Amazon has replaced Clarkson, Hammond and May on The Grand Tour, and the BBC has just confirmed the revival of Top Gear. But has anyone stopped to ask if we really need these car shows?
Top Gear is coming back. The BBC has officially confirmed it, although there’s no word on when, what form it will take or who will present it. Meanwhile, Amazon is relaunching The Grand Tour next month with an entirely new trio: Thomas Holland and James Engelsman from the hugely successful Throttle House YouTube channel, joined by trainspotter and social media personality Francis Bourgeois. All six episodes arrive on Prime Video on 4 September 2026.
Suddenly, after several years’ hiatus, the two biggest brands in motoring entertainment are preparing to go head-to-head all over again. But my first question is extremely simple. Why?
Do we really need a new Top Gear? Do we need The Grand Tour without Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May? Have these revivals been born from a genuine passion for cars and a desire to celebrate motoring culture, or have the BBC and Amazon been rummaging around in the cupboard, discovered two famous car-show brands and decided there must still be some money left to squeeze out of them?
More importantly, if these programmes are returning, what should they actually be? Because the world that created Top Gear has frankly disappeared.
YouTube has completely changed car entertainment
When Clarkson, Hammond and May were at their peak, television was still the main way most people discovered automotive video. You waited until Sunday evening. You watched whatever they chose to show you. Then everyone discussed it at school, work or down the pub on Monday.
Today, YouTube provides more automotive content in a single afternoon than a traditional television programme could offer across an entire series.
Reviews, comparisons, industry news, ownership reports, technical analysis, restorations, road trips, supercars, cheap cars, classic cars, electric cars, motorsport and off-roading are all available immediately.
There are also blokes trying to jump a £500 hatchback over another £500 hatchback in the name of car crash porn.
Whatever you want to watch, someone is probably already doing it on YouTube. They are usually doing it faster and with a much closer connection to their audience than a broadcaster could ever manage.
So what can television bring to this party? A famous brand, a large invoice and perhaps a helicopter? Actually, forget the helicopter. We all have drones now.
You cannot manufacture Clarkson, Hammond and May
My honest verdict is that bringing back Top Gear would be a complete mistake if the BBC intends to recreate it as another comedy entertainment show.
That version of Top Gear belonged to Clarkson, Hammond and May. Its enormous success was built around their chemistry, and chemistry is something broadcasters continually believe they can manufacture by placing three people in a room and waiting for lightning to strike. Usually it does not strike. And if it did, the room would catch fire, and they’d die.
Clarkson, Hammond and May became three instantly recognisable characters. Clarkson was bombastic, provocative and frequently outrageous. Hammond was the energetic enthusiast. May was the thoughtful, pedantic intellectual who could turn the operation of a windscreen wiper into an engineering lecture.
They annoyed one another, challenged one another and appeared to enjoy one another’s company even while pretending not to.
That relationship developed over years. The insults worked because there was affection underneath them. Their arguments felt convincing because the three men genuinely approached cars, travel, engineering and life from different directions.
They were also proper car people. This is the part everyone seems to have forgotten.
Jeremy Clarkson was a motoring journalist long before he became one of the world’s biggest television personalities. He was, and remains, an extraordinarily gifted writer.
James May was a proper motoring journalist with formidable technical curiosity and a genuine sensitivity towards engineering, history and design.
Richard Hammond was an experienced broadcaster with authentic enthusiasm for cars and motorcycles.
They understood why a particular car mattered. They knew its history, its rivals, its engineering and its cultural significance. They understood how cars made enthusiasts feel.
The explosions, antics and ridiculous challenges became the most visible ingredients, yet genuine credibility formed the foundation underneath them.
Copy the challenges without that foundation, and you are left with three presenters reading scripted jokes while a caravan rolls down a cliff.
Why the other versions of Top Gear struggled
Top Gear was franchised around the world. Producers recreated the test track, studio audience, challenges, faceless racing driver and scripted bickering.
Few came close to reproducing the original show’s global cultural impact. Even the American attempts struggled to make the formula feel entirely natural.
The props were present. The chemistry was absent. Most importantly, Clarkson was absent.
There is no point searching for another Jeremy Clarkson. There will never be another one, partly because he is a unique talent and partly because the media environment that created him no longer exists.
