Top Gear: Ambitious but Rubbish

“Something’s gone wrong with the handling,” shouts Jeremy Clarkson as he tries to get his car under control. What’s gone wrong is that one of his wheels has flown off. It then bowls across the test track, narrowly missing his co-presenters and crew. This is how Top Gear’s engineering segments used to end – in messy chaos, as Richard Hammond recalls here.

Other segments from the show’s early years include the time they turned a people carrier into a convertible and took it to a safari park. Also, some remarkable presenting sang froid as James May drives a 4×4 up a volcano, while red-hot rocks fall around him and his tyres catch fire.