Today saw Amazon Prime unleash the season one finale of The Grand Tour.
This week the tent moved to Dubai, which made for the usual jokes about the country’s wealth and love of sports cars.
Cars tested this week included an old-fashioned VW Golf GTI and the all-new electrically powered BMW i3. To illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the two cars, Jeremy and James raced them.
During the feature they talked about the pros and cons of the BMW i3 and the tax breaks you can get by owning one. Jeremy went to great pains to tell any passer by who would listen that they were paying for James May’s car.
As far as the race goes, the VW Golf won fairly easily given that James had to stop for a couple of hours to charge his car at a charge point — essentially allowing James to keep his nickname of Captain Slow.
The highlight of this episode for us was the segment that Richard Hammond did on drifting. He admitted that in all his years of motor journalism that he’d never successfully been able to drift.
To that end he sought some help from an expert — and then pitted his new found skills against two seasoned pros. One a guy with no arms. The other a 13-year-old kid.
Watching the two professionals was an amazing spectacle, and the cinematography involved was beautiful as it illustrated the ballet-like movements of the cars as they drifted round corners.
Most jaw-dropping moment
Watching the guy with no arms drift in a sports car. Seeing him steer the car with his feet was crazy good. It’s not something we’d try.
The Grand Tour has been released every Friday on Amazon Prime. A new series is planned for late 2017.