Top Gear

Tonight, Richard Hammond buys a cup of coffee.

James May slips on some snow. I hate snow.

And we show a picture of Steve McQueen.

Hello! Hello, everybody. We're back!

Thank you so much. Thank you.

It is a whole new series featuring many things.

We go to Las Vegas, Italy, Monte Carlo, Albania, Loughborough...

But we start tonight with General Motors, which is a big company in America.

Many people say that last year they stopped making the Hummer because it was too big and too silly.

However, Richard Hammond says the reason it's gone west is because it wasn't big or silly enough.

This is one of the deceased Hummers.

The H3.

And it is, you'll notice, a pretty sizable car.

However, if you mourn its passing,

don't worry because happily you can now buy something a bit bigger.

It's called the Marauder, which is quite a scary sounding name.

But, hey, Buttercup didn't feel quite right so, hey, live with it.

I can't imagine it ever having one of those Christian fish symbols on the back bumper.

The Marauder, which is built in South Africa, weighs ten tonnes.

It's also 21 feet long and 9 feet high.

So in traffic it does tend to stand out a bit.

Ooh, don't people get out of your way!

Don't they!

Yeah! Hmm...

Tell you what, you do get some people telling you about how they feel a bit nervous in Johannesburg.

I er... I don't, no! I don't.

It's a weird feeling because I'm both worried about bumping into things because it's big,

and NOT worried about bumping into things

because, well, frankly, who cares?

Like the original Hummer, the Marauder is a military-spec vehicle that ordinary civilians can buy.

All you have to do is pass a background check

to prove you're not a villain living in a hollowed-out volcano,

and come up with a cheque for £300,000.

That is Rolls Royce Phantom money,

for a machine that's not exactly the last word in luxury.

Take the back seats, for instance.

There are eight of them, which is good,

but I don't think you'll be renting this out as a wedding car any day soon.

And as for the dashboard, they clearly decided not to go for the walnut and leather option on here,

partly because they need to leave room for the switches,

partly because the wood might clash with the machine guns.

However, the Marauder does compensate in other areas.

Take this annoying slow traffic that I'm stuck in now.

Normally this is where you need some expensive sat-nav system to give you alternative routes.

The Marauder doesn't need sat-nav.

There you go. There you go.

Oh, yeah!

It really does control its immense weight very well.

Yes!

It really is like offroading quite a large building.

Right, now...

That gap's big enough.

I-It is now.

Oh, Lord!

This is a good town car.

In fact, the Marauder has several benefits as a city runabout.

Imagine, for example, that you nip off to get a coffee and this happens.

Oh! That's not nice, no.

Now, normally the towaway people leave you powerless and penniless,

but not this time.

The Marauder has got 290 brake horsepower

and a top speed of just 70 mph, which admittedly isn't brilliant.

However, the torque figure is astonishing...

1,100 Newton metres of it, which is... a lot.

And that makes it pretty good in a towaway tug-of-war.

We're going this way.

Yes, there you go.

Another everyday irritation,

popping into the supermarket

and coming out to find yourself blocked in. Again,

no problem for the Marauder, thanks to its vertical climbing system.

Low range, four-wheel drive, div lock,

drive, handbrake off.

It's really kind of the ideal shopping car.

But let's not get carried away because, like everything,

the Marauder has its weak points.

Visiting a drive-through, for example.

Normally at about this point you'd roll down the windows

and get ready to say, "Cheeseburger and chips, please."

But the problem is the Marauder's windows are for tough situations,

they're 90 mm thick. They can shrug off an RPG

and as a result you can't open them, so this is where it gets a bit awkward.

Good morning, can I take your order please?

Hello? If you're there...

I'd like a cheeseburger and some chips, please.

This isn't a riot situation, don't be alarmed.

But the real problem comes when you drive around to collect your order.

Right.

Don't be alarmed, I'm not shooting.

So, a mark against the Marauder there.

And if you happen to visit a safari park...

you might find that the windscreen wipers aren't that tough.

But is this the only weak spot? Let's see.

Now, this is where we're going to do a little test you won't find

in the NCAP ratings, and we start not with this but with that.

Our old friend, the Hummer...

whose underside was packed with seven pounds of plastic explosive.

Oh, dear.

Really not much point trying to see if it'll start because some pretty important bits are missing.

So the H3 is, like Hummer itself, very dead.

But the important question is what happens to the Marauder

when you put the same amount of explosives underneath it?

Right, well, clearly, what has happened here is there was a fight

between the Marauder and the earth, and the earth lost and the explosives have just dug a big hole.

The question is, can it still be driven?

OK, fingers crossed.

Ha-ha-ha-ha!

That was definitely an inconvenience but really nothing more.

Oh, yeah.