Clarkson was allowed to be opinionated, difficult, contradictory and occasionally infuriating. Today, every sentence can be clipped for social media, separated from its context and placed before an online tribunal within minutes.
Broadcasters consequently favour safer, carefully trained personalities who can complete a press tour without producing a corporate crisis.
Reports have linked Jimmy Carr with the revived Top Gear. The BBC has confirmed none of the presenter speculation.
Carr is an extremely clever comedian with the world’s most annoying laugh. He once topped the Top Gear celebrity lap board and owns an interesting collection of cars that includes an electrically converted Aston Martin DB6. Some enthusiasts may regard that crime/conversion as sufficient grounds for immediate disqualification from a Top Gear role.
The wider problem concerns credibility. The public knows Jimmy Carr as a comedian and panel-show host. He is not widely recognised as an automotive journalist, racing driver, engineer or motoring authority.
Liking cars and owning expensive ones does not automatically provide the authority required to lead Britain’s most famous motoring programme.
Steve Coogan would make more sense. He is a genuine enthusiast, a thoughtful performer and a brilliant storyteller. However, he revealed in 2016 that he had declined the Top Gear job because he did not want the pressure.
I understand completely. Whoever accepts that job will immediately be compared with Clarkson, Hammond and May. Every joke, opinion, review and awkward piece of studio banter will be measured against the most successful era of the programme. It may be the largest poisoned chalice in television.
Can The Grand Tour survive without its reason for existing?
Then we have The Grand Tour. Thomas Holland and James Engelsman already possess an established relationship through Throttle House, which has millions of YouTube subscribers. Their chemistry and automotive knowledge give them a considerable advantage.
People who regularly watch Throttle House tell me they are excellent. I have not watched enough of their work to pretend I know them particularly well, and I suspect much of The Grand Tour’s mainstream global audience will be in a similar position.
Success on automotive YouTube does not guarantee universal recognition beyond automotive YouTube. The new presenters could be brilliant. I genuinely hope they are.
But moving from a successful YouTube channel into a huge global entertainment franchise still represents an enormous leap. The production process, performance style, pacing and audience expectations are very different.
Francis Bourgeois is the more curious choice. His short-form videos can be great fun. He films his face through an extremely wide-angle camera while beaming with unrestrained excitement as trains thunder past. His enthusiasm is infectious in concentrated doses.
Give him a longer format and, based on the work I have seen, the limitations of his screen presence become more apparent. Something charming for 30 seconds can become rather tedious over 30 minutes. He may prove me wrong. I hope he does.
The larger problem belongs to the programme itself. The Grand Tour was created specifically as a home for Clarkson, Hammond and May after their relationship with the BBC ended. Amazon wanted those three men, their established chemistry and the enormous global audience that followed them from Top Gear.
That was the entire reason The Grand Tour existed. Remove the trio and what makes it The Grand Tour? The name? The budget? The elaborate challenges? The tendency to destroy things while crossing a desert?
Changing the presenters inside a programme built around three particular personalities may leave audiences feeling that they are watching an expensive tribute act.
Freddie Flintoff and the dangerous pursuit of spectacle
Both programmes face a far more serious danger. Competition encourages escalation. If Top Gear and The Grand Tour are fighting for the same audience, each will feel pressure to go bigger, further, crazier and more outrageous.
Bigger stunts. More ridiculous vehicles. Harsher terrain. Greater danger. Every trailer needs an explosion. Every episode needs a moment capable of going viral. We already know where that pressure can lead.
Freddie Flintoff suffered life-changing physical and psychological injuries while filming Top Gear at Dunsfold in December 2022. He has since spoken about living with anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks and post-traumatic stress.
Chris Harris later said he had warned the BBC three months before the accident that somebody could be seriously injured or killed unless something changed.
The BBC’s subsequent review said the production had complied with the required policies and industry practice, while identifying important lessons including clearer responsibilities and better communication between teams.
That language still leaves me deeply uncomfortable. I want to know that another presenter will never be placed in unnecessary danger because a producer needs a spectacular trailer shot.
Driving, motorsport and adventurous filmmaking all involve risk. Experienced professionals understand that and work to assess and manage it.
