The Five Best Top Gear Challenges
Posted on: 10/10/2014This series is now one of the most successful, widely watched series the BBC produces, on air since 1978. Yes, 36 years.
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In that time it’s come up with some pretty wild and wacky entertainment, much of it coming not only from the challenges for the presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond but the interplay between these three, as they successfully wind each other up.
But what are the best episodes? Well, we’re gonna nail our colours to the mast and name ours.
Polar Special
Season 9, Episode 7
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The concept was a simple one. A trip from Resolute, in Northern Canada across 450 miles of the toughest terrain all the way to the Magnetic North Pole.
The twist though, as there always has to be one, was that the race be between Clarkson and May in a pick up truck and a train of Inuit dogs pulling Hammond on a sledge.
As ever there was no guarantee- in fact that either team would actually make it to the end, let alone win it. It was a brilliant idea and the resulting programme was an hour well spent.
Car/Boat Challenge
Season 8, Episode 3
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The challenge is for each presenter to build an amphibious vehicle from standard car of their choice.
Clarkson chose a Toyota HiLux for his ‘Toybota’, a huge outboard strapped to the back. James May a sailboat Triumph Herald for his well-named Mayflower and Hammond’s hilarious VW Transporter ‘Dampervan’.
They all duly took to the sea, with brilliant, if wet results.
Turning A Car Into A Train
Season 17, Episode 4
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Well, why not?
Leicester to Loughborough was the plan, with a carriage train made up of caravans and the chosen towing cars with tyres removed, put onto rails to do the pulling. Cue Jaguar XJS and Audi S8, with a row of assorted caravans behind, making up First Class, Buffet Car, Second Class, and Scum Class.
Just brilliant and some perhaps predictable caravan shenanigans by the end.
Vietnam Special
Series 12, Episode 8
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This was a huge undertaking; to get from one end of the country to the other in only eight days, the dig being they would achieve what the Yanks failed to do in the entire Vietnam War.
The first gambit of course, is finding the requisite transport, but having blown so much of the budget actually getting there, they only have enough to buy small motorbikes rather than cars.
Spectacular, trying and funny in the best tradition.
Renault Robin Into Space
Season 9, Episode 4
