Top Gear (UK) / Funny

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Poor Clarkson. Poor, poor Clarkson.

Below, you will find the whole series. So far. Please enjoy!

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General

Pretty much every introduction to the Stig. Both the surreal ones and the topical ones that involve a (usually deserved) Take That!.
Whenever May yells "Mayday!" during a challenge.
Whenever you hear May yell "CLARKSON!" you know that one of these is either about to happen, is happening now, or has happened. It´s so iconic, that even has a compilation: [1]
- Several times May knows from the start that Clarkson's the one responsible:
  - During the race to the Magnetic North Pole Clarkson starts driving the Toyota Hilux while May's using the equipped bathroom at the back. May knows for sure it's Clarkson because Hammond is teamed with a dogsled crew to try and beat them there.
  - On at least two occasions May wakes up to find his mountaineering tent hanging over a dangerous location via his lorry's crane. Clarkson admits to Hammond that he's definitely responsible for one of them because of one simple reason:
  Clarkson: I don't like snoring.
Clarkson's pronunciation of "the baby Jesus". It's impossible to describe just how silly it sounds^note, so here are some clips.
These promos featuring the presenters as children are both hilarious and adorable.
Any moment when something goes wrong in the cheap car challenges, such as Jeremy opening his door and the middle remains stuck in place, and all three of them die laughing.
When any of the guys make a hilarious joke and all three crack up.
- When any of the guys look at each other, know what the other is thinking, and crack up laughing.
Michael Gambon driving so fast that he gets the car up on two wheels and gets a corner named after him.
Many of the later "Tonight on Top Gear" intros are absolute It Makes Sense in Context goldmines.

Series 1

In the fifth episode of the first season, when Jeremy tried to program numbers into the telephone located on the newest (at the time) Mercedes S-Class.
Car: Dial Number
Clarkson: No, don't dial that. I don't know who it is, it might be the Queen.

Series 2

The "Master of the Universe" segment from Episode 8. It was mainly villains (with the exception of the Sixth Doctor), and it went alright... up until it was the Daleks'' turn to drive around the test track. Upon examining it and seeing only humanoids could operate it... well, EXTERMINATE. Only a couple had left the area and were spared.
Episode 3: Jeremy throws a member of the audience out of the studio for calling the Vauxhall VX-220 a bad car.
Episode 1: Hammond yells "I AM A DRIVING GOD!" while driving a Bowler Wildcat. Cut to Jeremy's and Richard's comments:
Jeremy: "I am a driving God". When you take a dog for a walk, are you "I AM A DOG WALKING GOD!"?
Richard: It was a big moment! It's like being in a cartoon in that thing, and yes-
Jeremy: You got carried away.
Richard: I got- I got very carried away. I'm not a driving God; it was a mistake to make that claim.
James summing up the other presenters:
James: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to stop you there. I hate to interrupt, but this is quite honestly the biggest load of limp-wristed twaddle I've ever heard in all my five weeks in television. These two - these two are not men, OK? This one, Richard Hammond, every morning sticks his head in a bucket of hair product, right? He's got a dog, but it's a poodle! And I don't know what you're laughing about, Clarkson, because you won't drink brown beer and this is the man who says, 'flatulence? Oh, it's not funny!' when clearly it is! Right. I am actually the only proper bloke on this programme, OK? I live in a tumbledown house full of old motorbikes. And I think a bloke can drive a convertible, but... it has to be the right one.
Richard Hammond's explanation of oversteer and understeer in Episode 5:
Richard: To Clarkson Thank you Jeremy. Now this is really quite simple, K? Understeer works like this. You drive down the road. You turn the wheel, but the car goes straight on, crashes into a tree, and you die. Oversteer works like this. You drive down the same bit of road. You turn the wheel, but the back of the car comes around like this and you go off the road, crash into a tree, and you die. Now oversteer is best because you don't see the tree that kills you.

Series 3

During a Cool Wall segment, Jeremy tries to explain to 2 rather attractive girls in the audience why the rollbar (or, as they put it, scaffolding) renders the car into "Seriously Uncool" territory. The moment one of them tells him that a car like that would get him a 2nd date with her, however? It goes right into the "Sub-Zero" category. (Jeremy and Richard can be seen having a bit of a crisis afterwards as well.)
During the Monaro test in the 6th episode of the 3rd season, Clarkson turns the traction control on. Promptly the car begins to insult him in Australian slang, calling him a poofter and saying that England got lucky when they won the rugby world cup.

Series 4

When Richard Hammond is hypnotized into forgetting how to drive a car, and then thinking a small pedal car is a brand new car he recently bought.
The very first "cheap cars challenge" in Series 4. The final challenge is to crash the car into a brick wall at 30 mph, which leads to two Crowning Moments: first James May appears to have died, and Clarkson casually turns to the camera with a spiel about "if you want a job on Top Gear, write to..."; then, Clarkson's Volvo's speedometer is broken, so he guesses and actually hits the wall at 40 mph...whereupon the Volvo demolishes the wall and, unlike the other two cars, is still going afterwards.
- And the challenge finishes with Clarkson dozens of points behind and apparently out of the race...but he wins due to economy, because his Volvo cost one pound.
Series 4, Episode 6: Hammond harvests methane from cow manure to run a Rover - which then loses a drag race to a petrol Rover and a "human poo" methane Rover. After which James May gets out a calculator and starts calculating to see if it'll really save money as Richard tries to convince him it was a just a joke.
- After Hammond has convinced May that the cow program was a joke, and wouldn't work:
  James May: How much are four humans?
From Episode 7, Jeremy finds that the voice recognition software for the phone in the Mercedes C-class is as uncooperative as it was in the S-class in Series 1.
Clarkson: Dial - number.
Computer: Dialling.
Clarkson [bewildered]: ... I haven't told you what to dial yet! Let's try again. Dial - number.
Computer: The number, please.
Clarkson: Oh-one-seven-eight-five...
Computer: Zero. Seven. Eight. Five.
Clarkson: No, you've missed the one.
Computer: Pardon?
Clarkson: You've missed the one.
Computer: The number has been deleted.
Clarkson [to camera]: See what I mean?
Computer: Two. Zero. Two.
Clarkson [utterly confounded]: ... where did that come from?!
Computer: Pardon?

