Clarkson on new Grand Tour line-up: "they’re bloody funny"

The Grand Tour, Amazon Prime's motoring show, will return without its long-time hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – but Clarkson has given his approval to the new line-up in an exclusive interview with Autocar’s My Week in Cars podcast.

Thomas Holland and James Engelsman, from the Throttle House YouTube channel, will be joined by Instagram influencer Francis Bourgeois as the new presenters of Amazon's most-watched unscripted UK original series worldwide.

The trio will lead a six-part run that takes them from crossing the Angolan desert in track day specials to exploring Malaysia’s vibrant car culture, before heading to California to test America’s latest high-performance machines.

Clarkson holds very fond memories of the show, but is also confident about his successors. He told Autocar: “We had an enormous amount of fun doing it (the Grand Tour), but it's quite physical. It’s much harder to do than you might imagine. And the world is a much smaller place now.

“Think of the trips we've done over the recent past. Ukraine - can't go there any more. Russia - can't go there any more. We landed in Iran, drove up into Turkey, down through Syria and into Jordan and Israel. Can't do any of that. The whole of north Africa, with the exception of Morocco, is gone. We were limited to southern Africa. We've done Namibia; we've done Mozambique; we've done Botswana; we've now done Zimbabwe.

“But I've seen the guys being chosen and I've seen some of the stuff they've been doing, and it's very, very good. Oh, it's different. I mean, it's different because they're three completely different people to us. They’re bloody funny.

“I'm pretty confident it will work. I mean, touch wood, from everybody's point of view. We all want it to work and I'd love the idea that the Grand Tour carries on.

Other topics discussed on the podcast include which cars Clarkson currently owns, which era was 'peak car' and whether he would ever buy an EV.”

How Cropley bagged Clarkson for the podcast

When we arrived at Diddly Squat Farm to record our podcast, Jeremy Clarkson was sitting behind his new £3000 aluminium designer desk, the one he’d been writing about buying in his Sunday Times column the previous day. To tell the truth, that desk was most of the reason why Matt Prior and I were there on that day - and it's what eventually led to JC joining us for a very special episode of the Autocar podcast, which you can listen to below.

Clarkson had been writing about how, because farming was quiet and it had rained non-stop since Christmas, he wasn’t currently needed to run this or his other businesses (farm shop, pub, brewery, game show). He had thus been feeling bored and had turned to buying things and contemplating new hobbies. The desk was part of that.

It was all discussed in Clarkson’s uniquely breezy and ironic column writer’s style, but what grabbed Prior’s and my interest – we’d both read the column – was this rare confession about JC’s boredom and having time to spare. Twice before we’d approached him about filling a My Week In Cars slot, but the first time he’d expressed a blanket dislike of pods, and the second an entirely understandable protest that he simply didn’t have any spare minutes.