Top Gear

On today's show, James catches fire.

Richard knocks something over.

And I crash a Reliant Robin into to a lamppost.

Hello!

Hello, we're back! We're back!

We're back and we are...

.. more sensible than ever.

Well, we're starting sensibly anyway, with this,

the Bentley Continental GT.

It's not my cup of tea, if I'm honest,

but if you live in Cheshire and you have to travel great distances

at high speed in drinks globe luxury it really is in a class of one.

Now, however, there's a new version which is a bit different.

It's called the Continental Supersports, and this is it.

The fastest, most outlandish car Bentley has ever made.

First of all, it's been lightened.

The rear seat has been replaced with air.

The sofas up front are now racing buckets trimmed in the Duke of Westminster's smoking jacket.

And there is carbon fibre on the dash rather than walnut.

The result is dramatic because that car weighs just two and a quarter tons,

about the same as a three bedroom terraced house.

Still, it's not like there isn't enough power to deal with the bulk.

It has the same engine as before, a 6 litre twin turbo W12,

but now it produces 621 horsepower.

The result is 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.

God, that is 167, 168 and it's still pulling!

Flat out, it will do 204 miles an hour,

even if you fill the tank with Jerusalem artichokes.

That engine has been designed to run on something called bioethanol, fuel made from plants.

And if you use that rather than petrol the power output remains

the same, but you get fewer carbon dioxides coming out of the back.

Sounds wonderful, if you believe in this carbon malarkey,

but there are a couple of drawbacks.

First of all, there are 8,850 petrol stations in Britain, but only 20 of them sell bio-ethanol.

And, secondly, when you're running on maize it's not what you'd call economical.

Honestly, it gets through veg faster than Paul McCartney's ex.

The Supersports, then, it's all much as you'd expect,

very fast, very heavy and at speed about six miles to the gallon.

But don't be fooled by the headlines.

This is spooky.

I've got an automatic gearbox and air conditioning, satellite navigation and it's very quiet.

It's just like a normal Bentley, but look at the way it changes direction.

This car is like an elephant with the reflexes of a water boatman.

And if you're watching in Poland and you don't know what

a water boatman is, it's like an Evo X, it really is.

And if you're watching in Ethiopia and you don't know what an Evo X is,

what I mean is it does things rather well. No, not well!

Why did I say "well"? Oh, God.

Then you have the brakes which can tear your face off.

Ready, now!

To make the Bentley a race track screamer it's been fitted with

carbon ceramic discs, new suspension bushes and different anti roll bars.

Though when I say different I mean, of course, enormous.

They've also reprogrammed the four wheel drive system so that now most of the power goes to the back.

Imagine then that if you mash the throttle into the carpets halfway around a corner

it will spin up its rear wheels and hang its tail out like a small dog.

Sorry, but was a dreadful simile, dogs don't have wheels.

Unless they'd been in an accident.

But here's the extraordinary thing, OK?

It doesn't! Coming up to the Hammerhead going the wrong way,

halfway round, foot hard down...

.. it doesn't! It just grips.

Of course, you can make it misbehave if you go way too fast and poke it with a stick.

But even if you do that the computer steps in,

sends power to the front wheels and, bang, everything is sorted out!

It is uncanny.

It is a very impressive car, this.

But I don't like it.

What they've tried to do here is turn an ocean liner into a speedboat.

And, yes, they have sort of pulled it off,

but it still feels very big and very heavy. Oh dear!

Whoa!

So big and so heavy in fact that I believe it has just shredded its rear tyres.

Oh dear! Now, I don't think that's legal any more or safe.

The upshot then is simple.

If I wanted to spend L163,000 on a speedboat

I'd buy something that was designed to be a speedboat in the first place.

In short, I'd buy an Aston Martin DBS.

Thank you very much.

Really? You would have the Aston?

Oh, yeah.

No, it's more nimble, it's got two more seats,

doesn't weigh the same as a church.

Doesn't eat its own shoes. No,this is t he best car in the world. No, it isn't.

Yes, it is. Anyway, we must now find out how fast

the Wilmslow Express goes round our track

and that, of course, means handing it over to our tame racing driver.

Some say that his discharge is luminous...

.. and that even as we speak he is appearing on the main stage

at Glastonbury performing his most famous hit, Superstition.

All we know is he's called The Stig.

He's off! Note the flags there, Stig displaying his support for the Norwegian football team.

I tried to explain they aren't actually in the World Cup, but this made him very angry.

Here he is, first corner, looking nice.

Yes!

Interestingly, he's the only person in the world who likes the sound of the vuvuzela, because he invented it!

There he is, round Chicago, very tidy for a big car.