Series 5

Episode 4. Hammond having 'to go' into a 'wee bag' in the backseat of a Smart Forfour in a challenge where May and Hammond had to spend 24 hours in the car without ever getting out.
Also, on episode 4, Hammond and May play conkers, with caravans.
Hammond: James, we are grown men...
May: Yes, I know...
Hammond: ...but we're playing conkers with caravans.
May: That's okay. It's better than working at a bank.
- And when "heath and safety" find out about the game and "step in with some precautions", leading to this comment as Hammond and May put on some safety goggles:
May: There we go, now I feel perfectly happy about being hit in the face with a caravan.
In Episode 5's "People Carrier Racing", Hammond introduces the "serious driving talent": "Tim Harvey - former British Touring Car Champion", "Matt Neal - former independent British Touring Car Champion", "Anthony Reid - reigning independent Touring Car Champion and Race of Champions Champion", "Robb Huff - SEAT Cupra Championship Champion" "and Tom Chilton - who probably will be one day, a champion". Which is then followed by:
Hammond: (steps into screen, with a thumbs up) Champion!
- Richard states that the rules of the Historic People Carrier Racing were simple: 15 laps and no body contact. Which is instantly followed by one of the drivers punting off another and Hammond mentioning that they are touring car drivers.
Episode 6. The cheap Porsche challenge. James' car boot at first didn't open, then had to be taped shut; Clarkson's car broke down about seven times on the way to Brighton, haemorrhaged steam, smoke, water and petrol, and arrived there on the back of a tow lorry...
Clarkson: Beneath this rather faded, ruined exterior beats a heart of pure arthritis.
** Also, Clarkson put his "lonely hearts" ad for that part of the challenge in a "men seeking men" column.
From the Ariel Atom test in Episode 9: "My epiglottis is full of bees!"

Series 6

Series 6, Episode 4: The stunt at the beginning with Richard having a stuntman jump a stretch limo over a wedding scene... and failing.
Hammond: (As the limo is approaching the ramp) Will the bride make it? It's either leave now or forever be smashed to pieces!
- James May's advertisement for a used BMW, written purely in classified-car-ad abbreviations.
Clarkson: ...The essence of it is that, from now on, small car ads are going to be impossible. We're not going to know what on earth they're written about.
May: I've written one, for a BMW. "For sale, BMW 528. 19k, VGC, TNT, FSH, PAS, AAC, OBC, ICE, ABS, EBD, PDC, DTC, DSC, £15,000."^note
[general laughter.]
Hammond: Nice.
May: "ONO." ^noteAnd ONO is Or Near Offer.
- And, before that, there's the conversation about Jeremy Clarkson's Ford GT, that he had just gotten the previous week. Or, to be more specific, the problems with Jeremy Clarkson's Ford GT, that he had just gotten the previous week. It is, in a word, classic.
- Hammond, Clarkson and May's mothers test three cars. Cue the usual sequence of senior citizens knowing nothing about advanced car mechanics ... except when Mrs. May starts discussing her dislike of low-profile tires as they generate more noise when driving. The expression on James' face was priceless.
  May: Where did you learn that?
- Not to mention the fact that Captain Slow's mum, of all people, has gotten two speeding tickets.
- Then there's James' claim that it's her driving style that traumatized him at an early age.
  Hammond:You know how there's sort of global speculations as to the identity of The Stig...
When Clarkson interviewed Christopher Eccleston, they got into a brief argument about who was more Northern:
Eccleston: Well, you don't really count, Jeremy. You're from Yorkshire. You're actually part sheep.
During the Iceland episode: Clarkson referring to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev as "Reaganchev" and "Gorben" respectively.
In Episode 1, Jeremy pits a Range Rover against a tank. During the challenge, he starts leading the tank around a bush (complete with waltzing music), prompting this line from one of the crew.
Tank Crewman: He's turning in circles, the little *bleep* !
- Jeremy Clarkson was able to outsmart the tank's crew, but not for long.

