The Grand Tour

Thank you!

Hello! Hello!

- Thank you. - Hello!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thanks, everybody, and welcome!

And in today's show...

Richard chooses his favourite waterfall.

I like that big one.

...James waters a stranger's barbecue...

...and I put some dust on a girl.

All that is to come, but we start with McLaren.

They have replaced the 650 with a new car

which is fast around the corners and faster in a straight line.

Plainly, then, the only one of us three qualified to drive such a thing

is Richard "Whoops, I've Done It Again" Hammond.

While the outgoing car may have been great to drive,

it was never what you'd call beautiful, or even very exciting to look at,

but its replacement, well that's a different matter.

It's called the 720S, and from any angle

and in every detail, it's simply sensational.

Right down to the engine bay that glows red when you unlock the doors.

Yup, on the head-turn-o-meter

this thing definitely matches the Ferrari 488

and the Lamborghini Huracán.

And then when we move onto the business of speed and power,

it actually beats them.

Nought to 60 takes just 2.8 seconds.

Top speed is 212 miles an hour.

Both those numbers walloping the efforts of the Italians.

Everything is bigger in this car.

Even the price, £208,000.

Oh, wait, that's not a good point, is it? No, that's a... Never mind. Whatever.

The horsepower is... Well, it's ridiculous is what it is.

This four-litre V8 with its twin-turbos produces 710 of them.

To put that into context, the actual mechanical engine in a McLaren P1

without all the hybrid battery boost

produces just 17 horsepower more.

The net result of that is...

...staggering!

Ooh, that is fast.

However, although they've gone nuts with the styling and the engine,

the 720 is still very much a McLaren.

By that, I mean it's been made

by the ultimate tech nerds from the Kingdom of Geeks.

Let me put it this way.

This is, like I say, the replacement

for the McLaren 650S.

If you ask a McLaren technician, so how much of this car is new then,

they will tell you 91%.

Not, "nearly all of it, mate,"

or "about 90%".

91%.

James May applied for a job at McLaren

but they turned him down for being too slapdash.

And this incredible geekery has paid dividends.

For example, one of the reasons the 720 looks so pretty

is because it's the only mid-engine super car

without massive gaping intakes behind the doors.

Instead, McLaren created subtle channels

along the bodywork to feed air into the engine bay.

More nerd stuff. The old car, the 650, had a carbon fibre tub that came up to here.

On the 720, all of this, all of that down the centre, everything, is carbon fibre.

That means these carbon windscreen pillars can be very thin,

which makes it easier to see out, and it's light.

Overall, they've lost about 18 kilograms up here.

That means the centre of gravity is lower, which is good.

Then there's the computer-controlled suspension,

which is even more advanced than the system on the P1.

It makes the ride on this 700-horsepower hardcore supercar

as comfortable as a nice sit down.

The question is, what does all that comfortableness mean for the handling?

Here we go. Track mode... active.

Haw! I like that. I do like that.

Right! Um, well, carry on!

Oh, my God!

This is breath-taking!

The new chassis control system on this,

based on the work of proper pointy-heads in Cambridge,

it's all about maintaining the biggest possible contact patch

between the tyres and the tarmac.

God! It's the grip! It's staggering!

It feels like a four-wheel drive.

But if you do want things to get a little more lairy,

simply dive into the computers and activate

Variable Drift Control. It lets you select the angle of dangle through your drift

by varying the amount of traction control.

I think we'll go for all of it, lots of drift available.

Yeah, maybe less than that, I think.

I think I'm gonna have 38%.

38.5. This is a McLaren. Accuracy.

And that seemed to do the trick.

Yes!

Yes! Working! That's it!

I know my setting on a McLaren's Variable Drift Control.

Unleash the beast!

And when you've finished your slide fest...

...you can switch back to comfort mode,

and settle down for a relaxing cruise.

That's the thing that stands out about this car,

it's everything in one. You want speed, you get speed.

You want comfort, you get comfort.

You wanna lose tyre rubber, help yourself.

You want boot space, there's plenty.

But the thing I keep coming back to is those looks.

Because at last, McLaren's technical perfection

has been clothed in a way that does justice

to the fizzing brilliance underneath.

