Tonight: James wears a stripey jumper.
Richard drives a stripey Lamborghini, and we name the greatest car maker in the world!!
Thank you so much, everybody. Amazing.
Now, as we know, as we know, you can never get rid of a baddie, OK?
No matter how much you kill them. Remember Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?
She was stabbed, she was drowned, half an hour later, reared up out of the bath.
Then you got the Daleks, Blofeld,, Peter Mandelson! (LAUGHTER)
They just keep coming back. Then there's Top Gear's perennial baddie.
Yes, it's the caravan. Now as regular viewers of Dave will know
we have, over the last 24 hours, done our very best to rid the world
of the caravan menace. I think there's one more actualy.
That is, I think you'll agree, sterling work in our battle to free the road of these mobile traffic jams.
Sadly, it's a battle we're losing. There are now almost half a million caravans
on UK roads, and the British are the most prolific caravanning nation in Europe.
A title we've held for almost four years, according to the Caravan Council.
In short, they're building them faster than we can destroy them.
So we need a scientific Approach to getting them off the roads, and I may have found that!!
It Worked!!
What you're witnessing here, viewers, is the maiden voyage of the world's first caravan air ship.
I believe this is the solution to all our problems.
There are only two ways to go caravanning: you can have your two litre diesel
Toe your caravan, obscure the view of all the people you're annoying
or you can bring it up. Here. Everybody wins. Driving is more fun
and caravanning is more exciting. However
As with all all cutting edge engineering projects, there are teething problems.
Normally, you drive along with your caravan and your car and when you get to a caravan site,
you have a car to use. I don't of course, so I need
somebody to take the car to the caravan site for me.
And for that, I'm calling on my old caravan-destroying mate, Mr. Richard Hammond.
Yes, And because it doesn't have to log the caravan around
it can be a nice car.
This car will never, ever hitch itself to a swift Rapide.
It's a Lamborghini, probably the least caravanish car company ever, and this
is their new Gallardo Balboni, it's a tribute to Valentino Balboni. Lamborghini most famous test driver
Although he wore a cardigan to work, he was a mentalist. And as a tribute to his mentalness,
this particularly Gallardo is the most mental Lambo there's been for a while. But more of that later.
Because first, I shall ring James and offer him some encouragement.
Hammond? May. That thing is going to crash, and burn
and explode and you'll be scattered in a million pieces across the English countryside.
Don't be so defeatist. Anyway, I've got an address for you.
It's Hunter's Moon Caravan Club, which is just outside wear ham in Dorset.
I've made the booking. They are expecting an air ship, and i'll take for lunch by the river.
Right. See you in a bit. Caravanning in a Lamborghini.
I think he might actually be on to something here.
Let me tell you a bit about the caravan air ship
It's 125 feet long, 110,000 cubic feet of hot air holding it up
and it's a very very ingenious solution, because all the caravan attachments are still here.
Instruments flip up out the table, the gas burners go where the cooker would be,
and can be used for cooking, the beds fit where I'm sitting here. It is still a caravan,
it's just a flying caravan. It floats with the infinite blue. It's superb.
Meanwhile, on the ground, this was turning into the best drive
to a caravan site ever. According to Top Gear research,
37% of caravaners enjoy wife swapping. Well Think what's gonna
happen when the keys for this baby come out the pot! Oh yeah!
As I was saying, because this is a tribute to their looniest test driver,
Lambo ditched the usual four-wheel drive for Gallardo and gone back to
the hairy-chested rear wheel drive, that makes it 120kg lighter
all new steel brakes, instead of carbon ceramic fancy ones. It's Lamborghini's punk album.
Hammond, it's May! Oh Hello!! Your Alive!! How are you? I'm Very well. How's it going?
Pretty good. Slight issue on the horizon, though.
It's not the fastest aircraft in the world. How not quick is it? Well, top speed is about 17.
70 miles an hour isn't bad,, in a straight line. No, 17 miles an hour.
I think Dorset might be a bit far. I've got a new address for you. Another address? Dale Acres caravan
club site in Kent. Probably not my first choice of caravanning
defendant naigts. I'll buy you an ice cream. See you there.
