Hello! And you've joined me in the glorious, sumptuous town of Whitby
for what is normally a festival of noise, speed, power
and tortured metaphors.
This year, though, things are likely to be a little more dreary,
for reasons that will become clear in three, two, one. Now.
Hello! I'm here with this thing that appears to have risen
from the depths of Whitby Harbour,
because we're going to attempt to answer a very important question.
What is the worst car in the history of the world?
And obviously, I couldn't let him do it by himself because he'd get it wrong.
Why would I get it wrong?
Because you're obsessed with things that don't matter.
No, I'm not.
Yes, you are.
- I'm not. - You are.
Look, I said you could only appear in my programme
provided you promised that you wouldn't argue with me all the time.
I promised not to argue with you if you were reasonable in my programme.
James, you're arguing now and we haven't even got to the titles.
Yes, we have.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
This is very nasty.
It's a FSO Polonez.
Built by communists out of steel so thin
you could use it as a net curtain.
It is as reliable and as long lasting as a pensioner's erection.
JEREMY CLARKSON: A point it made moments later.
Completely stopped.
With absolutely nothing working at all.
(RATTLING)
Open!
Ah.
There's your problem.
Sparky bits.
Insulated.
Ahh! Bloody hell, that's hot.
- (ENGINE SPUTTERING) - A-ha!
(ENGINE REVVING)
Let me talk you through some of the equipment that is provided
as standard on this, the luxury CE model.
It has a heated rear window.
Um...
Uh...
Oh! I've found another feature, air-conditioning.
Apparently,
the intermittent Fiat engine in this has 1.5 litres,
which begs the question, 1.5 litres of what?
Cheese? Wallpaper paste? Marbles? Earwigs?
(ENGINE SPUTTERS)
JEREMY: Sadly, I wasn't able to test out the performance
because the Polonez had another little treat up its sleeve.
(CLICKS)
No, and it's broken down again.
There that's...
Okay, just count to 10, Jeremy, count to 10.
(SOFTLY) Seven, eight, nine, ten.
(SHOUTING) You useless piece of...
Of course, history has served up many cars that drove as badly as this,
but few looked quite so terrible.
Amazingly, it was styled by Giugiaro,
the man who gave us the original Volkswagen Scirocco,
the Lotus Esprit, the BMW M1,
and countless other breathtakingly beautiful cars.
I can only assume that here
he was experimenting with the idea of trying to design a car
after consuming four litres of absinthe.
(IMITATES AS DRUNK) All right, I've got it now.
Jeremy Clarkson is, unusually, quite correct.
The Polonez is a truly dreadful car.
However, I have found something literally even worse.
(INDIAN SONG PLAYING)
This is the Mahindra Cj540 Jeep.
And like the FSO, it, too, is made from hand-me-down bits.
But they're much worse bits.
(SITAR MUSIC PLAYING)
It started life as Willys Jeep,
the thing that American servicemen used to distribute chocolates and nylons
all around the European theatre in World War II.
When the war was over, the Indians decided
they would keep on making it, but with a few alterations.
Firstly, they ruined the suspension
by taking it off and replacing it with some old road drills.
And then, in order to accommodate
the second-hand Peugeot diesel engine they'd been given,
they had to raise the bonnet line.
That spoiled its good square-jawed, war-winning looks.
Now it just looks as if it's been given a massive wedgie.
It's so woeful on so many levels, this thing.
But the steering...
I don't know what means are used to connect this wheel
to the wheels at the front, and it's loose!
Look! It's gonna fall off.
That's if I don't fall out.
You could, of course, argue that this is a comedy car,
that you're driving it ironically.
But it's not a joke, you see, because jokes are funny.
And this isn't funny. This is...
And if Jeremy thinks that FSO is slow, he is being delusional.
A point I shall now demonstrate
with the traditional Top Gear quarter-mile drag race.
(ENGINE REVVING)
2.1 litres, 62 horsepower.
Three, two, one.
(GRUNTS) Oh, no!
Jeremy's lost his knob.
(LAUGHS) No.
It's neck-and-neck!
I'm growing a beard.
(CARS APPROACHING)
It's a photo finish!
JEREMY: And the photo showed nothing between their rubbishness.
Both these cars are very horrid.
But strangely, neither is the worst car in the world
and here's why.
History, of course, is littered with thousands of extremely nasty cars.
The Lada Samara springs immediately to mind.
And what was that thing that you drove once, the Hyundai...
Yes, the three-cylinder Accident diesel.
JEREMY: That was very poor.
The thing is, though, all the cars we're talking about here,
and the Jeep thing and the FSO,
they're all cheap, and cheap is a good thing.
Yes, and that's the point we're here to make.
Here, in the glorious surroundings of Yorkshire,
we're going to look for a car that is terrible but not cheap.
Yeah, and made by a manufacturer that should have known better.
Yes, and when we find it, which we will,
we've got a plan for what to do with it.
Yeah, it is a brilliant plan,
and if you want, you can fast-forward to the end and find out what it is.
But of course if you do that you'd miss this.
(TYRES SCREECHING)
(ENGINE ROARING)
JEREMY: The brand-new Ferrari 458 Spider.
A car that both James and I agree is the best mid-engine supercar ever.
(ENGINE ROARING)
When you take the roof off a car, obviously it loses a bit of rigidity.
And it gets heavier because they have to put more stiffening in.
Everybody always says that. Can you tell the difference?
- Let me just be exuberant for a moment. - Be exuberant for a moment.
- No. - Good.
Okay, so there's no downside, but the upside is,
you can hear more of that.
(ENGINE ROARING)
- And it's sort of more theatre. - Yeah, absolutely.