God, I'm falling in love a bit here.

Actually, no, I'll go further, I'm in love. This is utterly brilliant.

No, you're wrong. Well, no, I drove that car,

not that one, but I drove a 720 a couple of weeks ago and I didn't love it.

Are you just being obtuse because I did?

No, no, honestly. I didn't like the brake pedal.

- Oh, was it the wrong shape? - The wrong colour?

- No. - Was it in the glove box? Was it the handbrake?

- No. - Was it round and in front of you?

No! Listen! The problem was - imagine a volume knob on a stereo

where the volume doesn't start till you get to six.

So you push and then it all happens.

You wouldn't have noticed it on the track,

but on the road it was almost impossible to drive smoothly.

It drove me mad. Nearly as mad as the seat controls.

What was wrong with those, then?

They were really complicated.

I should explain, by the way, that this is a man

who a couple of days ago summoned a woman from the other side of London

to help him send a tweet.

- Yeah, he did! - No.

- It was a complicated tweet. - No, it wasn't complicated.

- Did you try the seat control? - Can I say, actually, yes.

And I agree with you, there's no sense to it.

There's no sense to all this. You can't recline.

You can't make them do what you want.

Anyway, let's forget the seat controls and let's forget the brake pedal

and let's find out how fast the 720 goes round the Eboladrome.

- With someone who can adjust the seat. - Yes.

Right, let's do this.

And she's off. Short-shifting away from the line to manage the traction

and immediately onto the Isn't.

Total focus there.

A deliberately wide line round the first corner,

working the tyres hard on this cold, tricky track.

Flying down to Your Name Here.

God, that thing sounds good.

Ooh, getting a bit of tyre squeal there.

And then hammer down up the hill and back onto the Isn't.

This is so quick.

A dab of brakes. Down the box to keep the fire lit.

Now up to the slow and technical Old Lady's House.

Avoiding any understeer there.

Interesting, she's got the car in track mode but the dash is in full screen.

Clearly that's what proper drivers prefer.

Even with the air brake up, clearly needs some managing under braking.

Just the last corner to go now.

Slices through there and across the line!

It looked good. It looks fast.

Right, let's see where it goes on the leader board.

Here we go, up it goes. Quicker than the GTR.

Ooh! Now, that's quite interesting, isn't it,

because what we've deduced from that is the car you loved

is no faster than the car it has replaced.

Yeah, yeah. That is a bit weird. The only thing I can think of

is the 650 was on Super Trofeo tyres which are super sticky, wasn't it?

And that 720 was on normal road tyres. It makes a difference.

- That is actually quite a good explanation. - Thank you.

Well it's either that or it's no better.

Anyway, shut up, because now it's time for us

to plant a sapling of chat on Conversation Street.

And it is an unusual Conversation Street this week.

Because it's the end of the year we're doing our awards, OK,

or as we call them, the Nigels.

We start actually with, well, we're calling it

the Nissan Juke Award for the Worst Car of the Year.

Nominations are, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.

Why is that on the list?

Well, many, many reasons, actually, chief among which

is the way it beeps as you're driving along for no reason.

You just go along and it goes "beep".

- Ah. - Nothing's happened, it's just beeping.

- Maybe it's just bored. - I'd be bored if I was a PHEV, but anyway.

Other nominations include the Mini Countryman

and the Renault Kadjar.

And the winner is...

It's the Nissan Juke!

There you go!

- A deserved award. - Oh, yeah, it is.

The judges were particularly impressed with its consistent awfulness.

It was awful when it was first launched seven years ago

and it continues to be awful to this day. Well done, the Nissan Juke.

Do you know what that car is? It's a wacky vicar.

It's more like the sort of vicar that will go,

"I've just been on My Face, and do you know who else was there? Jesus!"

- Yeah. - That's what it is.

Next it is the Hard Ass To Follow Nigel.

This is given to the car with the worst-looking rear end.

The nominations are the Honda Civic Type R.

- Oh, I like that. - No, you're wrong.

That is well wrong. It's just a car they wouldn't stop designing.

Look how many spoilers they put there.

"We'll have one here and one here and one there and there,