , for it's resemblance to the Ebola virus. The track is located in Wroughton, at an used British Royal Air Force base. [1] The track is not used for the show's Celebrity Face Off segment.

The track features prominent landmarks, such as Old Lady's House (which has an unexploded WW-II bomb right next to it), the Isn't Straight , Substation , Your Name Here , and Field of Sheep .

Lap Times [ ]

After reviews have finished, The Grand Tour team put their cars around the Eboladrome, their official test track, to see which can achieve the fastest lap time. In series 1, each lap time was completed by The American, a fictionalised version of retired NASCAR driver Mike Skinner (dubbed as the American ). In series 2, however, Skinner was replaced by British racing driver Abbie Eaton .

Locations [ ]

The following is a list of locations in which The Grand Tour has filmed for Series 1 :

• Southern California, USA
• Johannesburg, South Africa
• Nashville, USA
• Stuttgart, Germany
• Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Lapland, Finland
• Loch Ness, Scotland
• Whitby, England
• Dubai, United Arab Emirates

From Series 2 to Series 3 , only one location was used:

• The Cotswolds, United Kingdom

Following the conclusion of the third series, the shows will no longer feature a studio in any capacity, instead taking place entirely on filming location.

Format Change (Series 4 - 5) [ ]

From the fourth series until it's final series, the show's well established format was majorly overhauled. The format, of studio segments interlinking pre-produced films, had been a staple of The Grand Tour's first three series and of Clarkson, Hammond, and May's work on the first twenty two seasons of the revived Top Gear .

Thee are the major changes, includes:

Studio Links [ ]

For the duration of Clarkson, Hammond, and May's tenure on the revived Top Gear and The Grand Tour, a studio had been used as a way to link between various pre-produced films. From The Grand Tour's fourth season, this studio link was completely eliminated.

Standalone Segments [ ]

As a consequence of the abolition of the studio links, the trio's regular standalone segments were removed. This included the power laps around both Top Gear's original test track in Dunsfold and The Grand Tour's eboladrome , and the various celebrity-related segments, including Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car and The Grand Tour's Celebrity Brain Crash and Celebrity Face Off. Altogether we're dropped.

Special Episodes [ ]

The removal of both the studio links and the standalone segments were a consequence of the larger transition of the show away from smaller films contained within individual episodes towards larger-scale episode-long films, more commonly referred to as specials .

The weekly episode had been officially scraped in-favour of the specials usually by one or two episodes per year, these said specials now aired at random at various times in the said year.

Gallery [ ]

updating...

References [ ]

• ↑ "'The Grand Tour' Will End in 2024" , Hypebeast , December 4, 2023
• ↑ "Jeremy Clarkson breaks silence on The Grand Tour exit alongside Clarkson’s Farm update" , The Independent , November 30, 2023
• 2 Cheap Car Challenges
• 3 Hammond's Rimac Crash (TGT)

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Episode list

The grand tour.

S5.E1 ∙ The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick

S5.E2 ∙ The Grand Tour: Eurocrash

S5.E3 ∙ The Grand Tour: Sand Job

S5.E4 ∙ Episode #5.4

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What was the Grand Tour?

Find out about the travel phenomenon that became popular amongst the young nobility of England

Art, antiquity and architecture: the Grand Tour provided an opportunity to discover the cultural wonders of Europe and beyond.  

Popular throughout the 18th century, this extended journey was seen as a rite of passage for mainly young, aristocratic English men. 

As well as marvelling at artistic masterpieces, Grand Tourists brought back souvenirs to commemorate and display their journeys at home. 

One exceptional example forms the subject of a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Canaletto’s Venice Revisited brings together 24 of Canaletto’s Venetian views, commissioned in 1731 by Lord John Russell following his visit to Venice. 

Find out more about this travel phenomenon – and uncover its rich cultural legacy. 

Canaletto's Venice Revisited

The origins of the Grand Tour

The development of the Grand Tour dates back to the 16th century. 

One of the earliest Grand Tourists was the architect Inigo Jones , who embarked on a tour of Italy in 1613-14 with his patron Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel. 

Jones visited cities such as Parma, Venice and Rome. However, it was Naples that proved the high point of his travels.  

Jones was particularly fascinated by the San Paolo Maggiore, describing the church as “one of the best things that I have ever seen.” 

Jones’s time in Italy shaped his architectural style. In 1616, Jones was commissioned to design the Queen’s House in Greenwich for Queen Anne of Denmark , the wife of King James I. Completed in around 1636, the house was the first classical building in England. 

The expression ‘Grand Tour’ itself comes from 17th century travel writer and Roman Catholic priest Richard Lassels, who used it in his guidebook The Voyage of Italy, published in 1670. 