Right, campsite number two. It's now time for a spot of
airborne lunch. This is unquestionably the most
powerful cooker ever fitted to a caravan. Very well cooked on one
side. It's all part of the adventure of
caravanning. Back to the Balboni. The thing is, the basicness makes
it better to drive. The steering feels so much quicker because
there's no four-wheel drive in the way and the gear change, the manual
box feels like it's shaking hands with an old friend.
Everything that isn't basic is price, because weirdly, this
stripped out strictly functional costing £163,000, which is 18 grand
dearer than the ordinary four-wheel drive one, so maybe less really is
more. The Balboni propelled me towards
our campsite in Kent. And then James rang again. Hello?
Hello. Are you ringing from the grave? No, not at all. It's going
marvellously up here, mate. You'd love it. There is one slight hitch,
thoxt What is up now? performance is slightly marginal.
If I get ahead wind of more than 30 knots, I start to go backwards.
can't go into a wind of more than 30 knots? No. What is the wind
speed now? It was 12. You're telling me you're being blown
around Britain? It takes too long to get down to Kent so I will turn
round and go the other way up to Suffolk.
Right. Anyway, I've got an address for you. Why not book us into every
caravan site in Britain before we left. Stop nit-picking, will you?
What a norbert. If this air ship caravan skex his catches on, what
we'll have is the skies full of air ships crashing into each other when
the wind gets up and the roads crashing crashing we'll have cars
crashing into each other pause they With the wind behind me, I headed
for our new destination. Frblg morning, caravan club. Any pitches
available at the White House beach club? What is your surname? Do you
have facilities for people arrive by air ship? OK, are you actually a
Here I am in the village of - here, this village! And it's somewhere I
would never have seen. It's a really, really big tower
over there. That's - well, that's clearly just a danger to caravaners.
Look at it. Must remember to tell James about that. As As it turned
out, at that moment, James had more than a tower to worry about.
May Day, May Day. Norwich golf pap pa golf, I'm about to enter your
air space. You're entering an area of intense
aerial activity at the moment t is imperative that you remain clear -
well clear. Sorry, cannot comply, have no
control over air ship owing to wind conditions. Remain well clear.
Norwich cannot comply. You have traffic left, 11 o'clock range of
half a mile, fast moving. Have visual. Further traffic in your
That's the news report and no news of a massive fireball burning over
Northamptonshire or of people in the streets being hit by pieces of
long burning hair and bad jumper. Anyway, I'm probably being
pessimistic. It sure is going very well.
Stay where you are, man! heading close to the City Hopper.
Police helicopter not necessary. I will attempt to clear your zone at
this altitude. Please don't call the police.
Police helicopter to Golf Tango. We're not aware of your intention,
but you've strayed into the controlled air space of Norwich
airport. I may be about to get a Suffolk, a popular holiday
destination. Just a few miles away now. James will have landed, set
the van up, organised our little home from home, probably got the
kettle on. Finally, I reached a caravan site.
I didn't know if it was the one I had booked into, but it would do.
Here we go. The landing you won't even notice. This is a lovely
approach over the trees. This is a matter of a resting descent.
People who envisaged the elegance of the majesty of lighter-than-air
flight, zeppelin, Barnes Wallace, Drifting. This is difficult. Gas!
Gas! It's going down. May Day, May Day!
Bloody hell, stop! Stop! Stop!
Papa Charlie echo, whiskey, echo, what? I think it has a lot of
promise. Airships have never worked? Jew can't land being full
of hot air. I have been in a hot air balloon once, it landed
dragging itself through sideways through a hedge in a field, I ended
up jammed on the lady Mayoress in a field. I want to talk about lighter
than air transport. I want to talk about the Lambourghini? It is
heroically daft, by going down from four-wheel to rear-wheel drive, it
is bonkers, it is like free climbing rather than all the ropes
and harnesss. Compared to, we must compare it, rear-wheel drive, to a
Ferrari 430? It is not as good, it is better. It is the white stripe.
