Tonight, Richard Hammond buys a cup of coffee.
James May slips on some snow. I hate snow.
And we show a picture of Steve McQueen.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello! Hello, everybody. We're back!
Thank you so much. Thank you.
It is a whole new series featuring many things.
We go to Las Vegas, Italy, Monte Carlo, Albania, Loughborough...
LAUGHTER
But we start tonight with General Motors, which is a big company in America.
Many people say that last year they stopped making the Hummer because it was too big and too silly.
However, Richard Hammond says the reason it's gone west is because it wasn't big or silly enough.
This is one of the deceased Hummers.
The H3.
And it is, you'll notice, a pretty sizable car.
However, if you mourn its passing,
don't worry because happily you can now buy something a bit bigger.
It's called the Marauder, which is quite a scary sounding name.
But, hey, Buttercup didn't feel quite right so, hey, live with it.
I can't imagine it ever having one of those Christian fish symbols on the back bumper.
The Marauder, which is built in South Africa, weighs ten tonnes.
It's also 21 feet long and 9 feet high.
So in traffic it does tend to stand out a bit.
Ooh, don't people get out of your way!
Don't they!
CHUCKLES Yeah! Hmm...
Tell you what, you do get some people telling you about how they feel a bit nervous in Johannesburg.
I er... I don't, no! I don't.
It's a weird feeling because I'm both worried about bumping into things because it's big,
and NOT worried about bumping into things
because, well, frankly, who cares?
Like the original Hummer, the Marauder is a military-spec vehicle that ordinary civilians can buy.
All you have to do is pass a background check
to prove you're not a villain living in a hollowed-out volcano,
and come up with a cheque for £300,000.
That is Rolls Royce Phantom money,
for a machine that's not exactly the last word in luxury.
Take the back seats, for instance.
There are eight of them, which is good,
but I don't think you'll be renting this out as a wedding car any day soon.
And as for the dashboard, they clearly decided not to go for the walnut and leather option on here,
partly because they need to leave room for the switches,
partly because the wood might clash with the machine guns.
However, the Marauder does compensate in other areas.
Take this annoying slow traffic that I'm stuck in now.
Normally this is where you need some expensive sat-nav system to give you alternative routes.
The Marauder doesn't need sat-nav.
There you go. There you go.
Oh, yeah!
It really does control its immense weight very well.
Yes!
It really is like offroading quite a large building.
Right, now...
That gap's big enough.
I-It is now.
Oh, Lord!
ALARM WAILS
This is a good town car.
In fact, the Marauder has several benefits as a city runabout.
Imagine, for example, that you nip off to get a coffee and this happens.
Oh! That's not nice, no.
Now, normally the towaway people leave you powerless and penniless,
but not this time.
The Marauder has got 290 brake horsepower
and a top speed of just 70 mph, which admittedly isn't brilliant.
However, the torque figure is astonishing...
1,100 Newton metres of it, which is... a lot.
And that makes it pretty good in a towaway tug-of-war.
We're going this way.
Yes, there you go.
Another everyday irritation,
popping into the supermarket
and coming out to find yourself blocked in. Again,
no problem for the Marauder, thanks to its vertical climbing system.
Low range, four-wheel drive, div lock,
drive, handbrake off.
It's really kind of the ideal shopping car.
But let's not get carried away because, like everything,
the Marauder has its weak points.
Visiting a drive-through, for example.
Normally at about this point you'd roll down the windows
and get ready to say, "Cheeseburger and chips, please."
But the problem is the Marauder's windows are for tough situations,
they're 90 mm thick. They can shrug off an RPG
and as a result you can't open them, so this is where it gets a bit awkward.
Good morning, can I take your order please?
Hello? If you're there...
BOOMS OVER LOUDSPEAKER: ..I'd like a cheeseburger and some chips, please.
This isn't a riot situation, don't be alarmed.
But the real problem comes when you drive around to collect your order.
Right.
Don't be alarmed, I'm not shooting.
So, a mark against the Marauder there.
And if you happen to visit a safari park...
you might find that the windscreen wipers aren't that tough.
But is this the only weak spot? Let's see.
Now, this is where we're going to do a little test you won't find
in the NCAP ratings, and we start not with this but with that.
Our old friend, the Hummer...
whose underside was packed with seven pounds of plastic explosive.
Oh, dear.
Really not much point trying to see if it'll start because some pretty important bits are missing.
So the H3 is, like Hummer itself, very dead.
