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Remember When Clarkson And Hammond Cut May’s Oxygen While Diving In Barbados?

The Grand Tour trio headed to Barbados during the show's first season

by Brad Anderson

As we eagerly await the next episode of The Grand Tour , a particularly hilarious clip from one of the show’s best episodes has been posted to YouTube.

This clip comes from the 10th episode of The Grand Tour’s first season when Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond headed to Barbados to construct an artificial coral reef using the bodies of five cars. It was an excellent episode and this video shows one of the most entertaining segments.

After dropping two car bodies into the ocean, the trio had to anchor the cars to the ocean floor so they didn’t float away in the currents. To make this happen, James May had to dive down. Unfortunately for him, Clarkson and Hammond were left with the task of supplying him with oxygen while he was under the water.

Watch Also: Jeremy Clarkson Says The Grand Tour’s Scotland Special Is Coming This Year

This required manual labor and as we all know, Clarkson doesn’t like manual labor. As such, they decided to unplug May’s air and attach it to a generator to do the work for him. While Clarkson and Hammond enjoyed the sunshine and crystal clear water of Barbados, May is left on the ocean floor. Before long, Clarkson decides to take things into his own hands and dives down with a welder to secure the cars in place. It doesn’t go well.

A couple of months ago, James May confirmed that the trio recently finished filming a new episode of The Grand Tour in Scotland. This new episode will be released later in the year. The trio are also said to have started filming another episode in April and are hopeful that they can head overseas later this year for another episode.

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Dumb Fight at the O.K. Coral

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• The Grand Tour travelling tent arrives in Nashville, Tennessee from where Jeremy Clarkson , Richard Hammond and James May introduce their attempt to save the world's coral reefs using only a selection of car body shells and some extremely inept boat driving. Also in this show, Jeremy finally indulges his series-long Alfa Romeo obsession with a test of the new, 500 horsepower Giulia Quadrifoglio and AC/DC singer Brian Johnson comes to the tent to try his hand at Celebrity Brain Crash. — Carlo
• The Grand Tour travelling tent arrives in Nashville, Tennessee from where Jeremy Clarkson , Richard Hammond and James May introduce their attempt to save the world's coral reefs. In the interests of conservation, the three travel to Barbados and begin an earnest attempt to establish a new reef using only some car bodyshells as a foundation. Their efforts start badly and then get worse, involving inept crane driving, useless boat steering, and an embarrassing moment with a local hotel. Also in this show, Jeremy finally indulges his series-long Alfa Romeo obsession with a test of the new, 500 horsepower Giulia Quadrifoglio. Meanwhile, AC/DC and genuine rock legend Brian Johnson comes to the tent to try his hand at Celebrity Brain Crash.
• The trio host their next episode at Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is named after General Nash, who kicked the British out. The best-selling cars in US are all Hondas and Toyotas. Detroit has women with armpit hair growing Kale. Coal rolling is a sport where people test their pickup trucks to see who can roll the heaviest load. To get power up from the engine, they tweak the ECU, but it produces more smoke, hence the word Coal rolling. There is a loud banter with the crowd between football and American football. To help save dying coral reefs off the coast near Barbados, the trio attempt to shore them up by dumping the shells of five car bodies to help them rebuild. May and Hammond get the cars and the crane. Clarkson gets a boat, which is very small, underwhelming, and ugly. They soon face issues from losing most of the bodies they bring, leaving them to attempt to complete their job with the body of a Land Rover. The first car goes into the harbor, when Hammond accidentally pulls the crane release string early, before the car is in position over the boat. The 2nd car gets on the boat but takes it down with it. After sinking 2 cars, the port authorities chased them away. They take the remaining cars to a nearby Marina and hire a boat crane to load them onto a handmade float. Miraculously, they get 2 cars onto the float and drop them where scientists have told them that a reef can form. Now May, a certified diver, goes down to anchor the cars. Hammond and Clarkson are on oxygen pumping duty, but they hook it to a generator and go skiing. But May could not anchor the cars as the boat he was tethered to, drifted while Hammond and Clarkson were busy water sporting. Clarkson goes down in a scuba to weld the cars. But Clarkson didn't do it properly and next day the currents had carried both cars to the beach. The trio must retrieve the cars from the beach. But May removes a central string on the float, and it comes apart. So, May proposes to tow the cars back to the Marina and build a new float to start over. He brings a JCB to the beach. May fails, so Clarkson proposes to use the boat crane to tow the cars to their correct spot in the ocean. But the boat crane rope also breaks and the cars drop near the beach. The hotel (to whom the beach belongs) order them off as they have ruined the beach and all the furniture in it. The next day, the boat crane owner takes his crane back, so the trio only have a land rover left. They tie big tube tires to it and Clarkson tows the car into position using a ski. They sink the car at the location. Meanwhile, Clarkson travels between Wales and the Eboladrome, as he gives an extensive review of the new 500 horsepower Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio (turbo charged 2.9 L V6, 191 mph, Bp 60,000). Competitor to the BMW M3 (440 BHP) and the Jaguar ES (330 BHP). The car isn't easy to get out of. engineered by the same man who designed the Ferrari 458. Heavy on carbon fiber, slip disk differential, responsive steering, and a great gearbox. The Ferrari (which is part of the own company that owns Alpha Romeo) is at pains to point that the Giulia engine is not the same as theirs and that any resemblance to their own engine is only coincidental. The race mode in the Alpha is good. It does 1:27.1 on the Eboladrome and is 13th. Conversation street. Alpha Romeo Stelvio is launched. Ford Pick Up truck is the bestselling car in Nashville. The trio wonder why people don't steal stuff when it is kept in the open back of a pickup truck. May offers that's because they shoot them here in US for that. Today's car museums have beautiful cars such as the Impala, Cadillac, Buick, a 70's corvette (driven by all the astronauts) because design was an art in the 70's, but the same brands are churning out boring looking cars now, which means the museums wont have anything to show in another 40 years. May talks about how car brands create cars for setting lap times around the Nürburgring, but aren't good at anything else, such as BMW M4 GTS, Nissan GTR, SEAT Leon Cupra 280 (hatchback). AC/DC singer Brian Johnson comes to the tent to try his hand at Celebrity Brain Crash.