By the 18th century, the Grand Tour had reached its zenith. Despite Anglo-French wars in 1689-97 and 1702-13, this was a time of relative stability in Europe, which made travelling across the continent easier. 

The Grand Tour route

For young English aristocrats, embarking on the Grand Tour was seen as an important rite of passage. 

Accompanied by a tutor, a Grand Tourist’s route typically involved taking a ship across the English Channel before travelling in a carriage through France, stopping at Paris and other major cities. 

Italy was also a popular destination thanks to the art and architecture of places such as Venice, Florence, Rome, Milan and Naples. More adventurous travellers ventured to Sicily or even sailed across to Greece. The average Grand Tour lasted for at least a year. 

As Katherine Gazzard, Curator of Art at Royal Museums Greenwich explains, this extended journey marked the culmination of a Grand Tourist’s education.  

“The Grand Tourists would have received an education that was grounded in the Classics,” she says. “During their travels to the continent, they would have seen classical ruins and read Latin and Greek texts. The Grand Tour was also an opportunity to take in more recent culture, such as Renaissance paintings, and see contemporary artists at work.” 

As well as educational opportunities, the Grand Tour was linked with independence. Places such as Venice were popular with pleasure seekers, boasting gambling houses and occasions for drinking and partying.  

“On the Grand Tour, there’s a sense that travellers are gaining some of their independence and having a lesson in the ways of the world,” Gazzard explains. “For visitors to Venice, there were opportunities to behave beyond the social norms, with the masquerade and the carnival.” 

Art and the Grand Tour 

Bound up with the idea of independence was the need to collect souvenirs, which the Grand Tourists could display in their homes.  

“The ownership of property was tied to status, so creating a material legacy was really important for the Grand Tourists in order to solidify their social standing amongst their peers,” says Gazzard. “They were looking to spend money and buy mementos to prove they went on the trip.” 

The works of artists such as those of the 18th century view painter Giovanni Antonio Canal (known as Canaletto ) were especially popular with Grand Tourists. Prized for their detail, Canaletto’s artworks captured the landmarks and scenes of everyday Venetian life, from festive scenes to bustling traffic on the Grand Canal . 

In 1731, Lord John Russell, the future 4th Duke of Bedford, commissioned Canaletto to create 24 Venetian views following his visit to the city. 

Lord John Russell is known to have paid at least £188 for the set – over five times the annual earnings of a skilled tradesperson at the time.  

“Canaletto’s work was portable and collectible,” says Gazzard. “He adopted a smaller size for his canvases so they could be rolled up and shipped easily.” 

These detailed works, now part of the world famous collection at Woburn Abbey, form the centrepiece of Canaletto’s Venice Revisited at the National Maritime Museum . 

Who was Canaletto?

The legacy of the Grand Tour 

The start of the French Revolution in 1789 marked the end of the Grand Tour. However, its legacy is still keenly felt. 

The desire to explore and learn about different places and cultures through travel continues to endure. The legacy of the Grand Tour can also be seen in the artworks and objects that adorn the walls of stately homes and museums, and the many cultural influences that travellers brought back to Britain. 

Canaletto's Venice Revisited

Main image:  The Piazza San Marco looking towards the Basilica San Marco and the Campanile by Canaletto . From the Woburn Abbey Collection . Canaletto painting in body copy:  Regatta on Grand Canal  by Canaletto  From the Woburn Abbey Collection

The Grand Tour: This Is What Happened To The Carnage A Trois Trebuchet

The Grand Tour’s second pandemic special saw Jeremy Clarkson , Richard Hammond , and James May driving a number of french cars from Wales to the South Coast of England, and while they were restricted to the UK due to the pandemic, it was one of their best episodes yet.

But many questioned what happened to the amazing trebuchet they used to fling a car over the Channel to France. Well, in a recent video by DriveTribe that explores the company that makes The Grand Tour’s crazy contraptions, presenter Mike Fernie finds out how it came to its sticky end.

The trebuchet was built by the company HMS Engineering. These guys create all of the whacky and wonderful things you’ve seen used on Top Gear and The Grand Tour , and a number of other TV shows. But they also create work for other businesses such as an off-road track that winds itself through a Boeing for Land Rover.

They also created The Grand Tour’s trebuchet, which company boss Hadrian Spooner describes as “a piece of art” before admitting that it’s no longer with them.

“It’s gone, melted down, cut up,” he said to a saddened Mike Fernie. Spooner explains that something like the trebuchet would be a liability for the production company if anyone was to get hurt by it while being in storage, or if anyone was to use it wrongly or as a weapon. The easiest thing to do with builds like this is to destroy them.

“I used to think it was a crying shame, but when you’ve done so much of it, you just realise it’s what has to happen.”

He goes on to explain how the ask from The Grand Tour was “significantly past the world record”, and what he built was “one of the biggest in the world”.