But the important question is what happens to the Marauder
when you put the same amount of explosives underneath it?
Right, well, clearly, what has happened here is there was a fight
between the Marauder and the earth, and the earth lost and the explosives have just dug a big hole.
The question is, can it still be driven?
OK, fingers crossed.
ENGINE STRUGGLES
ENGINE STARTS
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
That was definitely an inconvenience but really nothing more.
Oh, yeah.
APPLAUSE
Good car.
It was great.
Useful bit of consumer advice there.
Can I just say, though, I was looking carefully.
The last little bit there as it came out of the hole, I noticed the rear tyre had been blown off the rim.
Seven pounds of plastic explosive and all it did was below the tyre off.
But a car with the tyre blown off is as useless as a car that has been blown to smithereens, really.
Well, no, seven pounds... He's right because it's like saying,
"My watch survived the explosion completely unscathed.
"The hour hand has come off, but apart from that..."
It's like saying, "I survived the explosion apart from my head, which is over there."
Would you two please just stop saying things?
I think it's an excellent car, and now the news.
Yes, news. Yes, it's the news. For people who think there's literally
too much room in the back of a standard Mini, don't worry because there's now a coupe. There it is.
Whoa-ho-ho!
Any details? I can tell you it's, er... It's between £18,000 and £24,000
and the top model has 208 horsepower.
A lot of people have been talking about its roof, unsurprisingly.
Mini themselves say it's styled to look like a baseball cap being worn backwards.
Why would I want that as my roof?
I think this is a car that, probably, at night when you leave it,
entertains itself by spitting at the elderly.
They should have called it the Lout. The Slob.
Steal its own wheels and put itself on bricks.
I like the idea of the Slob. Now, hey, you know when you're pregnant?
Er, no. No. Yours is coming on nicely.
And you go for a scan and they're able to tell the sex? Yes.
Well a very kind lady has sent us a photograph of a scan she's had done
of her forthcoming arrival, and it seems to suggest she's giving birth to a Stig. Look here.
She is! Oh, look!
All curled up, that's nice.
We're worried about this because we've told him time and again to stop impregnating people.
It's awkward. He made Michael Gambon pregnant twice.
If there's any consolation, it'll probably be a fairly quick birth, I imagine.
Unless it comes out sideways, like that.
Good news! Actually, it's not good news, it's just some news, OK?
MG is back. This is the new car, here he is.
It's called the MG 6, you can have it as a saloon or as a hatchback.
It's supposed to be very modern in every way but I don't think
the factory where it's being made in Longbridge is modern at all because I've got the press release
they sent out here and it says the first car was driven off the line by the only woman who works there.
That's not very modern, is it? No. Did they go on to say,
"And best of all she has a smashing pair of knockers!"?
Very modern.
Don't tell me. It says next, "Don't worry, chaps, we'll let her
"drive it off but we won't let her park it." Oh, God! Welcome to 1950!
The thing is, the car has gone away for some reason. That's not a joke.
The thing about this is, OK, we know this is made in China
by the lin-king wan-king don-king non-king...
Them. Yeah. Them. Keep going.
Heavy corporation industry, right, OK?
It's shipped over to Birmingham, where they fix an MG badge on it and sell it.
But they say in the actual brochure, which I've got here,
it talks about Le Mans and breaking land speed records.
It says the MG embodies British sporting style.
It doesn't. No, it doesn't.
I think the only British sportiness in that is the glue they use
to fix on the badge is made from a dead British racehorse.
That's the only sporty thing in that car, I reckon.
Wait a minute. I should add, the press release they sent us has got a typo on it.
Here it is, look. "Ear"?
MG ear. I think this indicates the car will be a bit hit.
It might be complete rap.
Absolute ollocks!
Yes.
Now, I've always wondered, I've always thought there was someone
in Britain now driving around in, let's just say, a Renault Fuego Turbo. OK?
How do they know that's not the last Renault Fuego Turbo in the whole country?
Well now there's a website called howmanyleft.co.uk,
where you can go on it and find out precisely how many examples
of each model are left in existence, OK?
It's unbelievable.
So how many Fuego Turbos are there? I went on it, there were three.
Just three? There were only three Fuego Turbos.
That makes them really special. It's an incredibly rare car.
No, I went on it, and did you know - because somebody doesn't - there's somebody driving around
in an Austin Maxi 1750 automatic and probably doesn't realise it's the last one?
Only one Maxi 1750... One. He's not here, are you?