Super car. You have to drive it a lot more than you thought, because
of the freak weather conditions that blighted James, the light
breezes. It was more like a Hurricane. It
was puffy clouds. Let's do the news. The Danes have made Anne noupsment,
they are going to start -- an announcement, they are going to
start making a supercar. It has a V8, supercharged and turbochargeed,
they say all of the components, where possible, will be made and
sourced by companies in Denmark. Yes? Will it be made of bacon.
it be lubricated with Lurpak? know Bang & Olufsen, and inside it
is all, as far as I'm aware, Philips electronics? It doesn't
stop you buying pretty much everything they make. I am a bit of
a sucker for Bang & Olufsen. The new Audreys have their speakers
rising up out of the dashboard. bet you're rising up with them.
am. It works like kit nip on him, if you give him a bang and Olaf sen
he grips it and hugs it to his chest. What is cat rip? You give it
to cats and they hug it. The only thing I want to give a cat is its
name and address to my dogs. He said when I said I would set my dog
on his cat that he wouldn't be able to do it? Uuraguay dog comes around
to see my cat, it would get its bloody head kicked in. Bang and
Olaf sen brings me bang and Olafson brings me back to that car.
A woman had a baby, while she was on her way to hospital in a Kia,
they have called the baby Kia. It could have been worse, it could
have been Proton. Because these people called their baby, Kia, Kia,
the people who made the cars have given them a Kia car. We have got a
picture of the handover. This brings us on to a very important
Top Gear, top tip, if you are on your way to hospital in Labour, and
you're in a Kia, for God's sake get out. Let the child be Christened
skip, bus stop, phone box, anything, just get out. I Christen this child,
doorway of Currys, because at least that way you get a free microwave
and not a hidious car like that. reckon this whole story and baby
Kia here, it could spark a whole load of copy cats, a whole load of
dads waiting until the due dates and driving a Lambourghini and
driving really slowly to hospital. Why are you called Zonda with the
brake package. Last weekend the three of us were in Middlesborough,
on Saturday night we had to drive back to England, it meant going
down the M1. The truth of the matter is all three of us had been
away from home for six weeks, looking forward to seeing our
families. Belting down the M1, you arrive in Leicestershire, and there
is a 20-mile set of road works there. They have average speed
cameras set at 50 miles an hour, for the entire length. Traffic is
light, there is no rain, it is three lanes, but you're forced to
do 50. I don't know who the Minister of Transport is, I want
him to find the man who came up with that idea, go round to his
office on Monday morning, and punch him really hard on the side of his
head. Because if he doesn't, I'm going to find the man and attach
him to a milling machine, and see if it is possible to turn a man's
head into a perfect cube. Do you know why they have the 50 mile an
hour speed limit, to protect the work force, who weren't there. They
were in bed, where I wanted to be. I agree with you entirely. But the
answer is not cubing people's heads, the answer is when the work force
aren't there is do 70. You will get nicked? Who here would just do 70
through a set of road works with speed cameras. If you go charging
through you get booked. Do 70 you take it to court in front of a jury,
you argue correctly that it is wrong to apply the 50 mile an hour
speed limit when there is nobody there to protect. You are saying it
is logic? It is logic. It is logic to kill Peter Mandelson. But you
can't do it. Killing Peter Mandelson is a grey area, but doing
70 miles an hour on the motorway is an absolute. How many people went
on the anti-war march, a million, we went to war. How many people
went on the countryside march, 400,000, and fox-hunting was banned.
The Government is not interested in the will of the people.
Particularly if it is not some long-haired old Queen arguing about
speed limits. Speed limits are a pain, there are two solutions
outlined, revolution or cubing people's heads, or alternatively
you could just leave a bit earlier. No, cube their heads. Leave five
minutes earlier. It is not five minutes any way. It is five minutes
a day. Any here from Leicestershire. How did you get here, Jesus.
He's from Leicestershire. He's Jesus, come here, Jesus, come and
talk to me. Congratulations. It's slightly
bigger news than the M1 but nevertheless let's gloss over the
second coming, do you commute on the road? I go the back way.
Because of that. How much does it add to your transport every day?
Ten minutes, quarter of an hour. day? Each way. It is an hour and 40
minutes a week the Government is stealing from Jesus.
This is a sore point. Gordon Brown is stealing an hour and 40 minutes
from Jesus. Any way, time to move on. Because
last week we asked you to nominate the car-maker that you thought over
the years has made the largest number of great cars. There have
been a couple of quite interesting nominations, one was Matchbox,
clever, I thought, the other was James May, he tied with Chrysler.