(TYRES SCREECHING)
In a Ferrari, everything
from the shape to the sensation of really tiny things,
like touching those paddles,
is somehow slightly better defined than it is anywhere else.
And it has more tactile meaning, do you know what I mean?
Stop talking. I want to listen to the noise.
(ENGINE ROARING)
It's a performance artwork.
It's like music and dance. That is what it's like, I think.
That's why it's so much better than something like the Mercedes SLS.
And it's funny I should mention that, actually.
What?
That's why this is so much better than an SLS.
You have long argued that that car is better than this.
It is.
JAMES: You've just been waxing about this car and how wonderful it is.
No, no, no, no, no.
As a car, the Mercedes is better for going to the shops for milk
on a wet November evening.
Trust me, that is a better car.
JEREMY: It's got a boot at the back, the engine's at the front.
It's less showy, it's a better car.
Less showy?
(ENGINE ROARING)
- Overtake it. - It's not possible.
He's got more brake horsepower than I have.
One.
- What? - One.
One what?
- He's got one more brake horsepower. - There you are, it's more.
Right, neatly through the chicane. Beans.
- Now I'm stuck. - You lifted off.
I didn't!
- This is fraudulent. You're cheating. - (LAUGHS)
JAMES: Unsurprisingly, after just five laps,
the SLS tyres gave in.
(CAMERA CLICKING)
And it was relegated to the pits.
That's a perfect demonstration of what's wrong with it, you see.
One hundred extra pound feet of torque, and all it does is destroy the tyres.
JEREMY: I like a car that eats itself.
- JAMES: No, you don't. - I do! It's savagery.
What does that extra one hundred pound feet of torque do?
Other than send you to a tyre depot. Sooner.
- It's not funny. - It is funny. (LAUGHS)
JAM ES: What this has proved then
is that with the 458, Ferrari knows what it's doing.
And has done for the last 65 years.
(OPERA MUSIC PLAYING)
The Ferrari back catalogue is a cocktail of perfection.
A symphony of intelligence, flair,
technical innovation and art.
So, what were they thinking of when,
in 1980, they came up with the Mondial.
This is Lennon and McCartney's Egg Man.
(WHISPERS) Rubbish.
Six thousand people
bought one of these, assuming, reasonably enough,
that it would be terrific.
It's a Ferrari, it has styling by Pininfarina, a V8 engine.
All the things that make a Ferrari great.
But...
It's slower than a Golf GTI.
And it doesn't handle as well.
Who did they have in mind when they designed the seating position?
I mean, I have reasonably long legs,
but not exceptionally so.
If I put the seat in the right position,
the steering wheel is pretty much sawing my testicles off.
JAMES: And things are even worse in the back.
The rear seats look as though they were designed for somebody
with no body below the pelvis.
If you're one of those brave people who thinks
"I'm not going to buy a small family hatchback,
"I'm gonna buy a cheap Ferrari."
You'd probably end up with one of these.
And you would be bitterly disappointed.
James, do you mind if I ask you a rhetorical question?
Mmm-hmm. Carry on.
Is there anything else wrong with the Mondial that you can think of?
No, I think I've covered pretty much everything.
- Really? - Mmm.
Oh, no! There was one of...
Actually, if you stick your head down there...
- Yes. - ...I can demonstrate it to you.
- Yeah. - (ENGINE WHIRRING)
(WHOOPING)
So, what it's doing is, it's feeding the petrol from the fuel tank
directly back into the earth again, without going through the engine.
Yes, it doesn't bother with any of that pesky internal combustion nonsense
that other cars do.
Here, end it.
JEREMY: However; it was by no means
the worst catastrophe in Ferrari's history
because if that was Lennon and McCartney's Egg Man,
this is Chuck Berry's Ding A Ling.
(ENGINE ROARING)
Built to celebrate Ferrari's 50th anniversary,
it was launched in 1995,
48 years after the company was founded.
The idea was very simple.
Ferrari wanted to make an everyday Formula 1 car,
so that 349 of their better-off customers
could experience on the road
what Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger
were experiencing back then on the track.
JEREMY: Of course, some changes had to be made to the F1 engine
before it would work in, say, traffic or on a roundabout
or in a garage or on a motorway.
Or in fact anywhere it might actually be used.
(ENGINE ROARING)
So the V12 in this shows almost nothing in common
with an F1 V12.
This one only revs to 8,500.
It's a 4.7, so it's bigger.
And while it makes a lot of noise,
it's not really the sound you get from an F1 car, is it?
Whoops$!
JEREMY: The only really Formula 1-ey thing about it
is that it's a stress member, it's a part of the chassis.
It's bolted directly to the tub.
Which means, of course, it's bolted directly to the driver's spine.
And that means he gets to feel every single one of the vibrations.
JEREMY: There was a weight issue, too.
Formula 1 cars do not need head lamps or indicators,
or even a sodding great battery.
This did.
And nor do Formula 1 cars have to meet noise regulations.
And what's more, F1 cars don't need rubber in their suspension bushes
to protect the occupants from shattering
every time the car goes over an amoeba.
It's nothing like a Formula 1 car.
And nor is it anything like a car you'd want to drive.
Or look at.
JEREMY: What is was, was a big expensive mongrel.
Obviously, as cars, the Ferraris are nowhere near as bad as the
Mahindra and the FSO.
But, when you consider what they cost,
and what you were expecting,
actually, they're worse.
JAMES: Mind you, when it comes to disappointments
it's hard to beat the BMW X3.
It's supposed to be a more compact version of the X5 4x4.
But it's a bit like going out with a two-thirds-scale Dolly Parton
and expecting her to be just as comfortable to rest your head on.
The ride is not very good.
It's not particularly good off-road,
and it's not very spacious.