HMS Engineering is currently building something for an upcoming episode of The Grand Tour, and while it’s currently being hidden from view, we’re very excited to see it being used when the time comes.

Steven Douglas

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‘Grand Tour' Review: Miguel Gomes' Avant-Garde Eastern Odyssey Is Not Recommended For Tourists – Cannes Film Festival

After the extraordinary triple whammy of Emelia Perez , The Substance and Anora , here comes Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes with a blast of cinematic chloroform to calm the Cannes Competition down a touch.

A talky, experimental odyssey through the far east, it deals with issue of colonialism and gender, but in such an oblique way that it's hard to fathom without referring to the rather cryptic press notes that come with it. Fans of Gomes's deadpan style - with which he broke out in 2012 when his film Tabu became an arthouse favorite on the festival circuit - will no doubt respond to its eccentricity, its wry irony and its undoubtedly striking monochrome cinematography. Less enlightened viewers may wish to take a pillow.

The film takes place in two timeframes. The fictional narrative takes place in 1918 and begins with British civil servant Edward Abbot (Gonçalo Waddington) arriving at Mandalay station in Burma. Although he apparently hasn't seen his fiancée Molly Singleton (Crista Alfaiate) for seven years, Edward is drunk, wearing a groom's outfit, and carrying a bunch of flowers. But that's not necessarily what we see. Instead, and throughout, we mostly hear the story in voiceover, performed by a variety of unnamed narrators, male and female, from whichever country its protagonists are in at the time. It takes some getting used to, since often the footage used is from the present day, much of it showing how modern the east has become, with its traffic-heavy cities and love of karaoke.

Edward catches the midnight train to Rangoon, and then takes a ship to Singapore, where he stays at the swanky Raffles hotel and meets an old acquaintance, Timothy (Cláudio da Silva), an expat of no fixed means with an outstanding bill for 18 Singapore Slings drunk the night before. Timothy is Molly’s cousin and considers Edward to be a lucky man. He also thinks that, because of his travels, he is a spy, which Edward refuses to confirm or deny. When a telegram arrives from Molly ("ARRIVING. STOP"), and Edward takes off again on his travels, this time to Bangkok, with a tour guide and his three wives.

This, effectively, is the plot. Apparently inspired by a briefly mentioned anecdote in Somerset Maugham's 1930 travel diary The Gentleman in the Parlor , in which the writer recalled an encounter with a fellow Brit who was running away from the prospect of an unhappy marriage. Gomes takes this scenario a step further when, around the halfway mark, Molly appears and takes over from Edward as the protagonist, following his ghost trail through Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan. Sometimes there are flashes of color, and, mysteriously, Gomes frequently returns to a street puppeteer - scored with chiming Javanese gamelan music - who tells the story of a giant god and a mortal couple.

Gomes films it all in his traditional pastiche visual style, a deliberate throwback to silent cinema, complete with frequent use of iris-ins to end a scene. The leads, similarly, give theatrical performances that are anything but natural (or British), and play their scenes on busy, exquisitely designed soundstages.

The push-pull dynamic of the man terrified of commitment and a woman in pursuit is mildly entertaining, much like an early Guy Maddin movie, but the political subtext, as it was in Tabu , is a little trickier to define. Gomes has enough admirers now that there's a small but dedicated audience for his sophisticated meditations on history and culture, one that is ready and willing to read into his verbose juxtapositions of fact and fiction, today and yesterday. For the rest of us, though, it all seems a little too much like hard work.

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‘Grand Tour’ Review: Miguel Gomes’ Dreamy, Delirious Time-Swirling Travelogue Through East and Southeast Asia

Bristling with life and song and revelatory collisions between cultures and timeframes, the Portuguese master's Cannes Competition title is a healing balm for trying times.

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All we know is that, when this low-level British diplomat (who, like all the British characters, whether they hail from London or pine for Yorkshire, speaks in Portuguese) shows up at Mandalay train station, it is 1918, near midnight and he is drunk. The next day, when he goes to pick Molly up from her arriving steamship, his nerve suddenly fails, and before he even claps eyes on her, he scarpers onto the next ship bound for Singapore.

This is the story of “Grand Tour,” but it is not the half of “Grand Tour.” From the beginning, Gomes’ eccentric, puckish sensibilities are in evidence, with every beautifully rendered black-and-white, period-set interior alternating with bustling, bristling contemporary footage of the various towns and countries featured. Between 1918 and now, some of them have changed their names — Burma is now Myanmar, Siam is now Thailand — but none have changed their spirit, a fact that the seemingly reckless but actually deceptively meticulous construction makes clear.