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‘The Grand Tour’: Five Moments To Cherish as the Curtain Closes

I f you’re a fan of Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond, you’ll know that the trio has decided to end “The Grand Tour.” It’s bittersweet news for the show’s fanbase. On the one hand, enthusiasts won’t have any more content from the beloved celebrities. However, we can revel in the fact that Clarkson and company have logged over 20 years of automotive shenanigans for viewers to enjoy. 

The Amazon Prime Video show reunited the three world-famous petrolheads after a falling out forced them off the BBC set of “Top Gear” in 2015. The trio didn’t stay off-camera for long, though. The three were back to reviewing cars in a year. Well, with the show ending, we look back at some of our favorite moments beyond the beautifully crafted shots of the latest cars. 

“The Excellent”

• Creating a coral reef
• Racing supercars from the past, present, and future
• Breaking a speed record with an amphibious car
• Creating a path through the Highlands

In Season 1, Episode 9 of “The Grand Tour,” Jeremy Clarkson “sympathetically marries” the chassis and drivetrain of a Mk 1 Land Rover Discovery with the admittedly lovely body of an R107 Mercedes-Benz SL. “The Excellent,” as Clarkson deemed it, is an exciting prospect. I’m afraid it was less than spectacular in execution. 

Creating a coral reef didn’t go so well for the ambitious trio at ‘The Grand Tour’

Season 1, Episode 10 pits Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May against the clear, aquamarine waters of Barbados. They had a bizarre mission: sink bare-metal husks of popular cars to jumpstart a coral reef ecosystem. As expected, everything goes wrong, and the team ends up accomplishing very little of their mission.