But more to the point, the proportions are all wrong.
It looks like what happens when somebody takes a very well-known car shape
and tries to use it as the basis of a novelty telephone.
JAMES: If this had been built by Hyundai or Kia,
then you wouldn't worry.
But it wasn't built by Hyundai or Kia
It was built by the same company, at the same time,
and by the same people who built this.
This, of course, is an M3, a limited edition M3.
£1,000 more than the standard car.
And for that you get £4,000 worth of extras.
So you're paying £1,000 extra
and you're getting 4,000 quid's worth of stuff you don't want,
in a car that's already gone out of production.
Yes, it is, though, mechanically the same as the standard car.
Which means it is
pretty much perfect.
It's really civilised and quiet, and normal and brilliant,
and then you can drive it like a complete hooligan.
In almost every other performance car you drive these days,
the noise you hear is the exhaust.
- Yeah. - Listen to this.
(ROARING)
JEREMY: That noise is coming from the front, that's induction noise.
Yeah, it is. The noise of an engine working, which is quite nice.
JEREMY: Why don't I have one of these cars?
- I mean, in the past you couldn't... - No, no, no, no, no.
...because they were COT cars.
- Top of the COT, actually. - They were. They were top of the COT.
Every time you saw an M3
you saw somebody you would never have round for dinner driving it.
But they've all now sort of migrated, I think to Audis.
You can bring anything you like to the party,
this will eat it, burp, and be on its way.
JEREMY: BMW are making many great cars at the moment.
All of which make the X3 look like a village idiot
in a family of geniuses.
(BAND PLAYING)
Then we get to the question of America.
This is a country that has been to the Moon.
It gave the world the IP00'.
It broke the sound barrier,
and runs a fleet of nuclear-powered 33-knot airports.
This is a country that can post a cruise missile through your letterbox
from 6,000 miles away.
So you would expect it to be the home of the greatest cars on the planet.
It isn't though.
There's the AMC Pacer,
the Chevrolet Corvair,
the Chevy Vega,
the Cadillac Cimarron,
The Pontiac Aztek.
the Ford Pinto. And of course,
the Thunderbird.
And then, we have these two.
On your left, the Lincoln Continental Mark IV,
and on your right, the Buick LeSabre Custom.
Both were designed to give the discerning American customer
an unrivalled blend of craftsmanship, power and luxury.
JAMES: And here we have a modern European equivalent.
The BMW M5.
It is, of course, a lot more expensive.
This one is around £85,000.
But, there's a very good reason for that,
as we shall now demonstrate.
- Well, not us. - No, obviously not us.
No, we've entrusted the job to someone very special.
We dragged him all the way up here
to the carpark of Darlington football club.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome...
(CLEARS THROAT) The Stig's Yorkshire cousin!
(MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYING)
The Stig is going to demonstrate the superiority of the BMW in...
A auto test.
(ENGINE REVVING)
JEREMY: So, here goes T'Stig on one timed lap.
One, go.
JEREMY: He's spinning away all of the Beemer's 560 horsepower
burning into the Darlington Football Club carpark there.
First obstacle, okay, it's the doughnut box.
T'Stig making use of the BMW's brilliant 50-50 weight distribution,
and now two almost perfect doughnuts.
He's slowed down!
How's he doing that?
He sped up again, and he's out!
T'Stig now exiting the box heading back down the car park
to the double left-right chicanes.
How's he doing there?
He's turning the wheel one way then the other,
and now he's going round a corner very fast.
Smoke coming off the back of the tyres
and he goes round some tyres.
And soon, he'll be driving into an imaginary garage
made out of green cones.
You just watch this.
There it is!
Right, he stops by pressing the brake pedal.
Now he puts it in reverse ready for the j-turn.
Reverse as fast as you can, flick the wheel,
jam on the brake, front will slide round.
The two-ton Beemer, there it goes!
And here he is now with...
He's slowed down again!
No, wait! He's... Now he's back to full speed.
And that's a good thing.
All he's gotta do now is get to the finish line.
And stop! Now!
One minute, 18.29.
And now, we have to try and beat that in our American cars,
and bagsy l have the Lincoln.
Okay, I'm very happy with the Buick LeSabre Custom.
How big's your engine?
5.7 litres.
Seven litre, V8 motor.
160 horsepower in the Buick.
It's 200 horsepower, okay?
How do they get so few horsepower from a V8 motor?
I don't know.
But it isn't about power anyway, this.
This is about agility, precision.
(THUNDER RUMBLING)
JAMES: Fortunately for us, the rain had come,
meaning our slides would be easier.
Three, two, one...
JAMES: And we're off.
JEREMY: Right, here he is.
Into the box for the doughnuts.
- Squeeze the brakes. - (TYRES SCREECHING)
Ooh, he's locked up.
That's not a doughnut as such.
JAMES: And we're out and we're ready for the slalom.
We'll get lots of power now.
JEREMY: James has a Rolls-Royce Corniche
so he's used to the wallow and the roll.
Figure of eight.
Look at the angle that wheel achieves when he's going round the corner.
That's beyond belief.
Beautiful.
JEREMY: So, j-turn.
Right, hold the thing, foot ready, reverse...
That'll do.
This is really a shambolic display,
demonstrating that the car must be terrible
'cause James is very good at this.
JAMES: A little bit of under-steer
as he heads for home,
to stop precisely in the box.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Three minutes, 34.85 seconds.
JEREMY: With James having doubled T'Stig's lap time,
I was feeling confident in the USS Lincoln.
Massive wheel-spin.
Oh, look at that.
One of the big problems I have is that I'm sitting
over 10 feet from the front of the car.
The bonnet itself is six feet, six inches long.
