These Are The Top Gear Moments Jalopnik Will Never Forget

Confession time: The last time I watched more than a few minutes of Top Gear, I was torrenting it on Limewire. I don’t remember much. I think they were mean about the BMW Z8, which is correct. Other than that, it’s a blur.

I do blame the TG crew for the trend of American car journalists degrading themselves by using repellent little Britishisms like “sorted” “proper” and “if I’m honest.”

That said, I was excited about the Chris Harris version of the show, mostly because it’s fun to watch Chris drive on camera. But confession number two, I only watched a few clips. I just can’t sit still for car videos on YouTube. This one was good, though.

One of my favorite cars of all time is the Bugatti Veyron, and Top Gear featured it frequently throughout its life cycle. There was the race across Europe where Jeremy drove the Bugatti while James and Richard were in a plane that was piloted by James, to great comedic effect. It did drag races against the McLaren F1 and a Eurofighter Typhoon jet, and The Stig took it around the Dunsfold test track and pitted it against a Pagani Zonda F.

But my standout Veyron moment on Top Gear is when Captain Slow took a Veyron to Bugatti’s Ehra-Lessien test track with the goal of reaching its record-breaking top speed of 253 mph. James did just that, and the video does a great job of capturing exactly why the Veyron is such a monumental engineering achievement. And a few years later, James went back to the track to drive the even faster Veyron Super Sport, setting a new top speed record—only for Bugatti’s official test driver to break it a few minutes later.

For years, “Top Gear” re-runs were my background noise TV. I’d rewatch it endlessly like it was “Star Trek” or something. There was just so much of it, and so many good bits, I never got tired of it.

It was this scene, which stretches all the way back to 2004, which seem to me to be the episode where Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May really seemed to gel as a trio. Plus it’s a great look back at a time when you could conceivably buy any Porsche, even a crappy one, for under $2,000. The concept is such a great, almost Jalopnik-y quest for the lads. Nothing is better than driving cheap, slow but fun cars fast.

For a few years now, the sound of Jeremy Clarkson’s voice has made me queasy, so I tend to stay away from rewatches, but there are still many good memories to be enjoyed.

I’m going to play the contrarian here (big surprise, right?) and say that Matt LeBlanc was the best host Top Gear ever had. There are lots of great segments that the former ‘Friends’ star hosted during his stint from 2016 to 2019—like the Ariel Nomad or Porsche 911R—but I think my favorite will always be Ken Block’s sightseeing tour of London with Joey in the passenger seat. One of the coolest cars of all time matched with LeBlanc’s dumb American flair, plus Ken’s iconic stoicism combines for not only a great Top Gear segment, but one of the best pieces of TV ever.

In 2010, Top Gear aired a segment about Ayrton Senna to commemorate what would have been his 50th birthday. It was easily one of the best pieces that the show ever produced. The tribute quickly discussed the three-time champion’s tragic death in 1994 and his impact on Brazil as a whole before quickly shifting to exploring why he was one of the greatest racing drivers of all time. During the peak of Top Gear’s international popularity, the BBC also held the broadcasting rights of Formula 1 in the United Kingdom.

The BBC-produced car show occasionally offered an alternative perspective on the globe-trotting racing series when the only other presence F1 had on television in many countries was just the official race broadcast. BBC F1 commentator and former driver Martin Brundle sat down with Jeremy Clarkson to talk about what it was like driving against the legendary Brazilian throughout his career. Lewis Hamilton also got to talk about being a Senna fan as a child before stepping behind the wheel of the McLaren MP4/4 that his idol drove to win the 1988 F1 title. It was a heartfelt tribute that succinctly explained why Senna’s legacy was still present in the sport over 15 years after his death.

I’ve never really followed Top Gear. I’ve never been a huge fan, not even a fair-weather fan. I guess the closest I get to Top Gear is watching the “Trip to...” films with Michael Coogan and Rob Brydon. Those movies have Brits in them and they’re driving good cars, like Range Rovers and Mini Coopers. That counts.

But if I have to pick a favorite segment from the show, I’ll have to pick something we reported on recently. Sir Michael Gambon passed away not long ago, and I learned he was once in “Top Gear.” There was even a corner named after him on the TG test course — Gambon Corner.