Sometimes in color, sometimes in monochrome, with the narrators speaking the local lingo and knitting Edward and Molly’s colonial-era stories into the Asia of today, we get gorgeous on-the-fly snapshots of modern life across the continent. A rickety Rangoon ferris wheel propelled by hand (and foot). Workers untangling the wires atop Saigon’s overloaded telephone poles. Old Chinese men playing mahjong; Filipino locals riding tuktuks; Lunar New Year fireworks exploding over the Saigon skyline; a portly man in a restaurant moving himself to tears with his karaoke rendition of “My Way” before returning to his noodles, dabbing at wet eyes.

The film also has a recurring motif in the puppet shows that seemingly every culture has developed, and developed differently, as a storytelling medium. There are marionettes and paper silhouettes and two-person representations of — are they turkeys? Ostriches? Who knows? But that we always see the puppeteers as much as we see their puppets seems appropriate to the sense we get, throughout this overflowing cornucopia of worldly pleasures, of a single intelligence, a particular curiosity and a uniquely skewed sense of humor unifying so much that, in our darker moods, might seem actually to divide us.

Gomes shot this extraordinary film in an extraordinary way. Hampered by Covid-era restrictions, a lot of the modern footage — credited to three cinematographers in Rui Poças, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and Guo Liang — was directed remotely, while the period segments, whether in bamboo forests or Raffles Hotel or aboard a ship whose captain speaks in six different languages over the mooing of a cargo hold full of cows, were creations on a sound stage. But even aside from the occasional deliberate anachronism — like a cellphone dropped in a forest when Molly is on the verge of catching up to Edward — and despite the brash collisions of stock and style, and scripted fiction and found-footage reality, “Grand Tour” is a remarkably coherent, if richly complex experience.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition). May 22, 2024. Running time: 129 MIN.

• Production: (Portugal-Italy-France) An Uma Pedra no Sapato production in co-production with Vivo film, Shellac, Cinéma Defacto. (World sales: Match Factory, Cologne.) Producer: Filipa Reis. Executive Producer: João Miller Guerra. Co-producers: Marta Donzelli, Gregorio Paonessa, Thomas Ordonneau, Tom Dercourt. 
• Crew: Director: Miguel Gomes. Screenplay: Mariana Ricardo, Telmo Churro, Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes. Camera: Rui Poças, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Guo Liang. Editors: Telmo Churro, Pedro Filipe Marques.
• With: Crista Alfaiate, Gonçalo Waddington, Cláudio da Silva, Lang Khê Tran. (Portuguese, Chinese, Thai, French, Burmese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese dialogue)

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Lochdown is the third episode of Season 4 of The Grand Tour . It aired on 30th July 2021.

• 5 Production
• 6 Promotion/Marketing

Synopsis [ ]

Did you wonder what this trio were up to during the pandemic? Well, they took some classic American cars and went on a grand tour adventure through the Scottish coastal roads. There are overheated engines, shouting, plenty of tea, and a whole load of classic car chaos.

Teasers [ ]

Andy Wilman shared a teaser of the intro to the Episode on April 16th, 2021. It shows views of Scotland landmarks and more. In addition, a teaser was released on July 14th, 2021 through the show's new TikTok account. This revealed the name of the episode and properly confirmed that it was official.

The cars used are from America to "show" Scotland what they're missing out on. The American Classic muscle cars were used for the second part of the episode, while the terrible american cars were used in a "Cold War revival".

Summary [ ]

Warning, Spoilers below!

The show starts with gorgeous shots of Scottish landscape. The trio introduce their cars and find out they must travel from Edinburgh to the Outer Hebrides. The trio struggle through the cobbled streets of the city but eventually find their way out. Next, they test their cars against a benchmark time at the Knockhill race track. The trio realise that they can not stay in hotels due to the lockdown, and therefore have to sleep in caravans. As usual, they modify these caravans. However, Hammond and Clarkson destroy their caravans and flood May's one in a prank so they stay the night in a Scottish castle.

The next morning, they switch to classic muscle cars to pay tribute to them. However, wanting to balance out these amazing cars, they showcase the worst in a "recreation" of the Cold War. This is done with a demolition derby of three rubbish cars from the Soviet Union and three from America.

The trio want to find a community that would enjoy the style and flamboyannce of the American cars, embarassing to Europeans. So they drive up to North Uist, but find a body of water in the way. To get over, they build a pontoon-like bridge and reach the American community. However, they are disappointed.

Production [ ]

The episode was filmed in October 2020 over the Scottish Highlands, starting at Edinburgh.

Promotion/Marketing [ ]

For this special, the trio took a different approach to advertising the special's forthcoming release. They pretended as if they had no promotional material (although images were used frequently on their social medias throughout July) and asked the fans to make some images, videos and films to do it instead. This was done through a Twitter Hastag (#Lochdown)

Gallery [ ]

• 2 Hammond's Rimac Crash
• 3 International Buffoons' Vacation