‘The Grand Tour’ had no shortage of supercars, but these three demonstrate diversity

“The Grand Tour” starts with a hypercar holy trinity in the pilot. However, season 2, episode 1 begins with an automotive juxtaposition: a strictly gas-powered Lamborghini Aventador S, a hybrid Honda NSX, and a fully-electric Rimac Concept One. It’s a delightful dichotomy, right up until Hammond tragically crashes the million-dollar Rimac. Unfortunately, it isn’t the first time Hammond has had a potentially deadly crash .

‘The Grand Tour’ broke a speed record on the water

GT: What It Means and Why You Should Want One

In the ninth episode of season 2, Clarkson, Hammond, and May cannibalize several vehicles to create an amphibious car. Not only that, but the trio have to take their creation to Coniston Water in England’s lake district. The site is itself famous; it’s where Donald Campbell died attempting to break a speed record in 1967. Luckily, the team emerged victorious, if also silly-looking.  

Carving a path through the Highlands is a gorgeous scene

In season 3, episode 7, the team heads to the Scottish Highlands to attempt the North Coast 500. Instead, they decide to turn the trip into a lesson in laziness and shorten their route. Still, it’s breathtaking views from start to finish, and Clarkson’s Alfa Romeo GTV6 prompts you to stifle your common sense. 

It’s understandable, though. I have to advise against attempting the NC500 without ample time. I took to the Highlands aboard a 750cc Suzuki motorcycle without factoring in weather and time. Rookie mistake. That said, the parts of the NC500 that I traversed were nothing short of stunning.

The post ‘The Grand Tour’: Five Moments To Cherish as the Curtain Closes appeared first on MotorBiscuit .

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Jeremy Clarkson reveals what happens to the cars of The Grand Tour and we’re not jealous at all

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Jeremy Clarkson snaps up cars like we buy Boots meal deals, as he’s revealed what happens to the cars of The Grand Tour once they finish filming their specials.

The 59-year-old answered questions from fans of the Amazon Prime series on Twitter, when one of his 7.2 million followers asked where the stars of the show end up after filming – and we’re not talking about Richard Hammond or James May.

‘The Jeep from Colombia and the Alfa from Scotland are at my house,’ he tweeted.

Lucky spud.

No wonder then, that The Grand Tour season four will be a collection of specials, ditching their traditional studio format for a series of road trips following the success of their booze-free Mongolian adventure last year.

Last month, the boys revealed they’ve kicked off filming in Cambodia , re-creating The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road photo under the glorious lights of Siem Reap’s Pub Street.

Jeremy and his merry men are currently back in the UK before jetting off to their next TGT destination, where the main man is celebrating being crowned the most popular Top Gear presenter of all time , despite parting ways with the BBC for punching a producer over a sirloin steak.

While Jezza came out on top in a landslide victory in a poll released by Radio Times, with Jimmy and Dickie trailing just behind in second and third places respectively, their replacement Chris Evans missed the top 10 entirely.

‘I’m overwhelmed, this is literally the 27th thing I’ve won, and it’s always special, but this is a particularly special moment,’ enthused the host, modest as ever, over his title.

The Grand Tour is expected to return with season 4 in 2020. In the mean time, Jeremy, James and Richard’s solo projects will be coming imminently.

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MORE : Jeremy Clarkson teases new farming series with wholesome Instagram post following filming for The Grand Tour season 4

MORE : Jeremy Clarkson returns home from epic first shoot of The Grand Tour season 4

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What you’ll see in Episode 12 of The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour Series 1 Episode 12 will be available tomorrow, with the tent staying firmly in Scotland, on the shores of Loch Ness for a second episode.

The main segment of the show will revolve around three SUVs – the Bentley Bentayga, Range Rover Autobiography and the new Jaguar F-Pace. For this episode, the boys will review the three vehicles in the only way they know how – by travelling to central Europe and driving through some iconic venues and no doubt some amazing scenery.