It's a Maxi 1750 automatic and it's unique. Still crap though, isn't it?
It's terrible. It's uniquely crap because there's only one.
Whenever we're told there's one Amazonian green-backed nose turtle left...
God, is there? We're all supposed to have these candlelit vigils
and eat mud and not drive cars and turn our central heating down to save it because it's going extinct.
There's only one Vauxhall Chevette GL automatic left, that's it.
There's only one left. Look at it!
What's being done to save this car?
I put it to you, nothing is being done.
Actually, in the Victorian era, chaps used to go off, when something was about to become extinct,
they would go off, find it and shoot it as a trophy.
"The very last one, blam! Ha-ha!" And then nail its head to the wall.
Are you suggesting then we go out and hunt?
Yes, nail its head to our wall in here. The last Chevette, like that.
We've just thought of something to do in programme six of this show.
We're going hunting the Chevette GL automatic. It's out there.
Moving on, there was a poll recently to find the most important car
from the 20th century, and I went for the Golf GTi
because it was fast and practical, and classless.
And it's been much the same story with all the models that have come along subsequently.
But none of them have ever managed to capture, somehow, the magic of the original.
Until now.
Now, I'll admit it's not actually a GTi
or a Golf,
or even a Volkswagen.
What it is a BMW - the new 1M.
What BMW has done to create this is take a standard one-series and pump it up a bit.
The wheel arches are flared, the car is slightly lowered, and, at the back, there are extra pooh chutes.
Inside, there's a splash of suede on the dash with some orange stitching.
Otherwise, it's humdrum, normal.
Not showy at all.
Apart from the orange paint, you simply wouldn't guess that it can do this.
Whoo! Whoo, yes! Blimey, this is good.
So what have we got here?
Well, there's a straight-six engine at the front,
a manual gearbox in the middle, and drive goes to the back.
That's page one, chapter one from the petrosexual handbook.
It just feels so... beautifully balanced.
Of course, all BMW M cars feel this way, they just feel
better than Mercs, better than Audis, better than pretty much anything.
And just when you think it can't possibly get any better than this,
you push the little M button on the steering wheel...
and the whole car shimmies.
It's like a shiver of excitement.
The feeling you get if someone suddenly gave you permission to set fire to Piers Morgan. Ooh, yes! Ooh!
In M mode, it's even more of a tyre-smoking mentalist.
Honestly, I haven't driven anything
this sort of perfect since...
I don't know, since the original Golf GTi, in fact.
And what makes that quite surprising is that the 1M is like a turkey curry on Boxing Day.
It's made from leftovers.
The door mirrors are from the current M3,
the rear axle is from the old one,
the engine is from a Z4.
It's a recipe that shouldn't work, but it does.
As we shall now see.
What we have here is a new, lighter, more powerful Porsche, the Cayman R.
And this is the new supercharged Lotus Evora S.
Both these no-compromise ground-huggers are purpose-built
to go like hell, so they should cream the sit-up-and-beg Beemer.
However, while the three-litre engine in this is from a Z4,
it's boosted to 340 horsepower with two tiny little turbochargers.
So, let's see how we get on.
So, £50,000 Porsche, £60,000 Lotus,
and the £40,000 BMW is showing them its many pooh chutes! Ho-ho-ho!
A bit depressing if you've just bought a Lotus.
And there's more.
The Porsche and the Lotus are effectively two-seaters and there's hardly any luggage space at all.
You get the speed at a price.
But there's no price to pay with the 1M.
There's space in the back for two children, and room in the boot for two more.
It's a family saloon.
This, then, does to today's sports cars what the original Golf GTi did to the MG and the Triumph Spitfire.
It renders them... pointless.
Drawbacks?
Pfff, erm...
Maybe the sat-nav screen is a bit far away, and perhaps the ride
is a tad firm, but that said it's not as uncomfortable as my AMG Mercedes.
Actually, falling down a flight of stairs isn't as uncomfortable as my Mercedes.
Sustained machine-gun fire would be better than popping to the shops in that.
And anyway, you won't really notice the stiff suspension, partly because the seats
are so comfortable and partly because you'll be having such a good time.
This is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant car,
and that's all, really, I've got to say. The end.
Unbelievably good.
It's one of the most spectacular cars I've driven in a long time.
Fair enough, but hang on, hang on, hang on!
£40,000 for a one-series!
I'm sorry, were you not listening?
I just said it's a brilliant car and that was the end. There was nothing more to say.
Yes, but that's a big price tag. There's nothing more to say.