Good car.

It was great.

Useful bit of consumer advice there.

Can I just say, though, I was looking carefully.

The last little bit there as it came out of the hole, I noticed the rear tyre had been blown off the rim.

Seven pounds of plastic explosive and all it did was below the tyre off.

But a car with the tyre blown off is as useless as a car that has been blown to smithereens, really.

Well, no, seven pounds... He's right because it's like saying,

"My watch survived the explosion completely unscathed.

"The hour hand has come off, but apart from that..."

It's like saying, "I survived the explosion apart from my head, which is over there."

Would you two please just stop saying things?

I think it's an excellent car, and now the news.

Yes, news. Yes, it's the news. For people who think there's literally

too much room in the back of a standard Mini, don't worry because there's now a coupe. There it is.

Whoa-ho-ho!

Any details? I can tell you it's, er... It's between £18,000 and £24,000

and the top model has 208 horsepower.

A lot of people have been talking about its roof, unsurprisingly.

Mini themselves say it's styled to look like a baseball cap being worn backwards.

Why would I want that as my roof?

I think this is a car that, probably, at night when you leave it,

entertains itself by spitting at the elderly.

They should have called it the Lout. The Slob.

Steal its own wheels and put itself on bricks.

I like the idea of the Slob. Now, hey, you know when you're pregnant?

Er, no. No. Yours is coming on nicely.

And you go for a scan and they're able to tell the sex? Yes.

Well a very kind lady has sent us a photograph of a scan she's had done

of her forthcoming arrival, and it seems to suggest she's giving birth to a Stig. Look here.

She is! Oh, look!

All curled up, that's nice.

We're worried about this because we've told him time and again to stop impregnating people.

It's awkward. He made Michael Gambon pregnant twice.

If there's any consolation, it'll probably be a fairly quick birth, I imagine.

Unless it comes out sideways, like that.

Good news! Actually, it's not good news, it's just some news, OK?

MG is back. This is the new car, here he is.

It's called the MG 6, you can have it as a saloon or as a hatchback.

It's supposed to be very modern in every way but I don't think

the factory where it's being made in Longbridge is modern at all because I've got the press release

they sent out here and it says the first car was driven off the line by the only woman who works there.

That's not very modern, is it? No. Did they go on to say,

"And best of all she has a smashing pair of knockers!"?

Very modern.

Don't tell me. It says next, "Don't worry, chaps, we'll let her

"drive it off but we won't let her park it." Oh, God! Welcome to 1950!

The thing is, the car has gone away for some reason. That's not a joke.

The thing about this is, OK, we know this is made in China

by the lin-king wan-king don-king non-king...

Them. Yeah. Them. Keep going.

Heavy corporation industry, right, OK?

It's shipped over to Birmingham, where they fix an MG badge on it and sell it.

But they say in the actual brochure, which I've got here,

it talks about Le Mans and breaking land speed records.

It says the MG embodies British sporting style.

It doesn't. No, it doesn't.

I think the only British sportiness in that is the glue they use

to fix on the badge is made from a dead British racehorse.

That's the only sporty thing in that car, I reckon.

Wait a minute. I should add, the press release they sent us has got a typo on it.

Here it is, look. "Ear"?

MG ear. I think this indicates the car will be a bit hit.

It might be complete rap.

Absolute ollocks!

Yes.

Now, I've always wondered, I've always thought there was someone

in Britain now driving around in, let's just say, a Renault Fuego Turbo. OK?

How do they know that's not the last Renault Fuego Turbo in the whole country?

where you can go on it and find out precisely how many examples

of each model are left in existence, OK?

It's unbelievable.

So how many Fuego Turbos are there? I went on it, there were three.

Just three? There were only three Fuego Turbos.

That makes them really special. It's an incredibly rare car.

No, I went on it, and did you know - because somebody doesn't - there's somebody driving around

in an Austin Maxi 1750 automatic and probably doesn't realise it's the last one?

Only one Maxi 1750... One. He's not here, are you?

It's a Maxi 1750 automatic and it's unique. Still crap though, isn't it?

It's terrible. It's uniquely crap because there's only one.

Whenever we're told there's one Amazonian green-backed nose turtle left...

God, is there? We're all supposed to have these candlelit vigils

and eat mud and not drive cars and turn our central heating down to save it because it's going extinct.

There's only one Vauxhall Chevette GL automatic left, that's it.

There's only one left. Look at it!

What's being done to save this car?

I put it to you, nothing is being done.

Actually, in the Victorian era, chaps used to go off, when something was about to become extinct,

they would go off, find it and shoot it as a trophy.

"The very last one, blam! Ha-ha!" And then nail its head to the wall.

Are you suggesting then we go out and hunt?