Up until now, The Grand Tour tent has visited the Californian desert, Johannesburg, Whitby, Rotterdam, Lapland, Stuttgart, Scotland and Nashville – and after leaving Loch Ness we’ll rejoin the boys for the series finale at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

7 things The Grand Tour team need to fix for Series 2

The grand tour is giving away free heads to uk residents, related posts, ‘funeral for a ford’ – the grand tour series 3 episode 14 preview, ‘survival of the fattest’ – the grand tour series 3 episode 13 preview, ‘legends and luggage’ – the grand tour series 3 episode 12 preview, james may is our man in…japan, ‘sea to unsalty sea’ – the grand tour series 3 episode 11 preview, ‘the youth vote’ – the grand tour series 3 episode 10 preview.

So there in Dubai next week !? , I thought this weeks was the last one hence it’s episode 12. So they’re classing the Africa special as 1 , I would class it as 2 but hey bonus episode is good by me

The episode 12 are actually, the second part of the epsode 11.

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Stavropol, South Russia: In Search of Gorbachev’s Roots

The origins of a soviet leader revered as a visionary reformer in the west, but reviled as a weak American puppet in his native land

This article is taken from the July 2021 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issue for just £10 .

P eople of my generation — Westerners at least — who grew up at the tail-end of the Cold War can still get a bit starry-eyed about Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the former Soviet premier who celebrated his ninetieth birthday in March this year. Leader from 1985 to 1991, he seemed to end the Cold War overnight, showed us “communism with a human face” and appeared at pains to sign away the nuclear weapons we had spent our childhoods cowering from.

A leader popular enough to get a nickname, to us he was “Gorby”, the man in the black trilby, the approachable Soviet premier that Margaret Thatcher could “do business with”. He was the communist who made Reagan revise his estimates of the USSR as “an Evil Empire” and consign the phrase to “another time, another era.”

Yet in Russia itself, away from metropolitan liberal circles, pro-Gorby declarations are usually met with pity or contempt. In his own country, he is remembered as the windbag with port wine stains — “Misha the Marked” — the apparatchik who harangued them with interminable speeches in a Wurzel-like Southern burr and let them down where it really mattered. He left the economy in ruins, the shops empty, the queues for household goods a daily torment.

With his perestroika (a radical restructuring of Soviet life) and glasnost (openness) he managed to break up an empire, shaking the USSR so hard it came to pieces in his hands. “A traitor”, you hear, “a weak, soft leader”, “naïve”, a “bad politician” and — the worst crime of all — “He was working for the Americans”.

Objections that he worked not for but with the Americans and had to do so to save the Soviet economy, are usually dismissed. For many, Gorbachev did the unforgivable. “What can one make,” muttered one Russian acquaintance, “of a man who inherits a family of nations and then just gives it all away?”

Yet as with so many of my generation, Gorby-loyalty is in my DNA. Those of us who have spent our adult lives travelling or living in Eastern Europe largely owe them to Gorbachev and his reforms, his demolishing of the Iron Curtain. At any rate, when I was offered the chance to visit his birthplace in South Russia earlier this year, I grabbed it at once. There were few world-figures whose origins interested me more.

Cupolas and idealism

G orbachev’s birthplace, Privolnoe, can be found about 90 miles north of Stavropol, the Southern city he was later to make, as Regional General Secretary, almost literally his own. It’s a village of about 3,000 people surrounded by, as he put it, “steppe, steppe and more steppe”, endless flat green prairie.

Alongside the motorway heading to it are numerous roadside cemeteries and thickets of trees all painted, in the Russian way, fetlock-high in whitewash, a precaution against insects and heat. The sun beats down from a vast sky and the floating clouds are a procession of wonderful shapes. Some look like work-brigades, some faintly like sputniks, others like combine harvesters. Here the weather can change instantly: Brits will feel at home. Privolnoe today is a well-manicured collection of one-storey brick or wooden houses complete with iris-blue shutters. It is surrounded by playing fields for the village’s kids, and springy-looking meadows with wildflowers.