It was weird he's only ever made one great car, James, the Eagle
Hamthrust. This is the top ten, as you can see we have Ferrari,
Lambourghini, coming up now we have the top three, here they are.
Automatic board. Cost a lot of money. In third place, according to
you, the voters. BMW. In second place, even though they made the
worst car in the history of the world ever, the Beatle, it is VW.
You can applaud this if you like, the winner is Ford.
That is it, the thing is, though, you're wrong.
Ford hasn't won this at all, we reckoned Ford has made four great
cars over the years. But the car company we think is at the top of
this list has made seven. The car company we have in mind, there were
350 million people watching last week's show when we asked you to
vote. The number of people who voted for, what we think is the
greatest car company in the world was nine. Not nine million. Just
nine. No ideas? Made some of the prettiest cars ever. Let me put it
this way, Mitsubishi has won the World Rally Championship once, did
you brew three times, Ford three times, the company we have in mind
won it ten times. No, silence. OK then, watch this.
This is a collection of art, of madness, of brilliance. This is a
collection of pornography, this is a clocks of Lancias. But this,
annoyingly is the Lancia people remember best of all, The Beatles.
It was made from steel so thin that on a windy day it would actually
change shape. And it wasn't much cop in the rain either. This was
fine yesterday, but then this morning we had a bit of a shower
and now look at it. The fact is though, that all
Lancias had problems. The Gamma, for instance, exploded every time
you turned the steering wheel. And then, there was the Fulvia.
It is a fantastic little car this. It's like driving a wroughty sorbet.
With its clever V4 engine, it was the first Lancia to win the World
Rally Championship. The thing is, though, when all is said and done,
it was a very small, 1.3 litre, front-wheel drive, two-door saloon
car. It cost when it was new, more than an E Type Jaguar.
We forgave the Fulvia the silly price tag, because what made it
great, the same thing that made all Lancia's great, the way it looked.
It really is as pretty as the sunseting over Charlize Theron. In
its day, this was too. The streamlined aPrince Williamia, the
first -- Aprillia, the first car to be designed in a wind tunnel.
Inevitably there were problems. The doors opened like this, it was
lovely, it meant getting in and out was very easy. When they were
closed they didn't quite meet, so quite a lot of weather could get
inside as you drove along. It was only made with right-hand drive,
fine in Britain and Sweden, which drove on the left at the time, but
it was quite annoying everywhere else.
And then there was the Monte Carlo. This was a wonderful car, a mid-
engineed mini-Ferrari. Because it was actually a Lancia, the things
that were right were balanced out by the things that were wrong. If
you so much as looked at the middle pedal, the brakes would lock up and
you would crash into a tree. Lancia took the thing very seriously, so
much so they stopped production for two years whilst they looked for a
solution. They found one. What they did was remove the brake servo, so
then it had no brakes at all. And... The Monte Carlo then was quite
dangerous. But in that Lancia way, it was so pretty I wanted one more
than I wanted my next breath. Sometimes, though, Lancia's lunacy
did produce results. Did you know Lancia was the first
car company ever to sell a car with a monocop. They were the first to
offer a five-speed gear box. first to sell a car with
supercharging and turbochargeing on the same engine. First to sell a
car with a V6 engine. First with an electric boot spoiler. They did all
these mechanical firsts, if you say to anyone a Lancia, they snigger
and say they fall apart. It is ridiculous. Holy moly, does the
bumper come off? I believe it has. You need to define greatness, that
is the important thing. Just because something is unreliable. Oh,
it doesn't mean it isn't great. Stephen Hawkins, great bloke, even
though a lot of him doesn't work. Yeah. I wouldn't break it to him
like that. But the principal stands. The principle stands. Meryl Streep,
everybody says she's a great actress, and then she appears in
Mama Mia, the worst film ever made. She's still a great actress. Have
you seen Mama Mia? Yes I have. big girl. To prove even the
tattyist Lancia is tougher than you might think, we have bought this
1982HPE. I shall now drive it non- stop through the night on a rough
rally stage. I shall be racing, not racing, been
told about that, dangerous, driving at the same time, on the same track
in a similar vintage car. This Morris Marina. Hammond, winner,
last one still running. Fair enough. Let's do it.
