The fourth episode of the twelfth series of Top Gear aired on the 23rd of November, 2008. It was presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig. Harry Enfield was the guest star, having previously appeared in the very first episode of relaunched Top Gear.
Synopsis[]
Every week, either Richard or Jeremy drives a "preposterously" fast car around the Top Gear test track. But, for this week's episode, neither of the two were available, as Jeremy was still injured from crashing his truck into a brick wall during the premiere episode's main challenge, and Richard was "busy selling fish at Morrisons". This meant that James May had to go out and do the segment for the trio.
Tonight...[]
- We have a race to Blackpool...
- The new Lamborghini comes to our studio...
- And at last, the Bugatti Veyron is on our track.
Trivia[]
- Jeremy's opening quip about Richard Hammond being "busy" refers to Hammond's then-ongoing advertising contract with British supermarket Morrisons. The Christmas advert for that year first aired on the 6th of November, 2008, with filming occurring in August, around the same timeframe as Series 12.
- Despite having a fuel range of only 655 Miles before running out and only able to normally achieve 35mpg, Clarkson before speeding up in an attempt to run out around where he lived in Oxfordshire managed to get it to do 49.1mpg.
- Despite not being the winner of the race it was agreed by the trio that the true winner of the race was Jeremy's Jaguar XJ6 as it had managed to achieve the impossible as it had managed to complete the full 750 miles of driving rather than the expected 655 miles & even when reaching 650 miles and expected to only have 5 miles of range left still showed that it had a range of 135 miles which would easily complete the full 750 miles and would have 35 miles left in the fuel tank. The result being it could achieve 785 miles.
- In the studio after the film of the race was finished it was stated by Jeremy that after arriving in Blackpool it had been discovered that when the fuel tank had been examined it was discovered that there was still enough left to do an additional 120 miles before running out and had this been known he could have still driven quickly to Blackpool and beaten Hammond. If the car managed to achieve 53mpg with the 18.7 gallon fuel tank it had a range of almost 1,000 miles.
- The scene on the stage was cut to them just walking on the stage and then pulling the lever. YouTube footage showed Clarkson and Hammond discussing that they had raced each other and while not mentioning the result Clarkson stated to the audience "All we can tell you is James May lost". It had however been a giveaway who had won when other public members as until Clarkson mentioned the race members of the public had seen Hammond arrive first.
- The final result showed that Clarkson had arrived less than 1 minute after Hammond. May meanwhile did make it to Blackpool but had arrived over 40 minutes after the switch on was over.
Goofs[]
- On the studio map, Belarus is misspelled as "Byelarus".
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