Unlike many Russian villages it has an infrastructure — for which read a bar and a decent supermarket — and everywhere there are stabs at a kind of (naïve) idealism. By the side of the road an enormous figure of a goose sits by a fairy-tale well, with the slogan “Protect Beauty” next to it. There’s a children’s playground called “The Ant Hill” with a mocked-up dragon and robots, and an Eternal Flame at the end of an avenue.

Nearby is one of the city’s war memorials. As different from ours as can be imagined, it shows the faces, absurdly young, of four of the city’s fallen, with “They Could Have Lived” accusing you beside them. Right behind are the cupolas of the village’s Orthodox Church — funded, it seems, heavily by Gorbachev — and the village’s “House of Culture” for knees-ups and fun. Though populated, like most Russian villages, either by children or the elderly (those of working age have left for the city) it’s a place whose pride in itself is clear.

Childhood of terrors

I t was Gorbachev’s house I wanted to find, and the first person I asked pointed me to it. It can be found by turning left down a side-road, then left again by the school — a dull grey building with happy transfers of aeroplanes and tanks stuck to the window, at which Gorbachev himself studied way back when. There’s little fanfare surrounding the Gorbachev home: simply a grey brick building behind fences with a metal roof and those trademark blue shutters which seem to define the village. It looks closed-up and unvisited, except by foreign film crews and Gorb-anoraks such as myself.

When I tell a cashier at the local shop why I’m there, her lip curls: “Oh, so you respect him in England, do you?” In a BBC news extract from 2016, villagers were more balanced. “Of course, Mikhail did a lot for our village, a lot,” one local says, “but as for the USSR, we’re upset about that.” Another echoes him, “Germany’s united now, but our country fell apart. That’s a mistake by our leaders. They could have saved it.”

Privolnoe has endured worse. The village, founded in 1861, has been through as much as any southern Russian village, but 1931, when Gorbachev was born, was one of the low points. Stavropol Krai , Privolnoe’s region, is heavily agricultural, packed with sunflowers and wheat. This made it vulnerable to Stalin’s collectivisation campaign, as he wrenched private land away from reluctant local farmers, to herd them into kolkhozes — collective farms — or send the richer of them to the Gulag.

For those who didn’t comply, a worse fate awaited, and this spelt terror for places like Privolnoe. A terrible famine was inflicted on the South — most notoriously in the Ukraine but here and in Kazakhstan as well — as an already chaotically disrupted workforce saw the grain quotas demanded of them soar, starving the locals to death.

Family memories

I t became a capital crime to steal even an ear of corn, and between 1932 and 1933, two of Gorbachev’s uncles and one of his aunts were to die of starvation. Gorbachev’s earliest childhood memory was of his grandfather boiling up frogs in a desperate attempt to feed his family. He remembered, he said, their white stomachs floating in the bubbling water, though couldn’t remember if he’d choked one down or not.

Such memories are far from uncommon in this region: many families went through the same. Nor was it unique that both Gorbachev’s grandfathers — farmers the pair of them — should be imprisoned under Stalin. One of them, the communist Pantelei, whose zeal didn’t save him from arrest quotas in 1937, was tortured so badly he returned, Gorbachev said, a permanently altered man. The other, Andrei — a pronounced anti-Red — worked so hard in the Gulag he came back from Siberia with four medals for it, thereafter swallowing his politics and getting on with the job.

The terror of Gorbachev’s early childhood gave way to others as the Germans roared into his village in 1941

As his biographer, William Taubman, pointed out, Gorbachev’s life as a child was already ideologically riven. Andrei’s house was stuffed with religious icons, Pantelei’s with portraits of Stalin and Lenin. The grandfather who believed in Christianity was hard as nails, while Pantelei, the Party Man, was warm and kind, and despite his rural background seemed almost an intellectual. Gorbachev seemed to live out these contradictions all his life.

The terror of Gorbachev’s early childhood gave way to others as the Germans roared into his village in 1941. Their four-month occupation left the place in tatters, the community divided, the women reduced to dragging ploughs themselves in a desperate attempt at a harvest. For a period, Gorbachev lived on a single cup of uncooked grain a day.

