Starting HANDLE

Top Gear’s recent trip to Nepal irks our James Walshe

As a reader of this magazine, you no doubt shared my delight as the lads on Top Gear recently chose three interesting old cars for use in navigating the Himalayas. It’s also likely you’ll have winced as the Renault 4 and Peugeot 106 Rallye were kicked around, crashed into and (in the case of the R4) inexplicably abandoned beside the road due to an unspecified issue.

Both at the top of their respective trees,

Top Gear and The Grand Tour deliver jawdropping visuals and well-crafted humour. However, watching as one of the presenters destroys a classic is like being at your favourite pub and watching as the barman spits in your drink. Personally, I’m not a big fan of Allegros, but what Richard Hammond did to that Allegro Estate on The Grand Tour last year was repugnant. Smashing something up for a cheap laugh? Not funny, mate – it was embarrassing.

Each year, our writers are challenged to buy and revive a classic for less than a grand and take it on an epic journey – from the

Alps in winter, to Scottish mountains.

It’s something that we’ve been doing throughout the magazine’s forty-year history and we’ve never felt the need to do anything other than simply enjoy the glory of conquering the trickiest of roads, repairing the cars at the roadside if they break down and bringing them home undamaged.

In the case of Top Gear, there are rumours that both the Renault and Peugeot have been saved, but it begs the question: why wreck them in the first place? I suggest our TV pals might need bringing back down to earth and to my mind, there’s no better place than the Practical Classics Classic Car & Restoration Show in March. You’ll find thousands of owners there who’ll be more than happy to remind you why we love saving cars, not smashing them up.

‘Like watching the barman in your local spit in your drink’