7 REASONS

YOU SHOULD WATCH THE GRAND TOUR

1 THE MAD MAX-STYLE OPENING SEQUENCE

It features 2,000 extras, cost nearly €2.8million to make, and sees a futuristic-style 150strong armada of wild custom cars kicking up dust across the Californian desert while a squadron of six military jets roars overhead.

2 THE VERY STARRY GUESTS

James May won’t confirm the names of the show’s celebrity guests, but says that ‘you’ll see some very well-known faces on our show – and I’m not referring to Hammond and Clarkson’.

3 THE AMAZING BIG TOP TENT

The Grand Tour is filmed in a tent with stage, lighting rig, crane, five cameras and a solid floor. It takes eight days to put up, three days to take down and needs a crew of 114 people. The show actually has two of these ‘studio’ tents, so they can leapfrog over each other in the schedule.

4 THE SPECTACULAR SCENERY

In the first nine months the trio drive VW buggies along the beach in Namibia, join a special forces training camp in Jordan, race a Rolls-Royce across Italy and visit Germany, California, Morocco, Tennessee, Dubai, Finland, the Netherlands, South Africa and Whitby in Yorkshire.

5 THE HYPERCAR RACE

The team hired a Portuguese racing circuit to film a race between three of the fastest cars on the planet – the £860,000 (€967,000) McLaren P1, the £625,000 (€700,000) Porsche 918 Spyder and the £1.15million (€1.3million) Ferrari LaFerrari – something they had never managed to do on Top Gear.

6 THE CRAZY STUNTS

‘The Grand Tour is not just for petrolheads,’ says May. ‘For instance, there’s a home-made car that I drive. I don’t want to tell you what it’s made of because it would spoil the whole set-up, but even I thought it was a stupid idea.’ What’s this car made of? Animal, vegetable or mineral? ‘Ooh. Erm, a bit of all those things. They’re recyclable, let’s put it that way.’

7 THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE

Richard Hammond attempts to build a car that would survive an apocalypse. He also attempts to save the planet with Clarkson and May by dropping wrecks of cars into the ocean to create an artificial reef off the coast of Barbados.