But there's something more to do. We have to find out how fast it goes
round our track and that of course means handing it over to our tame racing driver.
Some say he doesn't know what dogs are for, and that he recently
took out a super-injunction to prevent us from revealing that he...
SILENCE
..with an enormous goat.
All we know is he's called The Stig.
And he's off. Wipers on, it's drizzling out there.
Hopefully that won't hurt the time too badly.
Let's see, coming up to the first corner.
Very tidy on the way in,
tidy through the middle, tail out, there it is.
The limited slip diff allowing him perfect control.
♪ Ro-mah, rom-ma-ma
♪ Gaga, ooh la... ♪
For some reason the Stig is listening to Lady Gaga in French.
Weird. OK, tidy through Chicago now, down to Hammerhead.
I have a sneaking suspicion BMW have tried to
make this car slow so it doesn't go faster than the more expensive M3.
Look at that, tail really out there.
Stig looking where he's going out of the side windows.
OK, follow-through.
He's even sideways through that.
BMW only bringing 450 1Ms to Britain, 300 of them already sold.
OK, hard on the brakes, penultimate corner, still very greasy out there.
Into Gambon and there he is across the line.
I have the time here.
It did it in 1 minute 25 dead
so, even though it was a damp track, it was faster than an M3.
Very good, but hang on, because I think there was a bit of film there we didn't see. No, there wasn't.
There was, from the final run. I think the audience would like to see it. No, they wouldn't.
Yes, they would. Let's have a look.
There he is, you see, just past the tyres.
He's doing about 115 mph and, oh, look, it's spat him off!
But even on the wet grass it's still in shape.
No, that's just how good The Stig is, not the car, you fool.
It spat him off. AUDIENCE: Oooh!
Big price, small car, big price, fell off.
LAUGHTER
Now time to put a star in our reasonably priced car.
My guest tonight was christened Vincent
but then he became a rock star and decided he needed a rock-starry name so he changed it to Alice.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're not worthy. Please welcome Alice Cooper!
I can hardly believe you're here.
Alice Cooper!
A legend. Have a seat.
Thank you.
Why is it Alice?
Why Alice? You know,
you had to come up with a name that was going to piss off every parent in America.
It translated across the ocean so, you know, and Mary Whitehouse just hated us. Because you were banned.
Oh yes, she banned us for no apparent reason but it was the best thing that ever happened to us.
School's Out came out, we went right to number one, sold out...
Because the British public said, "How dare you tell us what we can see and what we can't see!"
So the British public was all for us but there was the one lady and we sent her flowers...
Mary Whitehouse - in essence, she was the Daily Mail but in a pearl necklace really.
She was a terrifying woman.
It was the stage shows, I think, that made everybody say,
"Hang on a minute, why are these people coming here?"
There was the story, which I don't believe is true, that you ripped a chicken in half.
No, that was Colonel Sanders. Made a chicken die anyway.
Somebody threw a chicken on stage in the middle of a concert.
I'm from Detroit, I've never been on a farm in my life, so I picked it up.
It had feathers, it was a bird, it should fly.
I threw it and it didn't fly as much as it plummeted
into the audience, and the audience tore it to pieces.
Then the next day it was "Alice Cooper rips a chicken apart and eats it."
Because in your shows, you often got decapitated, hung.
I got killed four times in my last show, but I play the villain.
I always play the villain, so the villain has to get it in the end.
The Darth Vader, the Hannibal Lecter, always has to get it in the end.
So when's the next time we can see you in the UK?
We'll be here in Halloween, of course because I own Halloween, it's mine.
It is. The Prince of Darkness. We're doing a big show at the Ally Pally.
I think it's kind of interesting, Alice at the Palace.
Will you be killed many times?
Just once in this show, one good one.
Although you've been killed many times, obviously on stage,
you didn't die in the '60s and '70s when so many of your contemporaries did.
Yeah, well my big brothers were Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix.
I can go right down the list of everyone that died
at 27 years old, and I was the little brother trying to keep up with them.
It almost got me. Who was the biggest? Nobody can compete with Keith Moon.
I've heard this many times, that Keith Moon was the maddest.
If you think of it this way, about 40% of what you've heard
about me or Iggy or Ozzy or anything like that is probably true.
Everything you've ever heard about Keith Moon is true.
LAUGHTER And you've only heard a tenth of it.
He'd come to Los Angeles and stay at the house for a week, you know.
And I'd go out to a recording session, come back and he'd be dressed like a French maid.