Power!
No!
JAMES: Stalled.
In Europe, cars are built to the nearest millimetre.
In America, it's to the nearest foot.
- Come on, you wazzock. - Power!
JAMES: And he's out.
He's out and he's heading for the slalom.
I'd stand back.
Now, lean in.
Whoa!
Lovely to watch. Look at the way it just...
It's like a mountain goat the way it...
Oh, and he's lost a hubcap.
(TYRES SCREECHING)
Three-speed gearbox.
The Americans, of course, terribly confused by the concept
of four or five.
Six is something they don't understand at all.
Oh, my God.
Ah! I'm out of the road.
JAMES: Utter rubbish.
I think when they were designing this car,
no one in any meeting ever used the word "precision".
Into the box for the j-turn.
J-turn.
And brake flick.
Just a magnificent display of agility, poise.
And now it's the home straight.
The sun is coming out to celebrate a fine victory.
And...
Stop.
AUTOMATED VOICE: In four minutes, 7.97 seconds.
Now, the thing is, okay, this was the slowest
and therefore the worst, the Lincoln Continental Mark IV.
So is this, do you think, worthy of the special treatment
that we have lined up at the end of the programme?
No. No, no, no. Think about it.
It's not really appropriate, is it?
Why?
It's American.
Oh, yes.
Let's move swiftly on to Lancia.
As we have said in the past
Lancia has made more truly great cars over the years
than anyone else.
The Delta lntegrale.
The Gamma.
The Stratos.
The 037.
Etcetera, etcetera.
So, what are they up to now?
This is where Lancia's greatness has led it.
It's a city car based on the Fiat 500, but not quite as good.
So you have to ask, "What is the point?"
It's called the Ypsilon, after a letter in the Greek alphabet
to make it sound intellectual.
But unfortunately, they spoilt the effect
by giving it the facial expression of a moron.
The only good thing about this, I suppose, is that you can say,
"I have a Lancia", unless you're in Britain,
because over here, for reasons we don't really understand,
this is badged and sold as a Chrysler.
That's a bit like Montblanc making a fabulous new pen
and then calling it "The BIC".
JEREMY: And so, from Lancia to Alfa Romeo,
another car company whose history is peppered with gold.
In the 1950 Formula 1 championship,
Alfa won all but one of the races.
And on the road they were the kings.
The Spider was the very embodiment of European chic.
And then, there was the Alfa Sud one of the best handling
front-wheel drive cars of all time.
Which brings us on to the GTV 6,
styled by Giugiaro when he wasn't off his face on absinthe,
it was a glorious looking thing.
And it was propelled by an engine of unparalleled creaminess
and zest.
I love this engine so much that I actually bought a GTV 6
and that's why I'm qualified to tell you that it's a genuine contender
for the worst car in the world.
First of all, it was a hatch back.
But you couldn't fold the rear seats down
because they put the petrol tank in the way.
And sadly, I can't show you that
because the boot release button has broken.
This, however, in the big scheme of things,
is nothing.
When I had a GTV 6, I remember driving along one day,
50 miles an hour.
And the rod connecting the gear lever at the front
with the gearbox which was at the back,
fell off and landed on the prop shaft.
Now, this made a noise,
similar I guess, to the sound made by the Red Sea
when it was parted.
It also locked up the rear wheels, causing a massive spin.
Um, other things,
you always had to put a broom handle
between the clutch pedal and the driver's seat
to stop the clutch plates welding together.
The driving position was suitable only for an ape.
Oh, and the sunroof leaked.
In many ways then, it was like having
a moody, bad-tempered, drunken girlfriend.
But, you would persevere
because she has the face of an angel, the body of a supermodel,
and once in a while, she'd let you get around...
Yes, thank you.
Uh, I agree. The GTV is not without its faults.
But let's be honest, it's highly unlikely
that the worst car in the world is going to be Italian,
because even when they're not very good, they're still somehow rather nice.
That brings us neatly onto the French.
(FLY BUZZING)
This is a Citroen Pluriel, which is an convertible.
And to explain what's wrong with it
we need to start by looking at a Mazda MX-5.
If you want to lower the roof on this or indeed, any other convertible,
you simply push a button and in a matter of seconds
a series of electric motors does the job on your behalf.
Done.
Citroen, however, decided that there was a better way.
I do know that somehow this whole panel
and this comes off.
Ow!
It just doesn't make any sense at all.
Here we go.
"The rear part of the movable floor should be retracted."
How do you...
Why is it this complicated?
The rear tailgate should be open.
I know!
After literally 10 minutes, I had to summon assistance
from a man in an anorak.
I see, right there.
Lift this... Ah! ...a few centimetres
"till it clicks in place, pivot the cassette..."
First get a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
(GRUNT5)
Jesus wept.
So there we are in just (BREATHING HEAVILY)
22 minutes,
the Citroen has been converted
into a
fresh air machine.
And I think the weather looks good for a while.
There is another problem with this system.
The bits you've removed won't fit in the car,
which means you have to go out without them.
Now, that of course is fine if you live in the Atacama Desert
where it never rains.
But, here in Whitby,
it does.
The only solution that I can think of
is to be followed everywhere you go by a man in a van,
with your roof in the back.
This, of course, is a very expensive solution.
Even the blithering idiot that I've employed is costing me
£4,500 a year.
And he will also need a clothing allowance
because when it does start to rain,
his favourite T-shirt will be ruined
before he's had a chance to reassemble the car.
While he's doing this, I shall talk you through
some of the other problems with this hateful little car.
It takes 25 seconds to change gear.
It is the flobberiest convertible I've driven
since the Saab 900.
And nothing on God's green earth says, "I'm a clot",
better than a Citroen Pluriel.