Series 7

The series sees the beginning of the Running Gag that Richard Hammond has had his teeth whitened. To which accusation Richard always replies, "I have NOT had my teeth done!"
The Budget Supercars challenge is full of memorable laughs. Hammond drives up in a yellow Ferrari 308 - a model originally sold as a Dino. Clarkson pulls up in a beautiful red Maserati Merak with headlights that turn on but don't lift up. And then May shows up late...with an AA truck carrying his black Lamborghini Urraco. Hammond and Clarkson proceed to take the piss out of him.
Clarkson: James, we said a mid-engine Italian supercar, not a truck.
May: (grumpily slamming the truck door) Is that the best you two can come up with?
Clarkson: Yes, it is.
- May attempts to defend himself. It doesn't go well.
  Clarkson: Let's cut to the chase - it's on a lorry.
  May: It's an electrical problem, the Italians -
  Clarkson: (riotous laughter)
  May: - invented electricity, as we know...
- Clarkson spends the whole series pronouncing Hammond's car "not a Ferrari" while Hammond insists that it is ... and then Clarkson combines it with Hammond's long-term Berserk Button about getting his teeth whitened:
  Hammond: ...and so far we've learnt that James's Lamborghini is rubbish, Jeremy's Maserati is slow, and my Ferrari is-
  Clarkson: -isn't a Ferrari.
  Hammond: It is!
  Clarkson: It is not a Ferrari; Teeth, be quiet!
  Hammond: It- I- It is a-
  Clarkson: Let's get back to the action!
- The first budget supercar challenge is simply to drive from one town to another without using the highway. Hammond repeatedly notices something wrong with his own 308, such as his speedometer being "a little optimistic", having told him he was driving 50 when he was stuck behind a truck, or his entire car body frame being "just made of rust". However, voiceover Hammond always chimes in "Still, could be worse" before the program cuts to James's very broken Lambo having broken down in the middle of the road once again.
- After all of Clarkson's teasing of Hammond for not buying "a real Ferrari", his look at the car's maintenance history reveals that his own Maserati Merak SS isn't actually an SS - it just had an SS badge added to it at some point. Clarkson nonetheless tries to claim this as a blessing in disguise, pointing out that this means his car only has to reach 190bhp in the horsepower test — Hammond's and May's having returned results of 194bhp and 117bhp respectively — rather than the 220 it would be for an SS model. And then he gets the actual result:
  Hammond: (laughing) What is it?
  Clarkson: (quietly) 80.
  May: What?
  Clarkson: (even quieter still) 80.
  Hammond: 80?! (he and May laugh uncontrollably) They've all gotten away! There must be a big gate open on the back, and all your horses just got out. Your car is garbage!
- Near the climax of the challenge, what could have been a scary moment when the engine of Clarkson's Merak disintegrates while he's travelling at speed on the open road — taking out the car's brakes into the bargain — ends up doubling back into hilarity when he ends up having to ditch the car in a hedge in order to bring it to a halt. This, combined with the fact that their ultimate destination was meant to be a lap-dancing club leads Clarkson to sum up the situation as follows:
  Clarkson: I must say, I was hoping to end the evening in a rather different sort of hedge, but there you are.
In the same episode, you have a Crosses the Line Twice example in Jeremy suggesting ideas for a "Quintessentially German" car^note, with plenty of morbid references to go round:
May: That sort of thing really annoys me.
Clarkson: We should do a car that's quintessentially German.
Hammond: What, just replace the spoons with little sausages?
Clarkson: No, no no... trafficators that only go like that! (performs Hitler salutes to either side of him, causing Hammond and May to burst out laughing) A sat-nav that only goes to Poland! (mimes the car veering off, before lapsing into a Hitler accent) Und ein... UND EIN FANBELT ZAT VILL LAST FOR A THOUSAND YEARS! (Hammond cracks up while shaking his head)
In the episode where Clarkson in the Bugatti Veyron races May and Hammond in a private plane (piloted by May) when Clarkson refers to his opponents as "Captain Captain Slow and his Hammond hand-luggage". Or as Ginger and Algy or as Maverick and Iceman.
In Series 7, Episode 3, Clarkson announced to the audience that Top Gear has won an Emmy Award for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment Show Not Made in America. Then Hammond asks Clarkson why he didn't go along to the ceremony to pick it up in person.
Clarkson: Well, 'cause I was writing the script for this week's show.
In Series 7, Episode 5, Hammond and May reach the end of the race between their Cessna 182 plane and Clarkson's Bugatti Veyron, and enter the restaurant serving as their meeting place. They initially think that they've won... until they find Clarkson tucked in the far back, behind a wall. May's reaction is priceless.
May: YOU UNBEARABLE MAN! I can't stand it!
- Earlier in the same episode, during the news segment, Jeremy gets aggravated by a store-bought alarm brought in for a demonstration, not being able to turn it off... and brings out his own, more direct method of shutting it off.
  Clarkson: SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!
- Also this line from Hammond near the end of the race, especially when coupled with his expression as he says it:
  Hammond: He's got a Bugatti, we've got a bus.
In Episode 6, Hammond races a Mazda MX5 against a Greyhound around a dog track. Which is...kind of funny. But what was really funny was Hammond and Clarkson afterward careening off on a rambling tangent about how animal anatomy is similar to transmission/engine layout, in that some animals are front-wheel/rear-wheel drive which can cause them to over- or under-steer when they take a corner, how elephants are four-wheel drive, and how cats can drift. And this somehow relates back to why you should buy a Mazda MX5.
Richard Hammond living up to his "Hamster" nickname twice in the series, both pertaining to cool cars. Fist in Episode 3, during the Cool Wall segment Richard eats the picture of a BMW M6 after a scuffle with Jeremy to keep it off the Sub Zero section. Then again during the awards ceremony in Episode 6 when Jeremy declared he wasn't going to give the award to the Porsche 911 and instead give it to the Aston Martin V8 Vantage. Cure Richard taking the card away from Jeremy and eating it while playing keep away from the other presenters like a dog with a bone. The segment ends with James trying to get Jeremy to continue while reading sillier and sillier awards with Jeremy refusing to continue because Richard "will just eat them all", all the while Richard is in the background still eating the card.