And your car was in the swimming pool.
And my wife would go, "Who is this?!"
How did you manage to survive, then, when obviously so many people didn't?
I woke up one morning, and instead of just throwing up beer, it was blood.
But real blood. I mean, not...? Yeah, it wasn't fake blood.
You know, throwing up blood on stage is very theatrical and it looks great.
In your Holiday Inn room, you know,
where the only person who can see is the maid
and she's really not impressed because she has to clean it up,
that was a good message for me that this is really it now.
If I keep drinking, I'm going to die. So what did you replace it with?
Golf.
That would clear Keith Moon up. Golf and cannibalism.
I don't want to talk about golf.
I want to talk about Detroit, which is where you're from. Yep.
A lot of people think of it as the music town, obviously Motown and the Motown acts, but the amount of
rock-and-roll stars that have come out of Detroit is simply unbelievable.
Iggy Pop, Ted Nugent, Bob Seeger, Madonna is Detroit, which a lot of people don't realise.
The MC5. White Stripes.
Bits of the Eagles, everyone thinks they're from California. They're Detroit.
Detroit, yes. Behind this music, which was huge,
obviously cars were also big and there's no question, you're a big car freak. Massive petrolhead.
Yes, I love cars. And they give me a Kia to drive!
Yes, we do. Down-to-earth, it's the star in the REASONABLY priced car.
How many cars do you think you've owned over the years? At least 100.
I'm assuming most of your cars you've had over the years,
I guess are American. Would that be the case?
Yeah, well, we were always addicted to the Mustangs and Camaros.
Detroit.
Yeah, the Detroit muscle cars. And you know, of course the Hemi Cudas.
What's the Alice Cooper Corral that you read about all the time?
I'm so into the cars and in Phoenix, Arizona, where I live, we build cars and then... This is the Corral.
Yeah. Then we put my name on it and I go and help sell it.
So we have a picture of...
That was a Lincoln Zephyr.
That's billion-dollar bills burning up the flames
and we said, "Who would buy a car, the billion dollar babies car?"
We said, well, Trump, maybe?
What would make it
really appealing to them?
You open the trunk in this car and there's your own private ATM machine.
Oh really? Yes, your own bank money machine.
A cash machine in the trunk. Yeah! You open it up and...
So when you're touring, are you looking for these unusual cars to buy?
I just found a really nice little '65 Mustang that looks like it came out of
the shop in Nashville. I drove by it every day going to the studio
and I finally went in and said "What do you want for this car?" They said 22,000.
Because that's cheap. Absolutely.
You didn't have the heart to say, "You do realise cars like that are worth a lot more these days"?
I didn't tell them. LAUGHTER
OK, so, anyway, you came over here to try your hand at a lap
and I guess a lap is quite unusual with corners for an American.
Yeah. No, you're really right because in America we drag race.
We go from light to light. You pull up next to a car.
This is the sign, this means race.
Really? You go, OK, you rev it up, put it in first gear and whoever gets to that light next is the winner.
But you burn rubber up, it's just drag racing so you don't even think about turning.
But this was interesting for me to get in a car,
the shift on the left side.
It was like dyslexic driving
because I'm going 3rd, 9th? Opening the door, no, it's not there.
So they gave me an automatic and it was a really, really fast Kia!
Who would like to see Alice's lap? Yeah.
Here we go. Let's have a look.
Oh, that's pouring with rain.
Look at that thing go.
Come on now. All right. That's an intense stare you've got going on there.
Clint Eastwood for a second.
And into the first corner.
This can go as a very, very wet lap.
No brake lights there, that's good.
Trundling.
Come on, you pig. Keep going.
Did I say "Come on, you pig"?
Yes, I think you probably did.
The Cee'd gripping well as it...
Where are you going? I've no idea.
It's tricky. Now the Hammerhead, was this OK?
You managed to stay between the lines?
Yes, come on, get the back around. TYRES SQUEAL
A bit of understeer and some tyre squeal despite the conditions.
Yes, you're moving, just.
Come on, come on, come on!
Come on, Kia.
How many people say "Come on, Kia?" Now where are you going?
Left! Left! Left! I was getting a big...
That's not fast there,
not fast at all.
I was floored right there. I had it floored.
There's obviously something stuck behind the accelerator pedal.
Come on, spin a little bit. Come on!
Where are you now?
And you're being a rock star there, all over the place. But across the line, there we are!
So...
here is the board with many, many names on it.
