The Grand Tour: New Trailer and Rock Legend Rumor

[Paul Jeffrey]

The Grand Tour, a new motoring programme due to release on Amazon Prime this coming November, have released a new trailer showing off some incredible production quality as the former Top Gear hosts look to take over the mantle of motoring kings from their former employers.

Since the surprise sacking of BBC Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, and the subsequent departure of co presenters Richard Hammond and James May, many fans have been eager to see what the three TV car nuts have in store with their new motoring show - The Grand Tour. Much like Top Gear before it, The Grand Tour looks to the three dynamic TV personalities as they take a wide range of high performance vehicles beyond the edge of performance in a quest of one-upmanship and friendly rivalry for our entertainment pleasure. Very little is known about the new show, other than Amazon are providing a substantial budget for Clarkson and Co to cast aside the enforced boundaries of the BBC production and let the creativity spill out in the new programme.

Signed up for three 12 episode seasons, The Grand Tour travels across four continents in a fine sample of vehicles and adventures. In the latest trailer, the team can be seen thrashing around a racetrack in the latest hypercars, blowing stuff up in a tank, dropping cars into the sea and entertaining a live audience in a huge circus type marquee. All the usual stuff really...

It has been confirmed that the opening sequence alone is the most expensive ever to be created for a television show, coming in at a cool £2.5 million. The opening scene features a wild 150 cars, 2,000 acrobats and six jet planes... BBC budget cuts be gone...!

In other news, it has been rumoured via The Sun newspaper that rock superstars Roger Daltrey (of The Who fame) and former Dr. Feelgood and Ian Dury & the Blockheads guitarist Wilco Johnson have been commissioned to write the opening theme tune to the new show. Daltrey and Johnson are no strangers to working together, releasing the epic Going Back Home album back in 2014, the first non The Who studio album from legendary British singer Roger Daltrey in 22 years.

It is thought that the rock duo performed a gig for top Amazon management back in August, and Clarkson is a know Who fan. A Sun insider claims:

“Jeremy is a huge fan of Roger and Wilko.

“The track which they played was a rocking blues number and would be great for the show. It’s one of a couple of options. Jeremy is also looking at getting his favourite band Hothouse Flowers to have a go.”​

Needless to say, if the rumors prove to be true, The Grand Tour will have one of the best opening theme tunes in modern television.

With Top Gear already confirming the somewhat lacklustre Chris Evans wont be returning for a second season, handing the reigns to former Friends star Matt Le Blanc, the gloves are well and truly off in the fight to be king of the motoring shows.

The Grand Tour will debut on Amazon Prime Friday 18th November.

Are you looking forward to the new motoring show from the three former Top Gear presenters? Do you think the show will prove more popular than the "new" Top Gear? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Nox]

Can't wait!

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

I'm looking forward to it myself, those three are a brilliant team together and the show looks like its going to be more "entertainment" and less serious than Top Gear (sometimes) was.

Plus Daltrey... Man I hope that bit proves to be true The Wilko Johnson album they did together was seriously good stuff and The Who are my all time joint favourite band (alongside the Beatles). So that would be super duper sweet

Now I need Amazon Prime....

 

[P*Funk]

Here, can we finally accept the fact that the trio of numpties are completely unserious and utterly uninterested in any sort of information based motor programming? There's no value in anything they're going to do in the Grand Tour so now we can actually have the new Top Gear be about actually digging into a more serious tone that used to be there in the earlier days of the trio's regime, when it was odd ball but still informative.

Great, please, just put Chris Harris on the main show and have some people who actually know how to drive cars do some presenting, kay? Like... don't ask me to believe that those power slides we saw in that trailer were being done by the boys. They couldn't power slide to save their lives.

I think there's room for both shows, why must they be in some idiotic competition? Top Gear for people who care about cars, and The Grand Tour for juveniles who think they care about cars but really don't know **** all about anything and just want to fap to posters of ugly Labourghinis.

 

[Queequeg]

Gonna give it a watch for sure, but it looks like it's set to continue just as ridiculous as it left off, so I'm probably not going to watch it regularly; just when I feel like having a laugh (in a good way).

 

[unseen]

Absolutley gagging for it. Entertainment at it`s finest.

3 morons being morons, in charge of many horsepowers. What`s not to love

 

[ears]

Why was Clarkson's sacking a surprise?

If I punched a colleague I wouldn't be surprised if I got the sack.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

3 morons being morons, in charge of many horsepowers. What`s not to love

Amen to that !