Series 8

The White Van Challenges are hilarious as a whole, but the climax was when it was Hammond's turn to take his itty bitty Suzuki Supercarry van around the track (in typical Top Gear fashion, of course). Hammond was just so full of confidence that cornering fast in a vehicle with a narrow wheelbase and high center of gravity would be no trouble at all. You can, perhaps, see where this is going...
- Don't forget Richard's last words - "I reckon I'll give it a bit of the old Scandinavian flick". Immediately followed, of course, by a bit of the old Scandinavian flip as he puts it right on its side.
  Hammond: (climbing out of the wreckage) I may have overcooked that a bit.
- On the drag race, after he won, Hammond got a little overexcited over his victory. His celebration? Screaming "WANKERS!", which promptly got silenced out on TV.
- On the tailgating challenge, James's van was so slow that he ended up getting a score of minus 4,000,000 as a result.
- While they were rounding up the scores, Richard is disappointed at getting one point for the police chase challenge.
  Hammond: One?
  Clarkson: Your van rolled over!
  Hammond: I could have been killed!
  May: So? You'd have still lost.
May races a pair of free runners through Liverpool. He thinks he's won, is giving his victory speech and then he looks up at the clock tower... to see the free-runners have climbed almost to the very top of it.
May: Oh for Pete's sake!
The caravan holiday, which ends with the caravan burning down as a result of a pan catching fire while Clarkson peels potatoes.
Clarkson: It's not a pan fire anymore, it's a van fire.
- While the pan fire is starting to consume the caravan, Hammond escapes while proclaiming that he saved the potatoes Clarkson was trying to cook when the fire began. Then Jeremy pulls out (presumably James') burning dressing gown, and Hammond finally rescues a giant inflatable crocodile pool toy.
- That one segment after the train was heard in the distance; May calls the sound "romantic." Note that he is also sharing a bed with Hammond at the time... and is also lying on it in a "draw me like one of your French girls" pose, with a big smile on his face. Hammond is not amused.
May: I like it, it's romantic!
Hammond: (mortified) DON'T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT! I'm on the same bed as you!
- The service station schtick, with May crashing the caravan into a bollard, and making a pig's ear out of getting it off as several amused motorists look on.
- No reasonable caravan driver would get confronted and cautioned by the Dorset police while lost looking for their campsite.
- Clarkson tries to connect the gas bottle, and stabs himself in the wrist.
Clarkson: (ranting) Why would anyone consider this a holiday? I mean, at what point in the last eight hours have I done anything I would call 'holidayish'. Nothing! I've been in a car accident. I've watched James May destroy a campsite. I've stabbed myself seven times.
- The boys walk into a local pub. A few seconds later, they walk straight back out again as Jeremy's voiceover says "Yyyyep...", implying that they were not allowed to bring Top Gear Dog in.
- "And then [Hammond] discovered Jeremy's secret weapon. Literally!"
Hammond: What the-?! (pulls the aforementioned rifle out of an overhead compartment)
Clarkson: Ah, yes. I brought that.
Hammond: That's an AK-47.
Clarkson: I know, I thought I might need it.
Hammond: Why?
Clarkson: A weekend, in... a box, with James May, and I thought "What am I gonna need?".
Hammond: ...you're not a practical man, are you?
Series 8 Episode 1, where they introduce the new Reasonably Priced Car by holding a (comically small) garden party for several stars to turn up and record lap times. The only problem is, the first one is James Hewitt and neither Clarkson nor Hammond know who he is - they end up putting him on the board as "Well-Spoken Man".
- Jimmy Carr. He is Drives Like Crazy incarnate and "O Fortuna" is playing whenever he's shown on camera.
The whole of the amphibious cars challenge is pure comedy gold, but of note is the point when Jeremy needed to remove a component from the front of his car to make way for a hull. Unfortunately, the car he chose was a Toyota Hilux. Cue Jeremy hitting the front of the car repeatedly with a sledgehammer before trying to cut through the bar. Hilarity, of course, ensued.
- Later, while trying to drive across a reservoir, Richard broke the propulsion system on his "Damper Van". Of course, it began to sink, prompting this exchange when Jeremy pulled up alongside:
  Clarkson: Hammond! How much?
  Hammond: For what?
  Clarkson: A lift.
  Hammond: I'll give you a million quid, or this bucket!
  Clarkson: What do we think, viewers?
- Then when Hammond climbed aboard the "Toybota" and began bailing the water out of it, we got this:
  Hammond: I've come up with a problem.
  Clarkson: What?
  [Hammond holds up aforementioned bucket, which has several holes in it]
  Clarkson: You-! Have- You owe me a million pounds!
- When Jeremy and Richard reach the other side of the reservoir, Jeremy makes an epic mess of turning the Toybota. Then James arrives.
  May: Is that your car?
  Clarkson: Yes.
  May: It's the wrong way up.
  Clarkson: Don't give me technicalities.
- Finally, the kicker: the revelation that the challenge broke Jeremy's Hilux.
  Hammond: You have broken the indestructible!
In episode 1 the boys attempt to make a mini-van/people carrier with a convertible roof. Highlights include:
- Richard repeatedly shooting sparks at James while attempting to cut off the roof.
- Jeremy trying to sew the canvas roof together and accidentally sewing the sleeve of his jacket to the machine.
- James bending the support strut the wrong way, prompting this line:
  Clarkson: Top Gear. Ambitious, but rubbish!
- Jeremy cracking right the hell up when they try to put the roof down.
- Attempting to drive their convertible van through a wildlife park. James keeps insisting the monkeys are more dangerous than the lions. He's right.
- Right after the wildlife park, they attempt to drive their convertible through a car wash. They end up setting it on fire.