This is not a promising start, dispelling the myth that Lancias
were not very good. Yes! Never doubted it. Obviously, the Marina
Now, you might be saying, it's a Morris Marina, a pan piano is going
to fall on it. I bought a Marina which already are a piano since we
were doing serious research, we agreed there would be no childish
racing. I've hit Hammond! That's OK, OK!
Proving what a fine and strong breed of car the Lancia always was.
8 hit Jeremy as he goes round this really difficult corner. He's got
the outside there. He'll never get by, and he hasn't.
We're not racing, we're not racing. It's through. I got my sun sun
visor out of the way. For hour after hour, we continued continued
to not race around the rally stage. It's pretty close to dark, still
literally no faults to report. Eventually, after not racing some
more, the Marina began to pull ahead.
It's of course a well-known fact that a piano on the roof aids
traction and gives you more speed on a rally-special stage. Then,
predictably, it broke down. So I went to get some tools to try and
fix it. There he is! It's Hammond! He's
The Lancia soldiered on alone, but then I got a warning light.
Literally. Orbg no!
I can't see through through the flames! I've got to blow this out.
Maybe if I sped up like in Memphis Belle.
No, that's not working. I can't see anything.
No matter, though, because here's proof that Lancias are tough and
strong, and dependable. This is a Stratot. It had a 2.4
litre Ferrari V 6 mounted in the middle. It was Italian, styled by
Bertone and completely impracticalable. It therefore
ticked all the supercar boxes. Unlike any other supercar before or
since, it wasn't designed to be parked in Monte Carlo.
It was designed to get there like this.
It's ab- its absurdly short wheel base meant it was agile and Ferrari
power meant it was so fast, it won the world rally championship three
times. And joy of joys, they made 500
What a fantastic car! Of course, there were a few
problems with it. Chief among which was a lack of
space inside. A gynaecologist would get in here
and go, "I'm at work!" It's like climbing into somebody else's giant
red posing pouch. James May's! touching my knee. You try changing
gear. I'm going to change gear now. This will involve man touching. The
list of faults doesn't end with the tiny cockpit.
Why did it give the passenger the pedals and the driver the wheels.
They're definitely over to the right-hand side. You're sort of
sitting a bit sideways. These window winders are not very good.
The other thing I really like as well is, you know a Porsche puts
the rev counter right in front of you, Lancia in this put the oil
pressure right in front of you. He What does that tell you! So, not
But then you look at it and there's the thing, because it just sort of
This is one of the best cars ever made. I would go with that. On the
grounds of its achievement, but also that slightly more subjective
thing of how gorgeous it looks. Just move your leg. That was a
stroke! Move it! After the Stratos came the 037,
last two-wheel drive car to win the world rally championship.
And the only two-wheel drive car to beat the mighty Audi Quattro.
The thing is, though, no-one really Then there's the Fima - the Thema
8.3: no-one remembers this, either, even though it had a fully fledged
Ferrari V8 under the bonnet. Without really remembering - we
don't really remember any of Lancia's seven great cars, and all
Lance weigh was forced by pressure from the media to spend a fortune
buying back rusty beaters, scrapping them and giving their
owners brand new cars. It was a PR disaster.
-- Betas. In Britain, Lancia's reputation was ruined. And in 1994,
they pulled out of the market However, before the most cars
matbreak car maker of them all finally went, they left us with one
final reminder of what they can do when they try.
This is a Delta Integrale. It picked up where the Stratos and the
This thing won the world rally championship six times on the trot
- six times! You can feel that DNA in here.
The steering is so neat, precise. It settles into a turn and just
gripped and pulled twelve back into a corner.
Having learned their lesson with the Aprilia, Lancia weren't going
to ohm make these in a right-hand drive, so they made them left-hand
drive - only. Only lance ia.
Despite this, a good one of these today is worth £25,000.