Later, as men up to the age of 50 were conscripted and the working age dropped to 12, he began to slog regularly as an employee of the Machine Tractor-Station. In 1949, just turned 18, he received “The Order of the Red Banner of Labour”. Along with his candidate membership of the Party, it ushered him into Moscow University, to study law. It was goodbye to the village.

Unstoppable rise

I t is difficult to think of greater contrasts to Privolnoe than Moscow, but Gorbachev never worked as the lawyer he trained to become there. When he emerged with a degree five years later, it was to a different world.

Gorbachev had in 1953 married his Raisa, a philosophy student, but something even more momentous happened that same year. A few months earlier, Stalin had died and the country was changing fast. In Stavropol region — Gorbachev went back there to start his working life — there was a shattering backlog of cases, as prisoners flung into Gulags for poor harvests in the thirties now had their charges re-evaluated and their sentences overturned.

To a newly-wed, one can see why the backbreaking tonnage of legal paperwork might not have appealed. Instead, Komsomol, the Soviet youth organisation (a kind of boy-scouts/girl-guides with political teeth) had vacancies, many of their senior members leaping to fill posts at the newly-created KGB. Within a few years, Gorby had been made Komsomol First Secretary for the region. His unstoppable rise had begun.

By now, he and Raisa were living in Stavropol. A fort-town in the North Caucasus, it was established in 1777 and is now Russia’s “greenist city”. Today Stavropol is stuffed with shopping centres, wine bars, street cafes and a population of 400,000. Back when Gorbachev arrived, it barely scraped a quarter of that, the town almost a big village.

Raisa Gorbacheva, she of the natty dress-sense and catty relationship with US First Lady Nancy Reagan, spoke about the “sea of mud” she had to cross to get to the Teachers’ Institute, the lack of central heating and running water (she and Gorbachev had to fetch theirs from a public fountain).

Not that life started very beautifully for the Gorbachevs in Stavropol. They lived in a single room with (in Raisa’s words) “a bed, a table, two chairs and two huge boxes full of books”. Raisa cooked each night on a paraffin burner in the communal corridor. The house, 49 Kazansky Street, a solid-looking affair, can still be found quite easily, up a slope and a sandy road, though there’s no plaque at all to its previous occupants (in fact Stavropol region, in terms of memorials, seems to have washed its hands of the Gorbachevs altogether).

As Gorbachev worked his way up through Komsomol and then the Party, their circumstances improved, with better properties on Morozov and Dzherzhinski streets. These names (still in place) are bitterly ironic — one referring to a young snitch (Pavel Morozov) who shopped his parents for unorthodoxy, the other to Felix Dzerzhinski, creator of the Soviet secret police. A Russia, in other words, Gorbachev did so much to try and free his people from.

Perestroika , he always said, had started for him in Stavropol. Made General Secretary for the entire region in 1970 — the Stavropol party boss — he brought in numerous reforms to agricultural work, introducing incentives and restructuring the farming system. Colleagues from the time have mixed memories. Some of them speak of his geniality, his openness and energy, the fact he drank so little. Yet historian William Taubman reports others describing him as “vain and easily offended”, “two-faced” in his habit of saying “different things to different people”, and “with a craving for power that led him to fawn on those who would give it to him.”

Such things though were endemic to the USSR and arguably came with the job, and the Gorbachev we know in the West was summed up by another colleague: “He was a great guy: inspiring, loved to joke and laugh, didn’t get drunk, a good, progressive thinker.”

Powerful allies

O nly one criticism was to dog him throughout his career: his failure to thank the people who helped him. Later, in the Kremlin, it bled loyalty away from those who might have been his rescuers.

But nothing helped Gorbachev more in his ambitions than Stavropol itself. At the bicentenary of the city in 1977 (part of his luck), a key visitor from Moscow was Mikhail Suslov — Chief Ideologue of the Party and creepy grey eminence of the Brezhnev years. Gorbachev, ever the genial host, schmoozed him and made an ally. He was boosted too by Stavropol’s geography, and those sanatoria in the Caucasian mountains. Not only Suslov but prime minister Kosygin and KGB head Yuri Andropov had diabetes and kidney problems. When they visited the South for treatment, Gorbachev was on hand to wine and dine them, gaining three patrons in the process.