Where do you think you've come?
Oh, man, I have no idea.
If I broke two minutes I'd be the happiest guy in the world.
I can make you the happiest man in the world.
But not by much. LAUGHTER
Because, Alice Cooper, rock legend, all-round unbelievably nice guy,
you did it in one minute...
56.3. Oh, yes!
I don't know, really, what to say about that other than it was terrible.
But, you know what? I'm proud of that. Do you know what I am?
I'm so grateful to you for coming on because it's been
such an honour to meet you. You were nothing like I was expecting.
I thought you'd eat the television and kill someone in the audience.
Come and see the show, I do that.
I'd love to see it. Ladies and gentlemen, Alice Cooper. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, as you know, here on Top Gear it's our job
to keep you up-to-date with all that's new and cutting edge
in the ever-changing world of modern motoring.
Hello, viewers. James Paddy May Hopkirk here,
driving a rally version of the original Mini Cooper S.
And that's quite a special feeling because, even though it rose to fame
because of all that Swinging '60s stuff, the Mini is actually the most iconic rally car of all time.
If you're one of our younger viewers or were hoping
to watch the Antiques Roadshow but you can't find the remote, let me give you a quick history lesson.
This tiny machine shocked the rally world by winning the prestigious
Monte Carlo Rally in 1964, '65 and '67.
The 0 - 60 time might have been a dreary 13 seconds but its light,
compact body meant it cornered like a go-kart.
It's bloody brilliant!
Everybody should drive a Mini, everybody should own a Mini
at some point or you're incomplete as a human being.
Now, like any form of motorsport, rallying needs cars that are stars in their own right.
It's why Formula 1 needs Ferrari.
And that's why modern rallying needs another Mini.
And now, at last, it's got one.
This is the brand-new World Rally Championship Mini.
But whereas the old car was something of a giant slayer, this new one is really...
just a bit of a giant and it's because it's based on this car,
the Mini Countryman which isn't really a Mini at all.
It's more of a trendy school-run car with four-wheel drive.
But if you look down here, you'll see it says Mini.
So it must be true.
Let's not get bogged down in that now...
because this is the modern Mini we're interested in.
ENGINE ROARS
Yes, what a racket!
Whereas the original Mini had 70 horsepower, this one has around 300.
It does 0 - 60 in 3.5 seconds.
And this brilliant sequential gearbox, look at this.
And go!
In fact, I got a bit carried away with the gearbox.
Bang! Oh! Go! Yes!
Oh! Yee!
By the time you watch this film,
the Mini will have taken part in its first proper rally.
No, I've buggered it!
But, as I drive it today, it's yet to turn a wheel in real anger.
So, we're here to find out how good it is and we're going to do that
with a typically unscientific yet informative and hopefully invigorating Top Gear race.
And to do that, we've come back to one of our old Top Gear stomping grounds...
the Winter Olympics site of Lillehammer in Norway...
where, several years ago, we raced a rally car against Richard Hammond in a bobsleigh.
And on that occasion it was the men in tights who came first.
So the motor car was given a bloody nose and has come back with a score to settle.
And because of that, the rally mechanics here have told
Captain Paddy Slow to get stuffed and make way for their driver.
He's Kris Meeke, intercontinental rally champion and quite possibly the fastest ginger on the planet.
And as for the bobsleigh team...
They're not here.
Instead, the ice-sliding community is fielding one of its biggest guns.
Olympic skeleton gold medallist Amy Williams.
Right, in case you can't get Dave on your telly, or for some other reason
you haven't seen the original race between Hammond and me, here is why Lillehammer is the ideal venue
for a rally car versus skeleton bob shoot-out.
We begin here, and this red line is the bob track,
almost two kilometres of twisting, turning, icy terror.
And this blue line is the road - almost exactly the same length,
nearly two kilometres - and it too is twisting, turning, yumping, icy terror.
And they both end here at the finish line.
The first person there is the winner. You realise that the car must win this one
because the car is 1-0 down.
The car that has been around for 125-odd years now is being challenged by...
My two year-old sled.
A tea tray. Do you mind if I...? I don't think people will have seen one of these close-up.
This is a skeleton bob.
Your face goes that way. Face this end and I steer here and here.
By doing what? By pushing my shoulders in and moving the sled.
So your face is actually over the end.
My chin and head and helmet will be scratching the ice on the way down.
70 mph with your face... Scraping the ice.
Our faces aren't going to scrape along the road, are they?