 

[Blimey]

The trio didn't deserve BBC anyway, Amazon all the way. Leave the dying show to the dying stars of Bad Gear.

 

[Celestiale]

The Grand Tour for juveniles who think they care about cars but really don't know **** all about anything

I am pretty sure the trio knows a whole lot more about cars then 99% of the forum audience here.
They present it in an entertaining way with emotions, and i am yet to see anybody else to bring across how it really feels to drive cars without actually driving them better then this trio. They ginger it up with a ton of political uncorrect jokes, from which 90% wouldn't even be understood by your "juveniles", probably a whole lot of adults who don't get the lot of them as well.
Then the new Top Gear which was utter ****, and pretty much the opposite of entertaining or funny.
Seriously...i agree on the Chris Harris part, he is really good...but the rest of your post is utter BS

 

[Christian Moreau]

I...am...excited... Best trio on TV, can't wait to see what foolishry they're going to pull.

 

[P*Funk]

They present it in an entertaining way with emotions, and i am yet to see anybody else to bring across how it really feels to drive cars without actually driving them better then this trio.

What, you mean the way Clarkson has of saying absolutely naff things about supercars that aren't true but sound amazing and emotional in the moment?

Sure, they were how you say when they started, but by the end it became a parody of themselves. They do somewhat know some stuff but as they progressed they courted the emotional more and left any semblance of reality behind.

They forsook the great balance they had at the start of the trio's run and went down the path they've gone, which is all spectacle. The new show is not for people who actually care about anything resembling fact or reality. In the end Top Gear became a distillation of entertainment with almost none of the review focus left in it. Emotions are appealing but they're ultimately false much of the time. I can't remember how many incorrect fallacious things Clarkson has said about cars in order to make some appeal to emotion, like what was it... the last V12 ever or something? Oh yea that didn't happen.

Now let me say I am fine with them doing that. Let them do it, I enjoy it somewhat, its entertaining (not as good as it used to be, I think its all a bit excessive now, self parody as I said) but I can enjoy the mindless fun of it. I just think its not all that its cracked up to be and more full of **** than people are willing to admit, and I don't mean his crass remarks about Germans. That's why I think the new Top Gear can be what the trio used to do and the trio can simply be the three jesters as they clearly desire to be. No need for competition, just two different faces of motoring on TV.

 

[Arne Dopudja]

Here, can we finally accept the fact that the trio of numpties are completely unserious and utterly uninterested in any sort of information based motor programming? There's no value in anything they're going to do in the Grand Tour so now we can actually have the new Top Gear be about actually digging into a more serious tone that used to be there in the earlier days of the trio's regime, when it was odd ball but still informative.

Great, please, just put Chris Harris on the main show and have some people who actually know how to drive cars do some presenting, kay? Like... don't ask me to believe that those power slides we saw in that trailer were being done by the boys. They couldn't power slide to save their lives.

I think there's room for both shows, why must they be in some idiotic competition? Top Gear for people who care about cars, and The Grand Tour for juveniles who think they care about cars but really don't know **** all about anything and just want to fap to posters of ugly Labourghinis.

Who gives a damn about car specs and info? You have wikipedia and user forums for such stuff. Also if you don't have the budget for the 80+k car they are reviewing, you don't need info, however if you are in the budget, you simply dong give two s***s because ayou simply can buy what you WANT not what is the best financial investment.

 

[Celestiale]

What, you mean the way Clarkson has of saying absolutely naff things about supercars that aren't true but sound amazing and emotional in the moment?

Sure, they were how you say when they started, but by the end it became a parody of themselves. They do somewhat know some stuff but as they progressed they courted the emotional more and left any semblance of reality behind.

They forsook the great balance they had at the start of the trio's run and went down the path they've gone, which is all spectacle. The new show is not for people who actually care about anything resembling fact or reality. In the end Top Gear became a distillation of entertainment with almost none of the review focus left in it. Emotions are appealing but they're ultimately false much of the time. I can't remember how many incorrect fallacious things Clarkson has said about cars in order to make some appeal to emotion, like what was it... the last V12 ever or something? Oh yea that didn't happen.

Now let me say I am fine with them doing that. Let them do it, I enjoy it somewhat, its entertaining (not as good as it used to be, I think its all a bit excessive now, self parody as I said) but I can enjoy the mindless fun of it. I just think its not all that its cracked up to be and more full of **** than people are willing to admit, and I don't mean his crass remarks about Germans. That's why I think the new Top Gear can be what the trio used to do and the trio can simply be the three jesters as they clearly desire to be. No need for competition, just two different faces of motoring on TV.