Come on, I'm paying you £90 a week.
Hurry up. I'm getting soggy trousers here.
It's very badly designed, sir.
JAMES: But for sheer idiocy,
the roof on this Citroen is nothing...
...compared with Saab's Sensonic gearbox.
Here's how it works.
There is a gear stick like you find in any normal, manual car.
But, there's no clutch pedal because the clutch
is operated automatically by the car's brain.
Now, the idea is it's the best of both worlds.
You get the control and precision of a manual gear change,
but the easy life convenience of an automatic.
And if you're just, sort of, driving about
as I am here, then it works perfectly well.
However, it can be a bit problematic under certain circumstances.
Ah-ha! A space.
And it is the one thing
that the driver of the Sensonic Saab 900 fears the most.
It's the reverse, uphill parallel parking manoeuvre.
And this is going to be a bit tricky.
Just to increase my chances, I'll lower the roof.
I'm just watching James May park a car.
I suggest you all do the same.
It's always entertaining.
BOY: Oh, the roof's coming off.
JAMES: Now, here is the issue.
If this was a normal manual car,
I'd be able to reverse, feeding the clutch very gently
and very subtly, to go backwards into the space.
If it was an automatic, I'd put it in reverse
and the torque converter would, of course, make the car creep backwards.
In this, when I take my foot off the brake,
it will simply roll away.
So, in reverse,
no clutch, remember?
Try and use the handbrake.
There we are going backwards,
but the instant you lift your foot a bit,
the clutch disengages and does that, you see?
You can't hold it like you can with the normal clutch.
It isn't that sophisticated.
Right, now let's try the parking manoeuvre.
Of course, nobody is watching this, which makes it a lot easier.
- Are we struggling? - No.
I'm explaining to everybody the problem is that you can't park.
No, the problem... Oh, I'll explain it to you later.
So, brake...
Are we going backwards? I've got it, feather it a bit.
No, it's gonna go forwards, no, it's gonna go backwards.
No, it's gonna go backwards.
This is quite good. It's gonna go backwards.
And it's gonna go backwards. No, it's rolling forward.
It's so difficult to do!
(CROWD EXCLAIMS) (LAUGHS)
Wait for it.
So, try and give it a bit more revvage.
Then it... (CROWD EXCLAIMS)
That is exactly the problem with the Sensonic Saab.
You cannot get it into a parking space, can you?
And then when you let your foot off the brake,
because it doesn't have a creep function, it does that.
Is that parked?
CROWD: Yeah!
It's impossible.
JEREMY: It's true. Saab's Sensonic gearbox was dreadful.
But I've just thought of something worse.
I will admit that today's Porsche 977 is really not bad at all.
But things used to be different.
This is a 1977 91 Carrera RS.
And it was terrible
All cars can kill you, but this one actively wanted to.
It had a full arsenal of handling characteristics,
and though James disagrees, all of them were fatal.
Come on, James, you have to admit, 911's are a bit tragic.
No, they're not tragic, Jeremy.
They are proper sports cars
for discerning enthusiasts who know what they're talking about.
That's what they're supposed to be.
But they're just codpieces
for gentlemen whose sausages have started to wilt.
Don't be... Look, we did agree that we wouldn't let this degenerate
into a pointless slanging match. Come on.
You can't expect me to stand here like a bush
while you explain this is a good car.
JAMES: Well, it's not the best 911, all right.
But it isn't that bad.
It's supposed to hark back to "the iconic" 2.7 litre RS
from '73 and it doesn't.
What do you mean, "iconic"?
Well, that's what Porsche people do.
JAMES: I decided at this point that the best way to get back at Jeremy
would be to sink to his level.
To do that I'd have to start with this.
This is a Ford Capri.
Now, most people hanker after the German engine,
2.8 injection, but not me, no, no, no.
You want the early one, the Essex engine, three-litre.
The Capri was to Europe, what the Mustang was to America.
It meant that people who had only hoped for a dreary saloon,
could now own an exotic two-door.
And for the same sort of money.
Proper job.
Suddenly, your saloon driver got a proper array of instruments,
hip-hugging seats and a bonnet that stretched to the horizon.
And this engine,
it has the honest, no-nonsense muscularity
of a man who's spent 40 years working in a foundry.
You ask the owner of this to lend you a stepladder,
and he will.
No problem.
Mate.
The three-litre Capri is one of those cars
that defined my youth.
Yes, we all had posters of Italian exotics,
but the Capri we knew was within reach.
It gave us hope.
Sadly, 20 years on, all the hope had gone
and they built this.
The Escort Cosworth.
A car Jeremy loved so much that he bought two of them
That's why I've arranged for him to be otherwise occupied
so I can tell you that it's rubbish.
James, what is this?
First off, it wasn't really an Escort, it was a Sierra
with a fake Escort body on it.
But never mind that.
The real problem is that it was as rough as old boot.
The early cars were fitted with an oversized turbo-charger
which made the power delivery
as crass and unsubtle as the owner's chat-up lines.
So, Ford had a bit of a rethink and fitted a smaller turbo-charger
which was a great idea.
But, that took the power down from 227 horsepower
to 217.
Now that, of course, meant it was slower.
And that defeated the point because the sort of person
who owned an Escort Cossie
could only really talk about how fast the Escort Cossie was.
It's just crass.
If you drove this past the famous Top Gear cock-o-meter
the needle would just fly right off the end of the scale.
James!
What I bet he's failing to tell you in there,
is that car was styled by the same man who did the Aston Martin DB9.
It's impossible to imagine that Ford could do any worse than this.
But, in 2005,
they did.
(REVVING)
(MUFFLED SCREAMING)
The Ford GT.