Michael Gambon was a treasure of a human being and I love watching anything with him in it, even TG. I had no idea Gambon was an engineer, but I learned that from watching his return visit to “Top Gear.” In the video, he says he’s 28. What an accomplished young man. Not only is he a good driver and hilarious interlocutor — really, the video segment will have you rolling with laughter — he’s also the best Hamm in the recorded history of Samuel Beckett’s play, Endgame.

“Top Gear” had a tumultuous few years after the sacking of Jermey Clarkson and the carousel of presenters that followed. Then Chris Harris, Paddy McGuinness and Freddie Flintoff stepped in to helm the show and it started to make sense once again. The turning point, for me, was this film from 2021, which saw the three of them drive the cars their dads drove. It was the moment that the chemistry of the new stars seemed to gel as it had in the good old days, and it was also just a really lovely film.

In it, Harris gets behind the wheel of his dad’s 3 Series, McGuinness has a Ford Fiesta and Flintoff is in a Ford Cortina. It showed the car origin stories of these three, seemingly random, presenters and offered a glimpse at why they now liked cars enough to make it their day job. It’s great and while it’s not quite the spectacle of past expeditions to the North Pole or the Amazon, it’s just a nice little film about our enduring relationship with cars.

Back in 2008, I was just a college student with no plans of getting into automotive journalism. I mean, if you had told me that it would be possible to get paid to write about cars, I would have jumped at the opportunity, but it didn’t even occur to me that it might be an option. So instead, I obsessively watched “Top Gear” with my friend Matt who introduced me to the show. And one of the first specials that I remember watching was the Vietnam Special. I hadn’t even tried pho yet since my hometown only got its own Walmart in 2002, but I knew from that moment I watched the special that I was going to make a similar trip to Vietnam.

It took until 2019 to actually make that happen, but it did happen. The trip, that is, not trying pho. I was introduced to the wonder of pho much earlier than 2019. And while we didn’t ride motorcycles the whole way, we did get to ride the Hai Van Pass on an old Honda 125. Sadly, the suits I got custom-made in Hoi An weren’t as flashy as the ones Clarkson, Hammond and May bought, but still. It was an incredible trip that I probably never would have taken if Top Gear hadn’t given me the inspiration back when I was still in college.

My favorite moment from “Top Gear” was the British Leyland challenge where the trio was tasked with buying cheap British Leyland cars with their own money to prove that the marque produced some cars that weren’t crap.

I especially enjoyed this segment because it set the stage for some of the trios finest bullshitting. Their typically pro-British mentality was put to the test in this attempt to justify their choices, and hilarity ensued as they bickered their way through some of the more original challenges. Highlights ranged from the Belgian pavé suspension test with a colander of eggs above their heads, to the handbrake effectiveness test that ended in calamity, to the ultimate quality test where each car was duct taped up and filled with water prior to running laps of the track to determine whose car was best-built.

This segment stands out in my mind as one of the first moments that my then-12-year-old self grew enchanted with the world of Top Gear, and sparked my dreams of becoming a snarky, stubborn automotive journalist. Despite the controversy surrounding some of the presenters, they brought the niche world of the car-obsessed into the mainstream and served as inspiration for an entire generation of car people. Side note – I used to volunteer with a high school afterschool program where my kids told me that car guys are the male equivalent of horse girls, but when I made them watch Top Gear they grew to better understand my dorky infatuation.

“Top Gear” did a few U.S. road trips during its time on air. My favorite was the late 2000s road trip May, Hammond and Clarkson took while driving American muscle cars. Hammond drove a Dodge Challenger SRT-8, Clarkson had a Chevy Corvette ZR-1 and May had a second gen Cadillac CTS-V.

While Clarkson’s disdain for American cars is well known, he actually liked the ZR-1. This time around, surprisingly, the hate of an American car came from May. He seemed to not like the CTS-V at all. In a hilarious rant that seemed to go on and on. He called the 6.2-liter 550 horsepower supercharged V8 in the CTS-V “not necessary.”

Speed is not the most important thing about a car. Neither is handling, nor reliability, nor any of those other aspects that spec sheets will tell you about. No, there’s something that matters more in a car, and the “Top Gear” Botswana special taught me just what it is: A good car is just a lil’ guy.

This is Oliver, and he’s a friend. A guy, a bud, a lil dude. Oliver may not out-handle a 918 Spyder or out-accelerate a Eurofighter, but he doesn’t need to. He’s a fellow you can get attached to, and that’s as important in the car buying process as any hard number. The Botswana special taught me that.