To be honest, i am currently at Season 10, i started watching it from the beginning a year ago or so. And until now, i think it's pretty great, but the focus is clearly not on cars, but on entertainment, that should be clear. On the way you learn something about how the cars behave, what's good, and what not (in a subjective opinion). But you won't learn any technical stuff, that's for sure. When i want to know the technical stuff about a car, i look for completely different sources to be honest, that is not was Top Gear is about, and never was i think that is the misconception a lot of people have.
I for myself can't wait for the Grand Tour, for me as a German it is the best "entertainment TV" i can understand (German, English, French, Italian). By far. Probably subjective, but i just like the humour a lot more then the "humour" from our German TV presenters. Don't wanna even start with Italian or French....
And it is not that the new Top Gear would have done anything better then the old one. It surely didn't inform any better about the cars involved, and in addition it wasn't funny at all whereas the old one was.It did the good stuff from Top Gear worse, and nothing better. Seriously, when they want to rescue anything, they should just give Chris Harris his own show, give him Rory Reid as sidekick, and just test cars - those were the only interesting bits in the last season. Would be a nice change of pace between them two (however, i'd still prefer Grand Tour anytime, i am only interested about any technical aspect from cars when i plan to buy it, and about those i spend a lot of time before i'll eventually buy them)
Well while i was writing this, Arne above explained it pretty good. Apart from Wikipedia, there are also dedicated Youtube channels who do nothing but serious car testing.

 

[Torcano]

I think there's room for both shows, why must they be in some idiotic competition? Top Gear for people who care about cars, and The Grand Tour for juveniles who think they care about cars but really don't know **** all about anything and just want to fap to posters of ugly Labourghinis.

Who would've thunk it that of all the places in the world, someone in a sim racing forum would turn this situation into a holier than thou contest.

Here, can we finally accept the fact that the trio of numpties are <blah blah blah>

That starting sentence though, desperate much for validation on your contrarian opinions m80? Tsk tsk.

On topic: Can't wait for the episodes. looking forward to see if the opening theme has the potential to be as iconic as "Jessica" from OG Top Gear. :3

 

[Brandon Wright]

went down the path they've gone, which is all spectacle. The new show is not for people who actually care about anything resembling fact or reality.

Absolutely right, and that's why I absolutely love it. I learned long ago that if I want serious car reviews I go to places like Chris Harris on Cars, /Drive, Fifth Gear or Petrolicious. If I want pure car entertainment that embodies the joy and passion of being a young boy with Countach and Viper posters on his bedroom wall, there's nothing better than Jezza, Hamster, and Slow. Sure they've become a parody of themselves, but that's part of the fun. If you're watching these guys for concise and valuable information on cars, you're watching for the wrong reasons. If you want to watch grown men acting like children while driving millions of dollars worth of exotic machinery and mercilessly murdering tires, tune in next month! Not everything has to be serious and informative.

 

[Rodent]

Still no word on how/when we up in the frozen north will be able to watch it sadly. And just going to mirror Brandons sentiment that the reason I'm looking forward to the show is for laughs and not some serious car analysis.

 

[Blimey]

Still no word on how/when we up in the frozen north will be able to watch it sadly. And just going to mirror Brandons sentiment that the reason I'm looking forward to the show is for laughs and not some serious car analysis.

18 November?

 

[Rodent]

We don't get Amazon here in Swedenland so... maybe? They're playing it very coy and it's a bit annoying.

 

[Queequeg]

Who gives a damn about car specs and info? You have wikipedia and user forums for such stuff. Also if you don't have the budget for the 80+k car they are reviewing, you don't need info, however if you are in the budget, you simply dong give two s***s because ayou simply can buy what you WANT not what is the best financial investment.

And that's where reviewing affordable cars comes in. Except they haven't done that in years.

I still remember the episode with Clarkson reviewing the Alfa 166. He was presenting the emotional appeal of the car as well as the value and costs of ownership in a way that was funny and DID include stereotypes, but contained facts as well. It appealed to emotion AND reason. But that was like 15 years ago and they have stopped exploring that concept more than five years ago.

Edit: Rewatching that the conclusion starting at 6:15 had me rofl and still the review did inform in a pretty detailed way about the depreciation of the car and gave a brief overview of performance and cost of ownership.