Now, the original car, the GT40, that was a true great,
a real working-class hero that whupped the toffs' asses at Le Mans.
More important than the first Labour Party victory, really.
But this later, "tribute band version",
this is not a great.
This is a chintzy, fatuous trinket
for sad fantasists.
Jeremy had one.
The original GT40 was actually quite a petite car.
But this one, rather like the people who bought it, to be honest,
has become slovenly and a bit broad in the beam.
The result of that is you can't really use it properly
on the sort of road where it ought to be fun like this one
because it's just too wide.
Whenever I see people in one of these, I always think,
"Get over it.
"That's not a GT40. You're not Steve McQueen.
"You're not at Le Mans.
"This isn't the '60s.
"It's over. Let it drop. Please."
At this point Jeremy managed to escape
and had something to say.
This is a Rolls-Royce Phantom,
a car which demonstrates to the world
that Rolls knows more than anyone else about the four pillars of luxury.
Space, light, comfort and quietness.
It is a superb piece of engineering.
However, in the past, things used to be a little bit different.
This is a 1972 Rolls-Royce Corniche,
specifically, it's James May's 1972 Rolls-Royce Corniche.
You can tell it's his partly because it's the slowest car I've ever driven,
partly because everything is absolutely
spotless.
Achoo! Sorry, James.
And partly because he's in the boot.
(GRUNTING)
Ci!
- Jeremy! - (METALLIC THUDDING)
The reason he's in the boot is so I can explain without interruption
why this is worthy of the treatment we've lined up
for the worst car in the world.
Rolls-Royces used to be bought by people you'd have round for dinner.
But, by the time this came along, the clever money had been replaced
by a raft of television celebrities,
many of whom were called "Jimmy".
Jimmy Tarbuck.
Jimmy Davidson, and of course, more recently,
Jimmy May.
(THUDS) Ow!
JEREMY: There were technical problems, too.
Hydraulics controlled the rear suspension,
steering and the brakes.
So, if there was one small problem, the whole car stopped working.
And of course, everything was handmade, so replacement parts
never quite fitted properly.
Mercedes Benz invented the car.
And ever since, has made magnificent cars.
This is a 280SL Pagoda, magnificent.
This is a 450SLC.
It's magnificent.
But not all their cars have been magnificent.
Not at all.
As I speak,
Jeremy is out there in a 6.2-litre AMG C63 black.
Unfortunately, you can't hear what he has to say about it
because I've disconnected his microphone.
(INAUDIBLE)
However, I can give you a pretty good idea.
I would imagine
that he's currently talking about the enormity
of the differential.
But neglecting to tell you that it takes 15 minutes to warm up,
it's so Victorian. So,
until then, you can't turn left or right at junctions.
I would imagine just then as he was going around and around
in a cloud of smoke, he would have been talking about
how much torque the engine develops.
(INAUDIBLE)
And I can tell you how much it is. It's too much.
That's why, out on this track, a set of tyres last for just 25 miles.
What a colossal knuckle-draggers' car.
And that isn't the worst AMG Mercedes.
Oh, (CHUCKLES) no.
Come with me.
This is the Mercedes SLS, a stupid car.
(TYRES SCREECHING)
This is the Mercedes SLS, it's a stupid car,
an ostentatious vulgarity for people wracked with self-doubt.
Though it has a 583 horsepower V8,
which of course, is a marvellous thing, nothing wrong with power.
But power is only good...
Power is only good if you can actually use it.
And in this car, the engine is merely a very elaborate way
of ridding the world of pesky tyres.
I hardly touched it.
What sort of a moron would buy a car
as dreadful, as dreary, as a Fiat Panda.
You'd have to be a woolly-headed oaf with a wardrobe full of
stupid stripy jumpers and idiotic floral shirts,
and at night you drone on and on in front of your friends about
gravity and maths and steam locomotives.
And then you'd explain that pencil sharpeners are interesting.
Hang on a minute.
James! There's been a bit of an accident with your car.
JEREMY: At this point we decided to call a truce
and stop simply insulting each other's cars.
So we found a local golf course
and had a debate about which car would be most fitting
for our special treatment.
Not bad.
Have we talked about Fiat?
Doblo.
But I think the Doblo's good.
Oh, come on.
- No, but I know... - It's as good as your jumper.
But the Doblo isn't bad, isn't it? It looks quite amusing.
- It is bad, it's shocking... - No, I'm not giving you the Doblo.
- You're not having that for sure. - Is it still me?
Yes.
Can I tell you something I've never ever owned up to you before?
But we all know, Jeremy don't worry about it.
I've never ever...
I've never driven a Seat.
I have.
Are they rubbish?
Well, they're dull.
You know, they're just like cheap VW's.
Could we include some of those old British marques?
What about...
- Wolseley Hornet. - Exactly, Triumph Mayflower.
The Austin Healey 3000,
which everybody thinks is wonderful, but it's terrible.
MG RV8.
That was a hopeless, hopeless car,
- fitted with a massive engine... - And looked terrible.
It's in the woods.
Oh, James!
- What? - James?
- What? - May!
- What? - Rolls-Royce Camargue.
No, I love it.
What?
- They were great, rode really well... - They weren't great, they were shocking.
Hurry up and hit your ball.
What about the Vauxhall Vectra?
No.
I would rather have double pneumonia
than a Vectra.
What's the score?
- About equal. - Yeah.
Well, we haven't really talked about the Japanese.
Hang on.
I mean, the Japanese have made a lot of dull cars, but...
Right. Suzuki X90.
Oh, very good. Very good.
The one that looks exactly the same going backwards...
Yes, and had a bit taken out the middle.
That's not bad.
What about Toyota?