As the last segment in Episode 2, they attempt to host a local radio show. Suffice it to say, it doesn't go well, with Jeremy reporting the travel news by bossing it around and James annoying the sports reporter. The immense backlash from listeners eventually forces them to bail out early.
- A couple of YouTube users have actually found and uploaded the full radio program from this episode; while the actual show went much better than the TV depiction made it out to, everything seen in the TV segment actually did happen, right down to Richard being in the bathroom after a song ends and the very cross Mrs. Smith calling in just to complain that the show is rubbish. The actual program includes such highlights as Jeremy arguing with a Liberal Democrat MP about carbon emissions, the boys' riotous laughter at hearing Richard's poorly made jingles for the first time, and James confidently (and grumpily) giving the news headlines after he's left alone in the booth.
In Episode 4, Jeremy subjects a Mercedes to the "Quaint My Ride" treatment, re-decorating the interior to look like a stereotypical English cottage (similar to his own house), complete with a miniature wingback chair as the back seat. As he is showing off his creation to the studio audience, Richard and James make their way to the front to offer their own take...
Richard: ... yes, well, to find out if his creation worked, we thought we'd take it out for a little test drive. [James has a put-upon "You can see where this is going, can't you?" expression]
- For the test drive, on a typically drizzly English afternoon, Richard takes the driver's seat. The second he hits the accelerator, he and James are launched backwards, as the seats aren't attached to the floor. James has to move to the wingback chair to hold Richard in place in the driver's seat.
  James: [recovering from the surprise of being thrown backwards] Yes, that's a design flaw...
- By putting in a concrete floor as a base for wooden floorboards and flagstones, Jeremy has added a lot of weight to the car, so Richard and James decide to see how long it takes to go from 0 to 60. The answer: 35.4 seconds, more than three times as long as the unmodified version. Highlights include Richard's bored look as the car takes nearly 20 seconds just to get to 43 mph, the chimney Jeremy installed over the fireplace where the boot used to be breaking off from the gravitational force, and the even scarier journey from 60 back to 0.
  James: This is the fastest Anne Hathaway's cottage has ever been!
- A survey of the car's electrical system reveals that not only do the mock Tudor lattices Jeremy added to the windows prevent them from opening properly, but the concrete floor has severed the wire for the brake lights, meaning the car would fail its MOT for that reason alone.
- They decide to finish by "turning on the heater" (lighting the fireplace, which fills the whole car with smoke) and doing a lap of the test track. Each time they go round a bend, they are thrown against the side of the car; inevitably, Hammerhead proves the biggest challenge, as Richard and his seat are launched backwards and across the car, cutting his scalp and leaving him seeing double.
  [as Richard brakes at the end of the lap, we hear the sound of both presenters and assorted odds and ends crashing against the front of the car]
  Richard: D'you know what? This is rubbish.
  James: Terrible.
- While going around Hammerhead, Richard slides around.
  James: Regain control of the cottage!
- True to form, Jeremy rebuffs his co-presenters' critiques:
  Jeremy: This is the safest car in the world.
  Richard: [points to his scalp] I've got a scar!
  James: I've got bruised ribs and a very badly barked shin.
  Jeremy: Listen! You see these endless crash test footage of cars being thumped into concrete blocks and the concrete blocks are never damaged. This is a concrete block!
  James: I would very happily drive this into a concrete block. Turning around on some corners was really dangerous!
  Richard: And another thing! Why did you polish the wooden floor? I was all whoa... [imitates sliding around uncontrollably]
  Jeremy: Look! The brilliance of this car is that you're never going fast enough to properly hurt yourself!
  Richard: [unconvinced] You're never going fast enough to get where you're going!
  James: Yeah, 0 to 60 in, what was it, 45 seconds!?
  Jeremy: How safe is that?
  Richard: Have you ever been in a dining room going 60 miles an hour?!
  James: Do you want me to show what it feels like to be hit in the back of the head with a wingback chair?
  Jeremy: Look, the problem is taste, okay? [to Richard] If we built a car to look like the inside of your house, it'd have a horse in it. [to James] And you, your house is just filled with pictures of the Queen!
The kit car race, in which Clarkson, Hammond and May attempt to build a Caterham Seven kit car from scratch at the Knockhill Racing Circuit up in Fife, Scotland, before the Stig could reach the circuit from his start point at the Caterham factory in Surrey.
- James being his usual self, listing off the parts on the instruction manual, leading to:
  Clarkson: JAMES, DOES IT NEED A WASHER, YES OR NO!?
- Jeremy despairing over building a kit car.
  Hammond: Think of the fun of assembling....
  Clarkson: It's not fun to do this! Your wife leaves you, she's in bed with a milkman and and you're like, "Ooh, where's my front suspension unit"?
- Jeremy's way of how to build a car? An hammer. He even uses it to attach the steering wheel.
  - And of course, the moment in which Jeremy "puts down his hammer and picks up a spanner", which leads to him putting a car seat the wrong way round.
- Bored bored bored bored bored....
- The trio win, but wonder what has happened to the Stig, due to being quite close to winning. It turned out that he was pulled over by the police, who ask him if the car belongs to him, where's he going to and where's he's come from and if the car's stolen (in quite pronounced Scottish accents!). The Stig just sits there, looking at them in his usual manner, leading to Jeremy to remark that the Stig "reserved the right to remain silent" as the Stig is put in the back of the police car.

