The Grand Tour

- Hello, everyone. - Hello!

Thank you.

- Greetings, everybody. - Wow!

- We got a rowdy bunch in! - They are, they are.

Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you and welcome.

And, in this edition of our car show...

Richard steals some sun cream...

I drink some wine...

...and James says "40."

40?

All that... All that is to come.

But, we begin with Jaguar.

Now, us three, we love Jags because they're so... they're so roguish.

You can take a girl for dinner if you have a Jag, and then she will pay.

You could go and stay with people for the weekend,

help yourself to all their belongings

and no one will mind because "you have a Jag". Exactly!

In fact, people expect it.

You have somebody to stay at your house who owns a Jag,

you've got to accept you're gonna lose some paintings.

And some cutlery.

The thing is, though, OK, even though a Jaguar

is an international get-out-of-jail-free card,

very few people actually ever buy one.

Who here has got a Jag? One, two...

Only three people in Britain drive Jaguars.

It's astonishing.

Yeah, I've actually got the sales figures here and they are pretty tragic,

because in the five years up to 2016,

Jaguar sold 200,000 cars worldwide.

And in the same period, Audi, Mercedes and even BMW,

each sold over eight million.

It's a staggering statistic, it really is.

We were talking about this in the office the other day and Mr Wilman said,

people don't buy Jags because they used to break down.

Yeah, but, that's just not true.

And we decided to prove this

by taking The Grand Tour this week to Colorado.

The car I've chosen is, I think, the best car Jaguar ever made.

The V8 super-charged XJR.

It's cool without being Cool Britannia.

It's caddish without being laddish.

It's... violent without being vicious.

And it is just the last word in sophistication.

Hannibal Lecter had one and that says it all because

the last we saw of him he was on a plane, scot-free,

eating a district attorney's head.

Soon I reached the meeting point, where I found James,

who'd bought an XK8 convertible.

Here we are, look. A big cat near an old dog.

- Greetings, May. - Moron.

It's not a Subaru!

You're supposed to be upholding the reputation of the Jag driver.

- Why have you bought that? - Because it's excellent.

- It isn't. - It is.

- This was a very poor Jaguar. - This was a very good Jaguar.

You could go camping in the wheel arches of it! They're so high up.

They looked all right when they were super-charged and lower but this is...

They didn't work properly when they were super-charged and lower

because they had a terrible ride.

The one thing you get from a Jag is a nice ride.

You're disconnected from the world, that's the point. Anyway...

And those wheels! There's no "anyway" about it.

That's the best Jag probably ever made.

- Hmm. No. - Well, it is.

Tell me what's wrong with that?

One of the wheels is odd.

Yes, ah, I know exactly what's happened here.

Previous owner's had a puncture.

He's simply borrowed a wheel from another car to use.

- And he's gonna give it back? - Of course he is.

- Because he drives a Jag. - Exactly.

And look in here!

It looks as if there's been a knife fight in the car.

That's because he went to stay with some friends, obviously,

thought, "I'll borrow their cutlery"

tucked it into his trousers and then he's cut his seats, that's what's happened.

At this point, Mr Hammond hoved into view.

- God, is that a Mark X? - That is a Mark X.

That's a properly villainous Jag.

- That that is a proper Jag. - Yeah.

Whatever you do, OK, do not tell him that.

No, no.

- Hammond, you idiot. - What?

We're supposed to be upholding the reputation of Jaguar,

you've brought an antique, you've brought an old piece of furniture.

I am celebrating and revelling in the glories of Jaguar.

This is 1967420G.

This front end started with this car. That's the Jaguar look.

The forehead lamps, the narrow grill.

Hammond, seriously. What is that?

It's a 420G. This was the favour...

- No, no not that. That. - This? It's my jacket.

I thought, a bit of style. We're in Jaguars.

There's no style in the jacket at all.

It's riddled with style!

Some of your jackets are terrible, but I can't...

Anyway, this was favoured by every villainous bank robber and baddie

in and around England in the '60s.

- How much did you pay for it? - £6,500.