Now, Hammerhead. This should be astonishing.

Oh no, it's exploded! It's rolled end over end!

This is incredible! But Stig's out of the wreckage!

He's dodging the naked waitresses and... he's on fire!

He's now coming up to Gambon.

No, no! He's taking his helmet off!

It's her! Right round the tiger!

He's just a shaken hands with Elvis and there he is, across the line!

I don't believe that, the most exciting thing I've ever seen and some idiot at Television Centre

cut to an advertisement for a stupid little Korean hatchback.

It's a good job ITV didn't cover the moon landings. 10 foot.

Five foot.

# If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit... #

Anyway, I have the time

and it did it in 1:24.9, which puts it there.

And that's not bad, really, for a small moon.

Anyway, now we must turn our attention to the Icelandic volcano because although it went on

to become global news, the actual eruption itself started out quite

small and that got us wondering how close could you get to it in a car.

Now, obviously, this was a job for a rugged, outdoorsy sort of chap.

Unfortunately, Jeremy was on holiday,

so James went.

It's very hard to drive across Iceland at the best of times.

But luckily I had just the vehicle for the job.

This looks exactly like the Toyota that Jeremy and I

drove to the North Pole.

More to the point, this has been to the North Pole with us,

but you never saw it and it never got any of the glory

because it was the one driven by the camera crew.

After we got back from the Pole our car went off to a museum whereas this one was just left to rot.

Today, though, I'm going to bring it back to life and give it one more mission.

Wow, I never actually thoughtI'd be so pleased to seeone of these again.

This really brings it all back,

the ice going on and on forever, the boulder field going on and on forever.

I can hear Jeremy going on and on forever.

Oh, God...

No matter, my job is to turn this into the world's first volcano-proof car,

which means a visit to Emil,

the 4x4 genius who built it in the first place.

I mean, what are the unique risks to volcano driving,

apart from obviously being consumed by molten lava and burnt to a crisp?

It depends on how close you want to get.

Very close. As far as I can work out no-one's ever actually driven

right up to the mouth of an active volcano in a car, so it's another Top Gear first if we can do it.

Yeah.

Some people claim you can walk on hot coals if you wet the bottom

of your feet and I was just wondering, if there was some system

of continuously wetting the tyres would it be possible to drive across the hot lava?

If you don't fall through, possibly, yeah, if you drive fast.

Emile didn't look very confident,

but we set to work anyway...

.. and by the next morning the volcano-buster was ready.

I know I look a bit like a petty thief on my way home from some corrugated roof robbery

at the allotment, but there's a very good reason for all of this.

Their lava occasionally goes over an area of water and that

causes an explosion throwing bits of lava and rock up into the air,

so that's there to stop those lumps coming down and breaking the windscreen, or my head.

We've also fitted our new and pioneering tyre cooling system.

There's an oil drum on the back full of water and pipes feed the water to the tyres.

Now, obviously, there's a risk of it freezing and we can't put antifreeze

in the water because that pollutes the glacier, so we've added a dash of vodka.

As I drove on to the glacier, I stopped to hook up with

a volcanologist who couldn't get to the volcano because of the weather.

And it's fantastically windy. I've never seen or felt a wind like it.

Because of this storm that has been raging for the last few days, we haven't really been able to visit

the area to see what's going on there.

So at the moment, with this weather, in this white-out,

really nobody knows what's happening.

Exactly. Nobody can say.

As night fell, the storm became worse.

It was so bad that by morning, it had taken the lives of two locals.

This is what we're seeing, or what we're not seeing, I should say.

Visibility is probably less than 10m.

We reckoned that as long as we could follow the car carrying Emil and the camera crew, we'd be OK.

There it is. There he is.

But we weren't.

Oh, I've lost the tail lights.

Wow, that's dark.

Soon, we were completely lost.

Can you see any red lights? I don't see anything.

Oh, cock.

Right, we are now, effectively, driving on instruments.

Outside the window is just... it's a complete sheet of white.

There's a blizzard going.

The windscreen itself is freezing up.

The windscreen wipers have frozen up.

It's quite unnerving.

Eventually, I had to get out to unjam the wipers.

Ah! Oh, my God.

Blinding.

Look at that.

Good job.

God, I've never known anything like that.

I hadn't realised how strong that was, being in here.

I could hardly stand up.

We ploughed onwards until, at last, salvation.

Lights! Look, lights! There they are. Thank God.

Eventually, the storm cleared and we arrived at

our overnight stop, where we were greeted by a spectacular sight.

Wow, look at that! Beautiful.

How far away is that?

About one and a half kilometres.

I can hear it, as well.