In November 1978, after some stunning agricultural successes, he received the call to join the Central Committee in Moscow. He and Raisa packed their bags and left Stavropol forever — back to Moscow and the centre of power. Just seven years and three dead General Secretaries later, Gorbachev, aged 54, would be leading the whole empire.

His father Sergei, who from Privolnoe witnessed so many of his son’s successes, wasn’t alive to see these ones, having died in 1976 (his grave is easily locatable in Privolnoe’s tranquil cemetery). But his words from an earlier letter give some sense of what Gorbachev’s family might have felt:

“We congratulate you on your new job. There is no limit to your mother’s and father’s joy and pride. We wish you good health and great strength for your work for your country’s well-being.”

Heartening words, from a father to a son. But whether you nod respectfully at that final phrase or scream with laughter will very much depend, it seems, on a single thing: which side of the Iron Curtain you grew up on. Perhaps the last word, though, should go to Gorbachev himself. Asked by film-maker Werner Herzog in 2019 what his epitaph should be, he had a ready answer: “Mi staralis … We tried.”

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• Mikhail Gorbachev
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Watch Richard Hammond Review The New Land Rover Defender

Our favourite little man and The Grand Tour presenter Richard Hammond has been up close and personal with the new Land Rover Defender . We’ve just written about it, so if you want to know all about the specs and in detail bits and pieces, click the hyperlink above.

But for now, let’s listen to the Hamster and what he’s got to say about it.

On first glance, he loves it. Hammond has always been an avid Land Rover enthusiast, owning more than his fair share in the past . His children love them too, referring to their favourite as ‘Wallycar’. There’s a funny story behind this that we’ll come back to at some point, but for now let’s stay on topic.

The 2020 Defender, then. It’s rough and ready, but with a substantial amount of technology and luxury components to keep it up to date and competitive in the modern market. Let’s face it, very few of them will ever leave the pavement, and Land Rover know this.

But there’s no doubt that it has more than enough off-road ability, and by keeping the essence of the original Defender, I think JLR has managed to pull it off.

Like the BMW Mini rekindled the masses’ love for the small four-door, this could very well do the same for the Defender. It is now a style icon but with a utilitarian upbringing. I think Land Rover has hit the nail on the head.

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Steven Douglas

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21 comments.

To much gizmos Surely they could have made a stripped down basic model to appeal to the self employed working class people who use them as a workhorse. This is a CAR for urban people who use the countryside as a theme park on the weekends. If I took it into a field of my cows they would laugh at it before chewing it to pieces and nicking the cameras for selfies If it does go off road into mud you can bet the fancy electrics will be fried by the time it’s warrenty is out. An urbanites imported toy as are the rest of their models.

It looks rugged and I’m sure it will be but if the issues with the TDV6 are anything to go by then I fear it will be at the side of the road more than it’s off it. It looks wonderful and very well keeping with the outgoing model I know lots of people are likely to slag it off as not being like the old one but things have to move on or we would still be living in caves.

I for one would consider buying it as it looks well made but at £45,000 I would say sorry it’s not for me Land Rover have priced it way too high with land cruisers on sale for £10,000 less the cruiser would be more reliable and last longer in my book something I’m not so sure this defender would be able to do so well.

Land Rover have always priced there cars way to high and I thought they might hang this in the £35,000 cupboard sadly not which means they will sell far less in these tines if austerity.

Everywhere British People slag British companies. Land Rover HAD to re-invent the Defender for a new age not one locked into a car that had its roots in the 1950s. They have tested this car more than any other car they have produced, they have provided multiple sizes (so far the 90 & 110 but we already know the 130 will follow) and multiple design packs plus numerous accessories & options. I for one applaud them and its going to be a massive success regardless of what the doubters say.