Series 9

Hammond's return to the show after his life-threatening accident: Awesome. Getting a bearhug from Clarkson on stage: Heartwarming. Negotiating a jetway flanked by showgirls to the tune of "Upside Down": Priceless.
Stolen directly from the quotes page, from Episode 1, after viewing the footage shot of Hammond's successful runs in the Vampire dragster:
Hammond: We weren't trying to set records, I just wanted to go really, really fast.
Clarkson: So you did 314 [mph]?
Hammond: Yeah.
Clarkson: And you wanted to know what it was like to go really fast?
Hammond: Yeah.
Clarkson: So you'd found out. Why didn't you just get into your car and go home?
[Hammond looks sheepish.]
Hammond: I don't know really. The thing is, that run that you just saw, that was at 5 o'clock, and we had the runway until 5:30, and...
[general laughter.]
In the episode's "Roadworks in 24 hours" challenge, in which the trio try to resurface a stretch of the D5481 [sic] near Bidford-on-Avon, Jeremy decides to motivate everybody by providing "inspirational speeches" through a megaphone. Needless to say, it annoys everyone present. When Jeremy tries his own take on President Whitmore's Independence Day speech, James simply just grabs the megaphone and throws it under a steamroller.
The scene in the tractor episode where Richard Hammond is trying to round up a field of sheep.
- From the same episode...
  Clarkson [chasing James May with a pitchfork] MAY! You're gonna die! I'm gonna feed you into your own machine!
- And the reason Clarkson threatened to kill May? May dumped 25 acres of rapeseeds (canola seeds, for all you Americans out there) into an area of about 25 inches.
- The "Starship Enterplough" crack from Clarkson about Hammond's machine.
- Also from this episode: everything involving Clarkson and Kirstin Scott Thomas. The news segment in which May and Hammond taunt Clarkson constantly, the lead up to the interview, and the interview itself are all priceless, if only for all the shots taken at Jeremy's expense.
Hammond: *After Kristin proceeds to inadvertently take apart all of Jeremy's cool car choices* Four years of your cool wall, destroyed! *audience bursts in laughter*
In Episode 4, Clarkson and Hammond get into another round of their long-standing disagreement about the Porsche 911 (Hammond loves the 911, while Clarkson, despite having just completed a glowing review of the 911 Turbo, doesn't like them as a matter of principle). May cuts them both off, tells them to take their argument to the pub, and tries to segue into the news, only to be derailed by the others continuing to bicker about the 911. May snaps at them to shut up, announces the news, and promptly drops into a Face Palm when he sees that the first topic that week is ... the Porsche 911.
May introducing a news item about why police officers in North Yorkshire say they can't enforce a booster seat law throws first him, then everyone, into hysterics.
May: People under 4'5" have to use a booster seat in the car. But in North Yorkshire, the police say they cannot enforce that law, d'you know why? Because they do not have the...(snickering) They do not have the legal - (breaks down laughing)
Clarkson: (laughing) I can't wait for this now. The legal...?
May: Because they do not have the legal right to...m-measure children!
The expressions of Richard Hammond and James May during the successful launch of a Reliant Robin they had turned into a Space Shuttle... followed shortly by their expressions when the failure of an explosive bolt led to the creation of a large crater in the English countryside.
May: That's why—
Hammond: How are you gonna use it again?!
Everything about the series nine episode where they go to Scotland, play golf (and get thrown off the course), and try to convince some modern art critics why their cars should be considered works of art.
- James calls Richard's Mazda "chintzy" and looks like a golfer's car, so Richard gets his golf bag and dumps all of his clubs out.
  May: Now that's just childish! And doesn't solve the argument!
- At the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh:
  Clarkson: Richard, you went to art college, you should be good at this!
  Hammond: If you've ever been to art college, you would know that what you do there is drink and pursue women!
There's a very good reason why you shouldn't put a motorcycle on the Cool Wall.
The limousine challenge has several highlights.