The danger grows when escalating editorial ambition, tight production schedules and competition for spectacle create constant pressure to push further.
Nobody needs to be fired from a catapult in a Reliant Robin. Nobody needs to cross an active volcano in a shipping container converted into an amphibious mobile production office. Nobody should risk death for a few minutes of television.
Another serious accident would cause enormous human suffering, damage the programme and provide further ammunition to people who already portray car enthusiasm as inherently reckless and irresponsible.
That harms the motoring culture these programmes claim to celebrate.
YouTube already owns the silliness
The antics and escalating craziness that made these shows famous are precisely the elements they should now abandon. Those shows have already inspired a generation of social-media copycats performing similar stunts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Also on YouTube, car reviews are plentiful. Motoring news moves instantly. Cheap-car challenges, drag races, outrageous builds and vehicle destruction arrive every hour.
Independent creators understand their audiences, face fewer editorial restrictions and can publish at a speed that would leave a lumbering legacy broadcaster gently weeping into its risk-assessment paperwork.
Television cannot win that particular race. Its opportunity lies elsewhere. YouTube creators rarely possess the funding, professional research, exceptional access and world-class production resources required to make something genuinely epic.
That is where the BBC, Amazon and other major platforms can still produce something magnificent.
Give me beautifully made driving tours exploring countries, people and motoring cultures, with stunning cinematography and presenters who allow the journey to breathe.
Give me ambitious documentaries about the rise of the Chinese car industry, the death of the affordable sports car, the history of the motorway, the transformation of Formula 1, the battle over autonomous driving, the decline of the manual gearbox and the communities preserving classic cars around the world.
Investigate vehicle theft, insurance costs, dangerous roads, manufacturer failures and political decisions affecting our freedom to own and drive cars.
Take us inside factories, design studios, racing teams and engineering departments that independent creators rarely get to access.
Tell us why cars matter.
Explore how they changed societies, enabled personal freedom, reshaped cities, created industries and became objects of aspiration, identity and art.
Spend the money on access, research, cinematography and storytelling rather than some blokes laughing about blowing up yet another Morris Marina.
Top Gear should return to its roots
For Top Gear, this could mean returning to its original purpose with modern production values. The programme began in 1977 as a proper motoring magazine. It covered new cars, road safety, consumer advice, fuel economy, insurance, motorsport and issues affecting real drivers.
A modern Top Gear could retain personality, humour and entertainment while treating cars and motorists seriously.
The BBC has the resources to investigate and explain a transport world experiencing its greatest transformation since the invention of the motor car. That programme could have a genuine purpose.
A revival chasing the Clarkson-era entertainment formula with three replacement personalities would simply remind us how much better the originals were. Those episodes are already widely available. We can watch them whenever we want.
The Grand Tour faces an even greater identity crisis because its identity was Clarkson, Hammond and May.
The new team deserves a fair chance, and perhaps they will create something fresh enough to develop its own personality within the brand. I remain deeply sceptical.
Should Top Gear and The Grand Tour come back?
My verdict is no, at least in the forms most people expect.
A comedy-led Top Gear revival would chase a past the BBC cannot recreate. Any new presenters will be judged mercilessly against the famous trio.
A completely reinvented Top Gear built around serious journalism, magnificent films, consumer advocacy, history, culture and epic driving stories could justify its existence.
It would require presenters with knowledge, authority, curiosity and an authentic emotional connection to cars. People who would still be telling motoring stories even if there were no BBC contract waiting for them.
As for The Grand Tour, its entire reason for existing departed with Clarkson, Hammond and May. Thomas Holland, James Engelsman and Francis Bourgeois may surprise us, and I sincerely hope they do, but they are inheriting a programme constructed around three other men.
Both shows need to stop chasing bigger explosions and begin searching for intelligent television ideas.
They should use their money and influence to elevate motoring culture, inspire people to understand cars, appreciate driving and recognise the enormous role the motor vehicle has played in our lives and throughout human history.
Most importantly, they must remember that no television programme, streaming contract, ratings battle or viral clip is worth somebody’s life.
If the plan amounts to more scripted bickering, increasingly dangerous stunts and ritual caravan abuse, put the brands back in the cupboard.
We still have the reruns.
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