IMHO, JLR just based the New „Defender“ on the last Discovery and upscaled the Discovery to look more like the current Range Rover Sport with its stupid lowered roof, making the third row much less comfortable for our family‘s 14h drives to Spain and France.

I love my mark 3 Disco which does not only let me go offroad in comfortable heated leather seats but also fits my hubbie, 4 children and large sheepdog plus luggage for a weeklong trip without any problems. I bought it for 25.000€ 8 years ago at 40.000km. For a similarly equipped „New 110“, which really just looks like Discovery Mark 5 with more interior toys, I would have to pay around 75.000€. That‘s just crazy.

Looks Great, I want to see and drive it.

They are clearly staying out of the “Ute/Pickup/Backie” farmer’s market. There’s nothing to defend those shiny sides, and backshed repair, an essential in most of the world, looks pretty unlikely

Trying to reach a new market. Sad that like Mini too different from good original. Only related by name. No longer town & country Defender, now Chelsea cruiser.

Trying to reach a new market. Sad that like Mini too different from good original. Totally different. Improvement? Only related by name. No longer Defender, crazy marketing project.

Wow! I can’t wait for it to be released! This is perfect for my son who loves rough rides!

The new Defender is feminine looking in design but still the old body style of the D90, D110, and D130 are way more masculine and rugged looking. I fear this will not convince the off roading community well enough. I also did try and build one today and there is no option to have front different lockers, only rear, and center diff-lockers. This is what the off roading community wants. At this point I can’t see it compete with a D90 or D110 with lockers. We wanted this to be the G Wagon killer…that it is not. Speaking of G Wagon they have not changed there body style this drastic only horse power and slight rounding of edges…perhaps LR should have done the same. I will have to leave it to after market companies (e.g. ARB, Lucky8) to beef this thing up a bit.

Its a defender Jim but not as we know it… doesn’t make me smile I’m afraid and the advancement in fuel consumption is a joke and the pricing and lack of mechano repairability/ modification will miss the core who depend and love the originals… can’t see this being the Queen’s favourite

Its an interesting vehicle – no doubt technically astounding and I’m impressed.

Is it a new “Defender” – I’m not sure; I’ve had and driven just about everywhere a range of green oval vehicles over more than 30 years. I’m just not sure this is one I would want to add to that list. it certainly won’t be replacing my existing 90 tdci, but maybe – just maybe – it could replace my Freelander 2z

Should have been made in the U.K. Personally another British classic gone. I would need to drive it before giving my comments on its ability off road but styling doesn’t look too bad, better than I was expecting to be honest.

Looks amazing, will they be available in the USA? Plus Grand Tour keep the tent, how else will the average joe find information on new vehicles.

Not a fan at all………….. I owned a 97 Yellow Defender 90 and absolutely loved it’s rugged design inside and out. Funny how the G Wagon has virtually kept it’s same design and isn’t truing to reinvent the wheel.

Agreed the G Wagon kept true to its origins and beefed it up with horse power and slightly changing it’s exterior. This is what LR should have done. Just look at the after market companies that are putting in corvette engines in a D110 and modernizing the interior. I’ll keep my D2 and be looking for an old D110 or D130…thanks for memories LR.

The G Wagon is twice the price? So how is that a fair comparison? Minimal options take it well over 100k

Anyone say strange c pillar?

I love it, and will probably buy one at some point, but I think it’s hat the new Discovery should have been

I applaud the effort by JLR but it’s going to the standard LR offering. Overpriced, fragile tech and built way down to a budget. A real case of form over function. The target audience for a Defender don’t give a crap about development at the Nurburgring. JLR have traded on previous glories for far too long. I fear that this will be as well recurved as the D5 🙁

I’m sorry Richard… it’s just not a Defender to me. Land Rover has a bad streak going of poor looking cars with interiors that are not as luxurious as the brand marquee should demand. Performance and comfort might be ok but it does not look the part. I’ll be sticking to Land Rovers made before 2013.