And I'm not surprised. Because this is a very unusual
Lancia. It wasn't very pretty, but God, it
APPLAUSE I'm standing here thinking "I want
that." But what I love about Lancia is that they never once just said,
"Let's make a medium car." They were always doing experiments. Some
of the experiments worked but some some didn't. That was the nraij of
it. They thought let's make an engine with seven-and-a-half
cylinders. Or make the windows go up and down with magic. No, it
hasn't worked. But sell it anyway. And that's what made them so
magnificent. They are still going today but now they are just a
division of Fiat making things like this, which is neither pretty nor
they good. What it is in essence is a Fiat Bravo with Rio Ferdinand's
face stuck on the front. If you still hanker over the glory days,
then later on in the show, we have something to warm the cockles of
your heart. But now it's time to put a star in our reasonably priced
car. My guest tonight is a broadcasting legend. He also has an
astonishing collection of cars - I list for you here: Ferrari 599,
Ferrari F40, Ferrari California, Ferrari Enzo, Ferrari 288 GTO,
Ferrari 308 GTS, Ferrari 246 Dino, Ferrari 275 GTB.
8 So, let's find out if there is any particular type of car he likes.
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Evans. APPLAUSE
How are you? Very well. How are you? Have a seat, mate. Have a seat.
Prul, you disagree with our greatest car verdict, then? Quelle
surprise. You don't believe presumably, judging by your
collection that Lancia aren't a brilliant maker of motor cars.
car falling to bits the best mark in the world! Lancia's only came in
black and rust! I I still stand by - There's more - the number of
FerrarisI would like to own now is one. What about the A6 0 mopbzia,
the PF 250, the four-cam. A lot of people write and complain this
isn't a car show anymore. It is now!
I love this enthusiasm. Why have you painted all yours white?
Because I wanted them to match. I wanted them to be a work of art.
I've got a white garage or "car house" as they're sometimes nofpblt
it's got a white piano in it, right? That plays itself, and there
are these eight beautiful white Farrarrys. It's no -- Ferraris.
Which led you to the auction. This is terribly vulgar. How much did
you pay for that? The most expensive car sold at auction in
the world. When I bought it. Last year? A lot of millions? Yes, $12
million. How drunk were you? wasn't drunk at all. The point is,
I didn't go to buy the car. I went to buy a poster.
The 250 Spider came up on the stand, my second favourite car in the
world because it was in my Top Trumps collection. I thought I
would go for it. That was the best one in the world, James Coburn
owned it for 23 years. Talking about this makes the hairs on the
back of my neck stand up. It's all documented, I've got the history
and that baby is back in the garage at home. I show it to as many
people as I can. Unbelievable. I was listening to you every day
whilst stuck in a traffic am gentleman, and you've auctioned
your entire collection of Ferraris for Children In Need. Yes. So how
does that work? People ring in and they were bidding? Yes. And drive
whichever one they want? We take the seven highest bids on the day
and they spend a four-day tour and during the four days, each person
who's bid the amount of money gets to drive every single car. Isn't
That terrifying from your point of swru sh It's only tin and rubber.
If anybody comes round to my house if they're fitting a carpet, a
carpet, burgling, before you take that, come and have a look at the
cars. I think it's really important to share these cars with people.
But you don't know who's bid. You know their names. You could have
any sort of ape turning up. Well, if you bid...
LAUGHTER You've got a book out. It's not
what you think - It's Not What You Think, which is what it's called.
Yes. And there's a list of top tens at the beginning of each chapter.
Yes. But this car business, it does seem to me that cars, you sometimes
claim you're not a Carman, but you bloody well r I'm definitely a
Carman. Behind my family, my job, maybe you're not not going to like
this, maybe golf, then I am a Carman. Sometimes, if I'm away from
home, the first thing I do, I get back home and I have to go to the
garage just to have a smell. I love it. The smell of petrol and leather,
I love it to death. It's better than stuff I've never tried.
LAUGHTER When I first met you about a
million years ago, you were definitely a Porsche man. You are
having a laugh! You've lost your mind. You need to go to Venice -
Did you have a 968? No. You did, convertible, Big Breakfast.
Mine was mabl. So it was a 944? was a 944 drop top, 19 grand, a
great car but it was dull and Obviously the big news is that
Chris he have vabs, enfant terrible of the -- Evans, enfant terrible of
the air waves is about to take over from the Terry Master. Has he given
you any tips? He gets up at 7.30 that's not a breakfast show. When
do you start? 7.00am. You will have to pretend you are older than you
are? People request Van Halen, that is the music. It is all fine.
are all going to be, my generation are going to be in our old people's
home with Anarchy In The UK in our wheelchairs. We won't have
wheelchairs but we will still do that. Give me a wheelchair. I don't
want any more Gracie Fields, just this. How did it go for you, out
there today on our lap? I did my best, probably the worst weather
there has ever been out there. The Stig, what a lovely man, he
couldn't have been nicer, what I have decided to do, I have had a
great time. I thought if I'm going to die, let me die today on this
track. He did actually say, Chris has no sense of self-preservation.