- Hammond's "sports limo", a stretched MG F that is a convertible. When testing out, Jeremy finds the back seats to be cold and Hammond pops up the convertible roof, only to find that it catches the breeze to such an extent that it folds right back down. Another funny bit was that Hammond has sports equipment, namely ten-pin bowling and bow and arrows with target board. The length of the limo was such that Hammond managed to successfully do a bit of bowling while on the move. And when using the bow and arrow, Jeremy ends up hitting James' head. But when they learn that the next challenge is to see how well the limos could be used to make a getaway in case of assassination attempts, Jeremy and James are in hysterics when they learn that the "assassins" are armed with paintball guns and that they will be judged by how many hits will they achieve on the car before they complete a J-turn and get away, which isn't quite so good for Hammond in his convertible. When it comes to the challenge, Richard puts on a paintball mask to protect him. But during the J-turn, he ends up getting a paintball to the back of his head. And later, during the Evasive Driving Test Part 2, in which they have to avoid a water cannon and a set of spike strips, Hammond gets soaked.
- Jeremy's limo, which is a Fiat Panda that has been ''absurdly'' stretched ("It's a giant Panda!"), longer than a London bus. Due to retaining the Panda's original two doors at the front, Jeremy configured a The Great Escape-tunnel-style cart just to get to the back seats, which James remarks is "an ingenious solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place". Oh, and the Panda's length meant that while manoeuvring on the Top Gear test track (which is 165 feet wide), it's turning is so atrocious that it ends up on the grass and run over a runway light. And when trying out "a speedier way" of using the car, Jeremy sits on the cart whilst the Panda is in motion and Hammond breaks, causing Jeremy to rocket down the length and get carpet-burn. During the J-turn in the evasive challenge, the Panda is so slow and sluggish that Richard and James (playing the part of the "assassins") manage to achieve a lot of hits without much effort. During the Evasive Driving Test Part 2, the Panda's attempt to manoeuvre between "civilian" cars that he must not hit results in it ending up in the grass, with it's engine smoking. But once it was out and got going again, Jeremy hits the spike strip and the Panda's engine dies out. For some reason or another, Jeremy gets out of the car, only to get himself sprayed by the water cannon.
- May's unconventional limo consists of the fronts of two cars - a 1994 Saab 9000 and a 1996 Alfa Romeo 164 - welded together, which becomes known as "the Alfaab". When testing it out, Hammond unlocks the steering from the Alfa despite May's protests, causing the limo to start steering erratically. In an attempt to regain control, Hammond tries to use the steering wheel, only to find that it falls off. Later, during the evasive challenge, May attempts to move from one end of the car (the Saab end) to the other (the Alfa end) to avoid having to do a J-turn and gets shot in the nads by the other two with paintballs for his trouble. Oh and, the wheel in the Alfa end falls off again, leaving the Alfaab veering off into the grass.
- Later the challenge for the three is to take a celebrity in their limos to the BRIT Awards. And hilarity ensures:
  - Hammond takes Jamila in his sports limo, who ends up to be quite embarrassing as she draws quite a lot of attention.
  - The length of Jeremy's Panda comes back to bite him as the limo as he originally designed it was not road legal, and so he had to shorten it a few feet and weld the two halves back together. Even when shortened, the Panda still causes mayhem trying to navigate London. Then it breaks in half, which forces Chris Moyles to sit in the front of Jeremy's limo. Even funnier is that because the limo no longer has back wheels, it throws up sparks everywhere it goes!
  - May gets lost on the way to Earl's Court for the BRIT Awards and causes his passenger, Lemar, to go off on an epic tirade. It's unclear just how staged the whole thing is, and James looks visibly uncomfortable, which just makes it funnier.
  May: Strictly speaking, it's left, but I think if we go right, I can go round the back...
  Lemar: What d'you mean, "right"? Right? Why? You've just said go left, right? So why don't we just follow what most people do?
  May: Because I think if we go right-
  Lemar: Are you doing this intentionally, now? This is just stupid. Are you a jerk? [May cuts in with "No..."] Have you come to mess up my day? You've picked me up, you've driven me around and round in circles in London, we've been past Harrods eleven hundred times now! Left, you're intending to go right! I'm not taking this any more! Open this damn door, for crying out loud! I've had it! FORGET IT! [he walks away in a huff]
  May: [Stunned Silence]

