If you’re expecting The Grand Tour: One for the Road to be a sombre, sedate affair compared to the trio’s previous work, think again: if anything, it proves that advancing age hasn’t blunted their capacity for causing mayhem, or embarrassment to the foreign office.
Zimbabwe, the gloriously filmed final location for their beloved format, is a poor country with a great deal of mineral wealth, the movement of which is very strictly controlled. It’s possible to buy large quantities of raw silver in Zimbabwean markets for ridiculously cheap prices, though, which formed the basis for one of the new special’s more ridiculous challenges: casting car bling from it.
Clarkson fashioned an antelope skull from the precious material. James May crafted himself a nifty new steering wheel with a solid lump of the stuff. Hammond cast himself a new spoiler for his Ford Capri: but didn’t have enough to make it full size.
Adorned with garnishings of solid silver, that gets roasting hot in the Zimbabwean sun, they set off. But realised as they were approaching the border to neighbouring Botswana that smuggling silver out of Zimbabwe is highly illegal.
Given that they are patently not in jail (though that might change, as apparently the Zimbabwean ambassador attended Tuesday night’s screening), they clearly weren’t caught, having sufficiently disguised the metal as parts of their cars. So there’s a Top Gear Top Tip for would-be smugglers trying to get precious minerals out of Zimbabwe: simply fashion them into gaudy ornaments for a selection of clapped-out bangers. Simple.
The relative ease with which they managed to cross the border evokes memories of the Patagonia special which aired almost ten years ago, in which angry Argentinian nationalists clashed with the BBC’s film crew, leading to a tense finale in which the presenters escaped to nearby Chile with the help of a police escort and even decoy cars.
Fortunately, the final moments of One for the Road aren’t harrowing at all: in fact, they’re beautiful, poignant, and left not a dry eye in the house at the aforementioned press event earlier this week. It truly is a fitting farewell for three incredible careers.
The Grand Tour: One for the Road will be available tomorrow, Friday 12th of September, on Amazon Prime video.