Would anybody like to see some of Chris's practices.
Let's have a look at some of these practices. At the 50 mark, turning,
off the brakes again, brake hard now, into in to second. This is the
hammerhead. You feel like you're going out of control, go out of
control. Nobody has ever spun there before. That's good. Watch this.
This is the last corner. Sideways. Everybody goes here, second to last
corner, I'm impressed. You never even made it to the corner.
thought I would just go straight on here.
That is good bravery. But then, the lap happened for real. Who wants to
see it. So you haven't learned your lesson,
still going for brute force. Come on, hello family. Concentrate, man.
Concentrate on the job in hand, that is wet. Good, it's Joe 90 mind
the wheel. That is slippery. You're looking quite good. You have
never been good at anything like this in your life, try and have a
go at this. Have you never been good at anything? Not like this.
I'm with you, all sports are impossible. Not bad. You have to
nail hammerhead. You have to do this, even though your chin does
look like a bum! Hammerhead, we have put cones out so Jonathan Ross
doesn't get lost if he comes back, you're in the white lines, that
looks slow but important for a quick time. Aim for the cameraman.
I missed the gear aiming for the cameraman. Is he getting tired now,
that's looking good. The smell of the clutch. Mmmm. But does it smell
of victory. I'm being a bit of a with us into the final bend. Come
on now. Cut the corner, just a bit. That's the trick. That's good.
That's quite a lot. This one, cut it a lot.
So an entirely new way across the line.
Here we are. There's the board. There is the
board. Where do you think. Obviously we will give you a wet
lap. We will butt Chris Evans "wet" on it. Where do you think you have
come? I don't think it is impressive, I try my best, I will
not lean forward, I will try to be cool. My heart is racing. You did
it in one minute, quicker than Terry Wogan was. You are already
the new fastest Radio Two breakfast show host we have ever had. In the
last 40 years. You did it in one minute, 40. That's good. 1.48.1.
For a wet lap that's the third- fastest wet lap we have ever had.
There's your ex. I'm just above her, not on top of her, just above her.
She's my ex. We were accused of favouritism by her by David Tenant,
that we only allowed that because she was wearing a see-through top,
but you cut corners as well. Next time I will wear a see-through top.
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Evans. Best of luck.
Be proud of that time Earlier on in the show, we explained that Lancia,
the greatest car company in the world, and just because of a few
problems with rust 30 years ago, they are not available in the UK
any more. The thing is though, as Jeremy as been finding out, you can
still get one, sort of. This is a Lancia Stratos, except
for one small thing, it isn't. It wasn't made in the 1970s in Italy,
in fact, I don't know where it was made, in a shed in Nuneaton,
probably. This, you see, is a kit car. Either you can pay someone to
build it for you, or you can make it at home yourself, with a hammer.
Apparently, if you're fairly competent it would take about 300
showers, obviously it would take me about 300 years, which is a very
long time. But, there is an upside, an original Stratos would cost
£100,000, maybe more, that is £13,000.
In theory that makes this the Hawk HF, the bargain of the century.
The body is absolutely identical to the original, all the panels are
completely interchangable. The interior too would be familiar to
Lancia fans. The pedals are nowhere near where the bottom of my legs
are. The steering wheel is perilously close to where my testes
used to be, before the seatbelt jammed them up to my lungs. The
gear lever is like Bugs Bunny's ears, and one of the buttons on the
dash operates the fire extinguisher, but I don't know which one it is,
so I dare not touch any of them. The wiper has gone upside down, it
wouldn't clear the rain from the window. Then there was a big noise.