Hopefully not. That's only if we're going upside-down, which we don't plan to do.
Right, let's do it.
As Amy imagined her way down the run,
I imagined Kris going too fast in the dark and the pair of us rolling end-over-end in a huge fireball.
OK, here we go! Three, two, one.
And we're off.
Go! Go! Go!
For Amy, the start is everything.
Just a tenth to slow at the top and she'll be two seconds off the pace at the bottom.
Sadly for us, she had a great start.
To the left.
No sign of Williams at the crossover.
That's because Williams was ahead.
Go! Go! Go!
At the halfway point, both Kris and Amy were losing precious time.
Kris because of the slushy ground,
and Amy because of rough ice.
Fortunately, Kris could rise above the problem.
Here we go. Whoa!
Less than a kilometre to go, Kris had closed the gap.
Yes, sir! Loving that.
Right.
Here it is, here we go.
Rrr!
AMY PANTS
Oh, no! What did you get?
Amy Williams, you did it in...
What is it? What is it?
You did it in 61...
Point? 61.04. Yeah?
We did it in...
59.73! No!
Sorry! Fair enough.
Congratulations to you too. It's traditional, I'm really sorry...
It's bad manners, but... loser.
Well done.
Disappointing. Well done, Mini.
I hate snow.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, Kris... Amy! Amy!
Can I first of all just say what a pleasure it is for me to have you back here on our show.
You always bring... a touch of joy to my heart.
Thank you.
This steering thing - you say you use your shoulders - how does that actually work?
So the inside of a sled pretty much is like a pivot point in the middle so, if I steer one shoulder there,
the pivot point will move and the runners grip the ice.
Do you have to do that really fast?
Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes slow, sometimes fast.
Is your hair naturally curly?
Yes, this is normal.
It's normal? Very lovely.
What's your favourite song? Oh, for God's sake.
Kris. Sorry, we don't have time to talk to the man.
No, we do have time to talk to the man. How did it get on, the Mini, in its first proper rally?
Well... Well, there we are, good. Now I want to talk
about planning permission because, if you want to change your house
in this country, you have to go to the council for permission.
This is to stop people putting up pink conservatories and generally ruining the heritage of Britain.
It all makes sense but I think the planners have overlooked an important detail.
This is the pretty little village of Chilham in Kent.
And careful planning means all of the houses are still very lovely.
But look here. The owner of this house wouldn't be allowed
by the planners to fit uPVC windows or stone cladding, but he's allowed to festoon
the parking space outside his house with a hideous Chrysler PT Cruiser.
It makes no sense.
If I had my way, only one car would be allowed in a village as lovely as this.
A car that, this year, is celebrating its 50th birthday.
The beguiling, bewitching, beautiful
E-type Jag.
Over the years, there have been many pretty cars.
But Enzo Ferrari described the E-type as the prettiest of them all.
And what makes that extraordinary is that it was shaped at night
in a rudimentary early-days wind tunnel that used so much electricity
it could only be operated when the rest of the country was asleep.
And everyone was still asleep when the car itself was tested
because the only place where they could actually run it up to its 149 mph top speed
was at 5am on the M1.
It was on one of those high-speed runs they discovered the roof
would flap about so,
to weigh it down, a string of lead shot was sewn into the canvas.
And there was a similar make-do-and-mend attitude to the rear suspension.
The chief engineer was given just a month to design an entirely new system.
The boss, Sir William Lyons, bet him a fiver he couldn't do it.
He did, and Jag used exactly the same set-up for the next 25 years.
Lyons, in fact, was completely underwhelmed by the finished product.
He didn't like the look of the back end and didn't think it would sell. He was wrong.
Because when the E-type was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1961,
it was an instant hit.
Such was demand for test drives that a second demonstrator
was driven through the night from the factory in Coventry to Switzerland.
And this is that very car.
OK, let's see what the old girl can do.
I know it's genesis, I know this is the very first convertible E-type ever,
but I have to find out what it's like when we give it some noise.
Oh-ho-ho!
Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!
Can you imagine what it must have been like in 1961?
You've been to the bakery, you've queued for a week for a loaf of bread, you're on your way home
in black-and-white in your Humber and you were overtaken by one of these.
It must have been staggering.
"What was that?!"
It's the same age, this car and me, give or take.
It has aged better.
Still looks good.
But it wasn't just the looks that astonished everyone back in 1961.
Back then, the equivalent Ferrari or Maserati was £6,000. A little bit more, in fact.
