Top Gear

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

The BBC Two version of Top Gear began on 20 October 2002 as a relaunch of the older programme, distinct from the original 1977 consumer magazine show. Its first series paired motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond with used-car specialist Jason Dawe; James May joined for series two. The show kept recognizable magazine elements—new-car reviews, track testing and a studio discussion—but built its identity around recurring competitions and experiments. That distinction matters: it was a factual motoring programme whose presenters tested real vehicles, arranged tasks and reported outcomes, while the comic framing and editing made many segments entertainment as well as comparison.

Early episodes placed reviews of expensive machinery such as the Pagani Zonda and Ferrari 575M beside deliberately unlikely spectacles, including a bus jumping motorcycles and older women attempting donuts in a Honda S2000. The contrast established room for serious performance discussion and comic experiments within the same programme. Harry Enfield became the first guest in the recurring Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment, where celebrity conversation acquired a competitive endpoint on the track.

The English Channel crossing revisited an earlier amphibious-car experiment with a much harder destination. Clarkson adapted a Nissan pickup, Hammond used a Volkswagen Transporter and May brought an upgraded Triumph Herald. May could not get out of the harbour successfully, and Hammond’s vehicle flooded after trouble in rough seas. Clarkson’s “Nissank” carried all three presenters across, reaching Sangatte rather than their intended destination of Calais. A road vehicle had become transport between countries, but the test also exposed how differently the conversions handled water. The boats’ failures shaped the eventual shared journey instead of leaving three equal contenders to finish the race. The same competitive structure could therefore end with rivals depending on one another’s vehicle to reach land.

The programme also built longer tests around durability. In a two-part effort to destroy a Toyota Hilux, Clarkson and May subjected the pickup to increasingly severe treatment: they submerged it, set it on fire, hit it with a wrecking ball and placed it atop a tower block scheduled for demolition, then checked whether it would still start. The point was not a laboratory durability rating; the escalating trial was devised television. Yet the outcome depended on the actual state of the vehicle after each test, and the surviving truck later appeared as a stage for guitarist Slash. The segment shows the show's characteristic blend: a real object is pushed through a contrived sequence, and the sequence produces both a practical observation and a comic payoff.

Budget challenges made the same structure more comparative. For the British Leyland challenge, the presenters chose old family cars—the Rover SD1, Triumph Dolomite and Austin Princess—and attempted to show that the once-troubled manufacturer had made cars worth buying. They used their own money and tested the cars through a series of tasks intended to reveal what each could do and what might go wrong. This is not a neutral consumer survey: the low purchase price, the presenters' choices and the designed trials shape the result. But a named car, a defined task and the consequences of using it give the segment more substance than a general argument about which marque is good or bad.

Other challenges expanded the scale without abandoning the test format. In the North Pole expedition, Clarkson and May travelled by modified truck while Hammond was pulled by dog sled; the different means of travel created a race whose terrain and preparation affected the result. In another feature, Hammond and May attempted to send a Reliant Robin into the air as a reusable space-shuttle idea, but the vehicle crashed into a field. The production later acknowledged that it added cricket sounds in the edit to create a cinematic night-time effect. That admission is a useful reminder that a filmed challenge can contain genuine mechanical outcomes and deliberately constructed presentation at once.

The series' entertainment can also intersect with real danger, and those events should not be confused with the staged challenges. In 2006 Hammond was seriously injured during a high-speed jet-car run filmed for Top Gear; the BBC commissioned an investigation into the production's planning and risk controls. That was a documented accident involving a presenter, not a scripted outcome invented for a challenge. The difference is important to understanding the programme: its vehicles and tests were real, but the production context, safety decisions and edited story were also part of what viewers saw. The incident led to formal scrutiny of how high-risk television activity was assessed and managed.

The travel races put familiar transport choices on a larger stage. Clarkson drove an Aston Martin DB9 toward Monte Carlo while Hammond and May tried to arrive first using the Eurostar and other fast trains. The competing routes made scheduling, connections and road progress part of the result, extending the rivalry beyond a straight-line comparison of speed. That freedom to move between a road test, a guest lap and an ambitious journey helped the programme accommodate both an individual car and the practical circumstances surrounding its use.