I mean, what about the Corolla? That's...
But it's not bad car, is it? It's just boring.
Yeah, boring. But, I tell you what.
Toyota gives me an idea.
JEREMY: This is a Lexus LFA.
A car I've looked forward to driving for about 12 years.
So, is it disappointing?
No, not even a little bit.
How would you describe this?
Well, it's tricky 'cause it's too wide to be a sports car,
it's too sort of raw to be a GT car.
And the engine's in the front.
So it isn't a supercar.
The only thing it does remind me of a bit is the Ferrari,
the GTO, the 599 GTO.
- What? Kato? - Kato, yeah.
JEREMY: They're both front engines.
They both sort of road-going racers.
And they both cost about £340,000.
Although, the difference is, this isn't trying to kill us.
- (CLARKSON LAUGHS) - With its car kung fu.
No, the Ferrari is more mental than this, more powerful than this.
Driving one of those is like being machine gunned.
I mean, it's just starting now to spit with rain.
If I was in a GTO, some poo would be coming out.
But in this...
More would be coming out of me, in fairness.
This is just brilliant.
JEREMY: You certainly don't want to get the LFA in a game of top trumps.
The 4.8 litre V70 produces just 552 horsepower.
Over a hundred less than the 599 GTO.
It does 0-60 in a yawning 3.7 seconds.
And the top speed is only just on the right side of 200.
It isn't even particularly striking to look at.
And yet...
You know they took nine years to design and develop this car.
Nine years!
JAMES: You know, it was actually ready after five years.
It was ready to go into production and they suddenly said,
"No, hang on, we don't want to make it out of aluminium,
"we want to make it out of carbon fibre." And then they started again.
They did, they went back to the drawing board.
Then there were endless laps at the Nurburgring.
Quite a mistake.
There were endless tiny adjustments to the steering,
and the brakes and the exhaust, until it was
absolutely perfect.
It actually feels like you're sitting inside a machine.
Lexus normally do everything they can
to disguise that their cars are machines.
But in this, they are acknowledging, celebrating,
that you're being propelled by bits of metal flying around.
You know what this car feels like?
A racing car.
It really does.
And sounds like one.
Oh!
It's bloody brilliant.
JEREMY: It is a beautiful piece of engineering, this.
It has a single clutch, paddle shift gear box
because that gives a better mechanical feel
than a trendy double clutch system.
And it has a transaxle, for better weight distribution.
I'll tell you what this is, it's is an intelligent car
made by intelligent people.
It's actually highbrow.
JEREMY: The trouble is there's one other highbrow Japanese car on the market.
The Nissan GTR.
How much is one of those?
About 70,000.
And how much was this again?
340,000.
Right.
JEREMY: That really was the only bit of lunacy with the LFA.
The price.
So, let's have a look now at a Toyota
that doesn't cost quite so much.
The brand new GT 86.
On paper it doesn't sound very exciting at all.
It has a two-litre engine which produces less than 200 horsepower.
And as a result, it has a top speed from the 1980s
and the 0-60 time of a not particularly dramatic animal.
So, it's not very fast and it doesn't look very exciting either.
But do not be fooled by appearances
or the lowly £25,000 price tag
because this is one of the best cars
I have driven in ages.
The engine may be small but it's a Subaru boxer unit.
So the centre of gravity is very low.
There's a proper snicky,
six-speed manual gearbox.
And joy of joys, drive goes to the back.
And I haven't got to the master stroke yet.
In recent years, car manufacturers have been obsessed with grip.
How fast a car can go round a corner.
And that of course means fitting low profile fat tyres.
With this though, Toyota have done the exact opposite.
It is fitted with tyres from a Prius.
Skinny, ecological, not grippy at all.
And the results are dramatic.
Okay, turn in.
And immediately the back is sliding.
And you have all the lock in the world,
just enough power, to hold the slide for as long as you like.
Or, until the tyres burst, anyway.
This is just fantastic.
(LAUGHING)
You can be Ken Block on every single roundabout.
You can break traction without ever breaking the speed limit.
I'm doing this at 20 miles an hour.
That would be legal in a residential zone.
Probably.
Plainly then, this £25,000 Toyota
was designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
So, what on earth were they thinking of
when they built this.
This is a Lexus SC 430.
Hideous, isn't it?
For inspiration, the stylists from Japan and Europe
went to the Cote d'Azur to study the architecture, the lifestyle
and the harbours.
Ah, well, that's what they told their bosses they'd done.
So you're suggesting they went on a holiday.
Well...
- (GROANS) - Yes, certainly.
"We could go to south of France and study things," Yeah, right.
They haven't drunk any beer or wine at all.
They claim the 430 looks like a south of France yacht.
But I'm not so sure.
One thing's for sure, it is a lot more Buick Riviera,
than it is French Riviera.
Under the bonnet there's a 4.3 litre V8 which developed 300 horsepower.
That's about half what it needs.
Well, interestingly, the electric roof takes 25 seconds to fold away.
Which is about twice as long as it should.
Do you know they made the roof out of aluminium to save weight?
Yeah, but why did they do that and then put this wood in it,
because that's not light, is it?
No, no, it gets worse, watch.
Mmm... More wood is on its way!
- What sort of wood is that? - They claim it's maple.
- Is it? - Is it?
JEREMY: Of course, you might forgive all this stuff if it was nice to drive.
But it wasn't.
This half-timbered steering wheel
is about as communicative as a half-timbered cottage.
You have no idea what the front wheels are doing.
Yeah, but never mind that. Have you felt the ride?
The ride in this thing is absolutely diabolical.
This isn't a particularly bad road.
No, and look at us. We're bouncing around all over the place.