Wait a minute, what the hell? What was that? The front left brake had
jammed on. I have to get this in to a workshop. Come on, come on. I
took the car to Nigel, the resident mechanic at our track, and greeted
him in the usual fashion. Have you got a hammer? That is scalding hot,
as we can see on the thermal-images camera. (phone rings) He has just
gone to answer the phone now. While we wait, I suppose I should explain
the £13,000 doesn't include the cost of an engine, you have to get
one yourself. You have a choice of two, you can either get Fiat's
twin-camthat you can buy usedor 5p, for £600 you can get the engine I
have in this. This handle is disguised as a spoiler, there you
have it, Alpha's V6. This provides more power than the engine the
Lancia used, with it the Hawk is faster, when it is working, which
it will be, eventually. It is mended. Now I'm going to get
back in. Which is a surprisingly elegant process if you're a mouse.
That's not good. You sort of get over this roll bar, like this. Then
you get your head in, it's probably easier to detatch your head first,
and put it back on in the car. There we are. Whenever there, and
then you might want to cut the camera for this bit.
I had intended at this point to check out the performance, after
the brake problem I had rather lost my nerve. 0-60 takes less than five
seconds, and what I'm not going to do now is see where that
acceleration stops. I really don't want to travel at 150 miles an hour
in a car built in a shed by a man I have never met. This is 90 perhaps
that's, the wiper has gone. That is an important consideration,
you have to bear in mind if you are thinking of buying a used kit car.
You have to ask, was it built fastidiously by James May over a
period of many hundreds of years, or was it built by a spanner, with
a hammer? I mean, would you buy a kit car that I had built? Having
chickened on the max speed run, I decided not find out what it is
like flat out through the corners. Here we go, I'm going in, and here
I am cornering not at all flat out. 60, that's fine. Brakes, three and
three quarters of them are very squirrelly. The steering is heavy,
a lot of body roll. I think that's probably enough cornering now, we
have done that, tick. Certainly then, the Hawk is only as
good as the block who put it together. You will spend more time
under it than in it, for example. I'm not going to pretend it is as
good as an original Stratos, for the same reason that a postcard of
the Mona Lisa is not as good as Leonardo's. But one day your car
will be working and you will see a reflection of yourself in a shop
window as you go by, and trust me on this, that's gonna feel good.
Because critically this looks like a Stratos. If we're honest, that's
I would like to build a kit car like that, I think it would be very
therapeutic. It would be. You know what I mean. It is more satisfying
to have something you have made yourself? I don't even like to eat
a sandwich I have made myself, because it always has blood in it
and bits of my fingers. We have to find out how fast this cargoes
round our track, that means handing it over to our tame racing driver.
Some say his new Christmas range of fragrances, includes the great
smell of Wednesday, and that he was turned down for the job of EU
President, because his face is just too recoginsable. All we know is
he's call The Stig. He's off, there he goes. I say
listen to that noise. The Alpha V6 sounds, if anything, even better
than the Ferrari V6. That's fantastic sound. What's happening
here. Is he looking for the stereo, no, what's gone wrong? He's broken
down. How authentic is that? This is a scene familiar to any Lancia
owner, look at him walking off, completing his journey on foot. Not
across the line. There is no way we were going to allow our first-ever
DNF, on the board, to be a Lancia, no way. So we, mended the car, in a
shed, OK, brought it back, it was here, this morning for The Stig to
try again. Unfortunately it was raining this
time. But the car has set off well, still making a fabulous noise, look
at the rooster tails, stip dipping badly underbraking as the tiing
turns in. That is a -- The Stig turns in. Where are you going, he
has got it back. He comes up to Chicago, locked up the front, back
stepped out, this is wide he's gone. The Stig has spun. That's not going
to stop him, he's still going on, look at that for determination.
He's obviously a fan as he comes up to the hammerhead, he has got it to
turn in nicely, better than Chris Evans there. Nice through with the
whole beautifully-held slide. It's gone wrong, he's headed for the
camera crew. I bet they were frightened. Is he breaking down
again, that is not at all like a Lancia as he comes to the follow-
through. He's backed off of that, I can't say I blame him, as he heads
towards the tyres, building up speed, not too much. He's coming
down, crikey this is out of control now, he has done it, he's round the
second to last corner, he's gone again. That's what I call driving,
as he comes round, this time across the line.
That is the best-looking lap we have ever seen. I have to say one
of the most exciting. Spectacular. Car control is phenomenal. The time
was, 1.48.2, which means it's also the slowest slap we have ever had