People who connect with the true history of Detroit and everything that it represents.
People who’d rather burn rubber than… other things. The trio establishes Detroit as a playground for people who’d rather talk about (and use) superchargers than spinach.
But that doesn’t stop the hosts from bringing some noisy life back to the still-neglected areas of the city – like the massive and blighted Packard Plant. ‘Captain Slow’ is far from slow in the Camaro, Clarkson shows his skills behind the wheel of the RTR, and Hammond, well, has some trouble with the Demon.Īs the three haven’t visited or lived through the current rebirth of the city’s downtown area and adjacent neighborhoods, the British hosts were predictably horrified to discover Detroit in its current state. Clarkson in a Ford Mustang RTR Spec 3, Hammond in a Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, and May in a Hennessey Exorcist Camaro. If you, like us, have enjoyed all of the antics of Top Gear and The Grand Tour over the years, you will not be disappointed.Īs we mentioned, in the first episode of a brand-new season of The Grand Tour, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May make a pilgrimage to Detroit to drive three highly tuned muscle cars. In the first episode of season three, the guys head to Detroit to drive three American muscle cars with a thirst for high octane gasoline, and an appetite for lots and lots of rubber.
I am excited to see what the next season of The Grand Tour brings, but also sad for the end an era that inspired my childhood and made me the car enthusiast that I am today.If you haven’t watched the latest season of The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, we highly suggest that you get to it. This episode of The Grand Tour was remarkable in that it was special without actually being special, it focused on the every man car, it focused on how important it was to be a regular average Joe, a working class member of society.Įven though I knew this was coming, I am absolutely gutted by the end of this series, but as an open letter I wanted to publicly thank Richard Hammond, James May, and Jeremy Clarkson for inspiring a 16 year old me to have a passion for cars. Whenever Jeremy Clarkson would talk about the Mondeo ST200, I felt like we had a personal connection, like we knew each other, and I felt like I had a friend that I had never met before, someone that knew me that I didn't have to know. Nothing, and I mean nothing has come close to what Top Gear, the Grand Tour and what my old (and now crushed) SVT Contour meant to me. I made some really great friends there, one of which I now live only a few miles away from and have known for over a decade, I owned numerous Ford Contours, an SVT model that I upgraded to the ST220 engine, and I absolutely loved them for being the completely package Fun, fast, comfortable, and versatile. I loved the car so much I joined an organization known as, we also were known as "CEG," The Contour Enthusiasts group. My first car was a 1996 Ford Contour, which was the first "world" car mid-size sedan offered in America, mine was a 2.0L Zetec engine with the 5 speed manual, which in Europe was the top spec. The last episode of The Grand Tour (Top Gear's) old format was released today with a proper send off to Ford Mid-size cars, and this episode absolutely meant the world to me. It has been 17 years that I have been watching these three imbeciles tell me everything I should think and feel about cars in a format that was unheard of at being successful.