Lexus trying to build a luxury sports cruiser
in the mould of the Mercedes SL
is like us two designing a golf bat.
It just wouldn't be any good.
JAMES: There's only one word to describe
the sort of person who would buy this car.
An American
Mmm... More specifically an elderly American.
Because this was the last car ever made
to be fitted as standard with a cassette player.
- Was it really? - Hmm.
I didn't know that but I'm glad I do.
Says it all.
JAMES: This then is definitely a contender for our special treatment.
This 35-year-old Peugeot however, isn't.
This is a great Peugeot.
The 504 Estate.
It was built to conquer Africa.
It was as rugged and as dependable as a Maasai warrior.
It was also quite a bit more practical than a Maasai warrior,
so it conquered quite a bit of urban Europe as well.
Later Peugeot stopped making cars for Africa and came up with this.
A car for the complex at Croft.
I remember thinking back in the late '70s
there would never be a hot hatchback as good as a Golf GTI.
This was, though.
The expression "joie de vivre", you're probably familiar with it.
It's French for Peugeot 205 GTI.
So if you were buying a Peugeot you would expect
a blend of these qualities.
Toughness, ruggedness, forged on the anvil of Africa.
And peppy, puppy dog enthusiasm.
But, no.
Today's Peugeots are a sea of awfulness.
And rising to the top of this cesspit of utter woefulness is this.
The Peugeot 308.
- Diesel. - Diesel.
Let's unpack this pile of peu de chien, actually.
We'll start with its face.
Because admittedly, this isn't the biggest gob
we've seen on a Peugeot in recent years.
But it isn't small enough.
And it's like one of those local councillor's faces.
Do you know what I mean? Promising a lot, but delivering nothing.
The ride, for example, okay. It's quite firm in an un-French sort of way,
and yet it handles like a big bag of damp laundry.
It feels all weighty and turgid.
The controls feel turgid.
- But, James, if I may? - You may.
The modern day Peugeot does provide a valuable public service.
How does it?
Because in the '70s, all bad drivers had Volvos.
So you saw a Volvo, you knew
it was being driven by someone who couldn't drive very well.
And just because it was in the left lane indicating left
didn't necessarily mean it was actually going to turn left.
- Yes. - Then Volvo started making good cars.
So the bad drivers migrated to Rover.
Then Rover went bust, so the people who were buying Rovers
- are now in Peugeots. - Yes.
So actually, they're quite useful.
I was teaching my daughter to drive the other day.
And she went, "Now mirrors..." I said, "Never mind
"mirror signal manoeuvre.
"The first thing you have to know as a new driver is,
"see a Peugeot, just cover the brake pedal."
JEREMY: We asked Yorkshire Stig to test it for us.
And this was his response.
This car, then, meets all of our criteria
for the title of Worst Car in the World.
It's not very nice to drive, it's not very nice to look at.
It doesn't appear to be very well made.
It's no cheaper than its vastly superior rivals.
It's not very comfortable, nor is it very fast.
It's made by a manufacturer that really should know better.
It's lazy, it's slovenly, it's unimaginative and we hate it.
But, James, do we hate it as much as we hate this filthy, filthy Lexus?
Well, that's a slightly ridiculous question.
It's like asking me which of your legs I hate the most,
the left one or the right one.
We have to make our minds up.
JEREMY: Only one thing was for sure.
One of these cars was going to get our special treatment.
So we're agreed.
Yes.
We're prepared to name the worst car in the world ever.
The worst car in the world, all things considered, ever, yes.
The car that we're going to...
- Yes. - Yeah.
JEREMY: This then is what we think
is the worst car, all things considered, of all time.
The Lexus SC 430.
And what we're going to do is very simple.
We are going to give it to someone who we think
will appreciate it very much.
That's right, we're on our way to his house right now.
JEREMY: (WHISPERING) This is it, isn't it?
(WHISPERING) That's the... That's it.
Shh!
Wait for it.
That'll stop burglars.
(BOTH SNICKERING)
JAMES: just go very gently over the gravely drive.
JAMES: Shh! Don't no big throttle.
Now just gently, gently.
(WHISPERING) No, we don't want to wake him up.
He's going to love it.
I think he's going to love it, just stop there, stop.
JAMES: Off, off, off, off.
- Don't slam the door. - Shh.
So...
Who would live in a house like this?
Let's... Let's examine the evidence.
Well, we've got electric gates.
No... (CLEARS THROAT)
- Hideous French-style water feature. - Yes.
And a pillared porch.
Absolutely, and there's more evidence still.
We know we're looking at a wealthy man.
- Definitely. - But...
The American flag.
And over there unless I'm very much mistaken,
that's a Ford Mustang.
Hang on, hang on. Look at these.
These are like...
These are like lions but somebody has carved their own face in them.
Who on earth would carve their own face into a stone lion?
(BOTH GIGGLING)
Plainly, somebody with incredibly small feet.
(BOTH LAUGHING) Look at that.
It's a size 5. (BOTH LAUGHING)
And that's the biggest one there. (BOTH LAUGHING)
Look, to be brutally honest, it's time we put you out of your misery.
JAMES: Shh.
The person to whom we have bequeathed
the worst car in the world, all things considered,
his name appears on,
the V5 document for the Lexus SC 430.
And here it is...
It's Mr Richard Hammond.
(BOTH GIGGLING)
Now listen, you pop that through the letterbox, okay?
All right, okay.
'Cause all that remains for us to do now
is take away his Ford Mustang in part exchange.
Have you got the key?
It's a '60s Ford, you can start it with a teaspoon.
Get to work.
(CAR ENGINE STARTS)
- Aha! - Excellent!
Thank you for watching.
- Yes, goodbye. - Good bye.