- What? - That is a lot of car for six-and-a-half grand.

- Look at the size of it! - Hammond, that is 1,000...

No, wait, £2,500 more

than I paid for a super-charged Jaguar.

That is Jaguar's embarrassing attempt to recapture their own design

that started with this, the four head-lamps, the narrow grill.

This is definitive. Your car is derivative.

And Hammond wasn't finished there.

Look at the size of this!

Imagine how many oil paintings, borrowed, I could get in there.

Smells terrible.

- Tool kit. - Let me have a look.

- That's for opening windows. - It is, no this is...

Not necessarily for fixing the car!

That's for cutting through somebody's fence.

This is for undoing the paintings from the walls.

All the Jaguar toolkit is just for burglaries.

It's got a jemmy in it!

At this point we set off into the heart of Colorado,

eager to demonstrate the magnificence of our cars.

Now it is telling me here that the traction control has failed,

the stability control has failed, and that the anti-lock brakes have failed.

And that's brilliant, because Jaguar obviously realised when they made this car

that drifting would one day become very popular,

and driver aids like this would be unwelcome and unnecessary.

So they were designed to break, and they have done.

This particular 420G is from 1967. Quite well-equipped.

This row of toggle switches here on the dash, six of them.

Wiper. Look at that!

Look at... Oh.

Yeah! That's the wipers there.

And then this is... They won't turn off now.

This is the fan. That doesn't do anything at the moment.

These are features.

This is character that has evolved over the years.

These are the beauty spots,

or the slight squint to one eye that makes a person beautiful.

If anything... If anything... Oh. The glove box has come open.

I'll close that now.

It's done it again.

Normally I'd say at this point, now we're alone, viewers,

let me talk you through a couple of things that aren't right with my car.

I'm afraid I can't do that because everything in here works perfectly.

There is, if you look in the left-hand dial, which is the rev counter,

there's an engine warning light on

to remind me that the engine warning light works, and that it's there.

When you brake, like that,

the brake pedal judders for you, so you know you're braking.

That's brilliant! Why doesn't everybody do that?

I will give Hammond's car one thing,

it does give good rear view mirror.

It looks villainous.

The Kray twins actually had 420s just like Hammond's Jag.

If you're watching this in America and you don't know who the Krays are,

they're the reason the Mafia never got to London.

They were too scared of the Krays.

Some incredibly strong smells in this car.

There's a sort of gluey, resiny smell.

And burning.

Yeah, burning.

It's having a smoke!

It's from the '60s. Everybody smoked in the '60s.

- It would smoke, it's a Jag. - That's what's it's...

You have a smoke, mate.

It's seen this nice view and thought, "I'll have a pipe and contemplate it."

Like, like a red native. What are they called?

- Native American? - Yes, that.

Once Hammond's car had finished its smoke,

we resumed our fuss-free journey,

and I got my foot down.

It's still got tons of poke. Look at that!

Which went well.

It's just not changing gear. It's... There's neutral.

Right, now it's in, I think, second.

Jeremy, why are we going so slowly?

I'll tell you exactly why, because the only German part in here,

the Mercedes gearbox, has gone wrong.

That was a sad lapse of judgment on Jaguar's part.

Any idiot knows you don't put German bits in a car.

- Manually changing gear. - What is wrong with it?

It's selecting a gear for the moment and then just sticking with it.

I can't wait for it to choose reverse.

This problem with shoddy German engineering couldn't have come at a worse time,

because we were now arriving at the location

for Mr Wilman's first challenge

and I'd have to fix things sharpish.

Now look.

"Now look" what?

Don't let us distract you Professor, Doctor.

Listen, I have worked this out all by my own!

The gearbox has overheated, OK? So I'm gonna put some fluid in it.

How much do you need to put in?

Don't know. How much do you need to put in?

- Put enough in. Go on. - Yeah, put some in.

It's like watching a really, really old drunk pour himself a Scotch!

"Just enough, man."

The concentration face is coming out, there it is.

Good to see a man operating at his absolute limit.

With the problem solved, it was time to get cracking.