This was £2,098, and this,
thanks to its 3.8 litre straight-six engine, was faster.
Oh-ho-ho!
This is just heaven.
Even by today's standards, that's a lot of go.
Small wonder the E-type became a must-have accessory for the jet set.
Princess Grace, Steve McQueen, Tony Curtis,
Britt Ekland, Frank Sinatra, George Best,
Roy Orbison, Charlton Heston, Count Basie.
They all had E-type Jags.
No car before ever caused such a stir
and no car has since, really.
Until now.
This is called the Eagle Speedster.
Made by a small engineering company in Sussex, it looks like an E-type.
It's even based on an E-type but there have been some changes.
The aluminium body is deeper,
the windscreen is lower and more steeply raked.
The wheels are new, and the tyres, and the brakes.
And the interior.
If someone had come to me asking for planning permission to alter
an E-type Jaguar, I'd have said no, don't be stupid, you'll mess it up!
But they haven't.
I think this, by a long way, is the most beautiful car I've ever seen.
It might actually be the most beautiful THING I've ever seen.
And the surgery isn't just cosmetic.
Under the bonnet there's a fuel-injected 4.7 litre straight-six
which sends its power to the rear wheels through a five-speed gearbox and an aluminium differential.
As a result of all the aluminium, which doesn't weigh very much,
this has a better power-to-weight ratio than a Porsche 911 Turbo,
and, as a result of that, it can do 0 - 60 in 5 seconds.
Flat out, it'll do 160.
And then there's the noise. ENGINE ROARS
Ha-ha-ha!
It's spitting fire.
It's a spitfire! That's what it is.
The looks, the noise!
This, to me, is...
absolute perfection.
I'll put my hand on my heart and say here and now
I've never ever driven a car, ever, that I've wanted more than this one.
I yearn to have it.
There is, however, a problem.
Because every single piece of this car, pretty much, was hand-made,
the price is fantastic.
Enormous. Eye-watering.
I didn't know numbers went this high, but it turns out they do, so sit down, I'm going to say it.
Here we go. The Eagle Speedster...
is half a million pounds. Half a million.
That's a lot for a toy. A car that doesn't even have a roof.
But this is more than a toy.
It's a modern take on the E-type Jag.
And the E-type, with the possible exception of Concorde,
is almost certainly the last truly great thing Britain made.
I think we should be more proud of it than we actually are.
Its 50th birthday was marked by a small piece on page 16 of the Daily Telegraph
and I don't think that's right, which is why I've organised something a little more substantial.
BAND PLAYS I've organised something which recognises that this is the soul,
the spirit, the beating heart of all that we can be.
The E-type isn't a plucky Brit that's happy to come home second, it wouldn't be humiliated by Barcelona.
It wouldn't simply wave Sebastian Vettel by.
And if you asked an E-type to organise a royal wedding,
it wouldn't ferry the guests to Westminster Abbey in a fleet of minibuses.
The E-type doesn't know what a minibus is.
Every country has an icon.
The great nation of France has the big brown pylon in the middle of Paris.
Australia has a rock.
The Belgians have a urinating infant.
Well this, I put it to you, is ours.
Our Jerusalem, our chariot of fire, the maypole around which the people
of this funny little rock in the North Atlantic can gather, to remind ourselves
that, once upon a time, we really were as great...
as we think we are now.
ENGINE FAILS
It won't start.
APPLAUSE
A stirring but nicely understated tribute there, I thought.
But you said something that worried me - with the possible exception of Concorde,
the E-type was the last great thing Britain made. Is that right?
Can you think of anything we've made since which you go, "that's a world-beater"?
The E-type was a third the price of the Ferrari, as I said, and faster, and better-looking.
The only thing I can think that even gets close really is Monty Python, that moved the world on.
What about those vacuum cleaners with no bags in them?
We invented those and they're pretty good, they're clever.
Hammond, I'm not sure that, in 50 years' time, people will be having
a big birthday party on Beachy Head with people going, "These Dysons are brilliant!"
I'm not sure that's going to happen.
Moving on, the Eagle Speedster - is it really that good? Look at it.
Seriously, just look at it.
It's beautiful to behold, yes, but how can it really be worth
five times more than an immaculate original E-type?
I can demonstrate that, Hammond.
I can demonstrate that because, if I step in here, OK? Listen.
ENGINE FAILS
LAUGHTER
ENGINE STARTS
CHEERING
It starts.
On that bombshell, it's time to end.
Thank you very much for watching. Good night!
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