Series 10

The introduction to their search for the greatest driving road in the world, in which Clarkson systematically insults just about every region of the world while Hammond increasingly frantically attempts to stop him.
Clarkson: Now it can't be there 'cause they're all doing five, can't be there 'cause they're all on drugs, that's just full of ox, Al Gore says that's gone so it's not likely to be down there, that's just full of spiders...
Hammond: (warningly) Jeremy...
Clarkson: (continuing) -signs here are full of gibberish, they're all communists, can't go there 'cause the Americans will shoot you—
Hammond: (abruptly) Thank you, Jeremy!
The feature itself is no shortage of laughs, particularly from James May. To start, while Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson picked more conventional choices for supercars for the excursion (a Porche 911 GT 3 RS and the Lamborghini Guirado Superleggera respectively) James' choice was an Aston Martin V8 Vantage N24... that had been stripped down for track racing. It had nothing in the way of comforts including air conditioning or even functioning windows (by the Balearic Sea, during summer), requires 5 minutes to start up, and no padded seats or seat suspension. Before they even got halfway through their first road choice James was complaining about how bad it was of a ride and by the end of it he was buck naked in the car, poring water on himself to keep cool. After the feature and discussing the car choices, Jeremy and Richard were generally pleased with their choices apart from price. James just had one word regarding his car: "NO!"
And, of course, the introduction to the review of the Lamborghini Reventon - a perfect Delayed Reaction from Richard Hammond.
- And don't miss the lead-in: May presenting alternate uses for tampons, Hamster getting Squicked out, and illegal use of kryptonite by Jeremy Clarkson.
Crossing the English Channel. More specifically, trying to get out of the harbor into the English Channel.
Hammond: I can just see sky, sea, sky, [gets pitched violently forwards] SEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
During the race across London: Jeremy Clarkson calls the Stig to check on his progress. When it rings, Stig stares at his ringing phone like it's a bomb about to go off. The fact his ringtone is the Coronation Street theme makes it doubly funny. The episode also "reveals" that The Stig sees every vehicle as a car, and is confused by most mundane actions such as reading the newspaper.
- Stig gets another laugh when he figures out how to read the paper, only to throw it away in disgust when he stumbles upon an article praising F1 driver Lewis Hamilton.
- The Stig takes public transportation, complete with odd looks from fellow passengers.
- From the same episode, Hammond riding a bicycle. Most of his shots consist of him cursing and yelling at the other drivers, yet he still manages to win. And when we see Clarkson pull up to the airport in a boat on the Thames, dock it, rush inside (assuming he's won)...only to find Hammond sitting there waiting for him.
- Then there's the in-studio coda to the race. How does the world's top-rated motoring show reconcile itself to the car coming in stone dead last? Simple: Blatant Lies.
  Hammond: If I remember rightly, when I got there, James, you were already there and had been for ages.
  Clarkson: He was! And do you know something else as well? I distinctly remember my boat blew up and I was killed!
  May: I'm sure I remember cruising straight past Hammond with his head stuck in some railings.
  Clarkson: And do you know what? London doesn't actually have a river, so I couldn't have used a boat!
The motorhome race. In which Richard races a motorhome against a whole wide variety of motorhomes, being driven by "touring car stars" and ("we've got desperate") James.
- As part of the "rules" of motorhome racing, the motorhome must be prepared for the race "before sundown", leaving the choice of stripping out and enduring a bad night's sleep or leaving the luxuries on board to face with the added weight for the race. With the drivers opting for the "strip out and have a bad night" option, the scene cuts to the only person who didn't:
  James: [As he cooks a pie] Gravy juice, Pan, Warm. Peas, Carrots, Add.
- Like the Historic People Carrier Racing, Motorhome Racing has a "no contact" restriction. But as Richard notes, the other racers were touring car drivers. And hence, carnage ensures.
- In the midst of it, after getting alongside another racer, James May is battering the other racer's vehicle with a frying pan!
- James May managing to get lost on an oval. Hell, just about everything involving May in that episode, such as his casually point out the door of a refridgerator unit on the track, noting that that doesn't happen at Silverstone.
- The flag marshall having to dive for cover, as one of the motorhomes crosses the line going sideways.
Absolutely everything in the challenge where they had to prove that not everything British Leyland made was crap. "Still, I'd only lost one thing." ^note Clarkson's door had fallen off.
- "Two things."
- Hammond's car disintegrating around him during said part of the challenge.
- When they use the noises of the various broken bits of the cars to play music.
- James May gets lost. On a race track.
- Clarkson attempt to park on a hill. And manages to cheat and says that he did it, but nobody saw him (due to the smokescreen generated by his failure). Or as the "Big Book Of Top Gear" puts it:
  James: Pass, Jeremy, Pass (Apparently) Richard: Fail.
- Talking about unusual claims on insurance forms.
- The Rover SDI's door opens. Well, the outer part does anyway.
- One challenge involves filling the interiors of the cars with water and driving until the water level inside the car drops below the steering wheel. Hammond manages half a lap of the test track while May managed to lap Hammond. As for Clarkson? Well, first his car leaked so much that they drained the tanker trucks trying to fill a car that wouldn't fill. Then, after they got so fed up and sent him on his way, Clarkson got a short distance (at the most) down the track before one of the rear door fell off and the whole load of water drained out. And it wasn't even the same rear door he'd lost in an earlier challenge. (In other words, through the course of the challenges, the Rover lost both rear doors.)
James Blunt's good-humoured appearance:
Blunt: I own a motorbike after that.
Clarkson: I didn't know you were homosexual!
Blunt: Most of my songs are about you.
David Tennant's lap around the studio track, which basically consisted of him repeatedly feeling for third gear. He left it all over the track.
- Also from Tennant's lap:
  Tennant: SPEED UP!
Pipe smoking fail!. "Thaff noth gong hwell."
Simon Cowell burns Jeremy Clarkson on why the latter can't host The X Factor.
- Immediately after which, however, Clarkson gets Cowell to admit the real reason:
  Cowell: Yeah, the other reason is you'd be funnier than me!
- During Cowell's lap, there is a moment where he seems to respond to Clarkson's commentary. Almost like The Tape Knew You Would Say That.
In the news segment in Episode 6, the conversation leads to the suggestion that all animals be removed from the countryside and put into the cities, followed by a discussion about the price of bull sperm. It really has to be seen to be believed.
The BMW car converted for racing in Silverstone was decorated with the fake sponsors "Larsen's Biscuits" and "Penistone Oils"; when the doors were opened these respectively displayed "Arse Biscuit" and "Penis". On top of this, James May has the LGBT flag next to his name instead of the British flag.
The Cockometer.
Their discussion of how a Bugatti Veyron should be delivered.
Hammond: Imagine, if you will, that you've bought a Bugatti Veyron. It's a big investment, you'd be very excited about the day it was going to going to be arrived, so you'd imagine such a thing would be delivered, you know, like on a golden carriage on a bed of swan's feathers, it's a special moment.
Clarkson: I'd want mine borne aloft by 16 greased, naked eunuchs. That's what I'd want.
In Episode 10, Hammond goes to an airfield "near Swindon", to see if the G-Wiz would be better if it were a remote controlled car. During one of his tests, he does "a simple drag race" against "an everyday normal car" (which turns out to be a Ford Mustang), and the distance between it and the standard G-Wiz is quite hilarious.
- Then after Hammond mods the G-Wiz into the remote control car and makes it perform well in the next drag race, he then tests it's handling on a circuit against a standard RC car, with him driving the RC car, while the Stig ("Someone who has never sat on Santa's knee" and "someone who's never watched Moonraker on Boxing Day") controls the G-Wiz. What comes next? The Stig simply runs his RC car over just as they're starting the race. And while Hammond does have a back-up car, Stig tries to get the G-Wiz to turn around corners, only to crash into barriers. Then, Hammond closes in. Aware that the Stig would just squash his car again, Hammond gleefully deploys "a special load": an explosive that blows up the G-Wiz. The Stig can do nothing more than just stare off in silence.
During the news segment of Episode 10, the presenters discuss car-related Christmas gifts. At one point, Hammond unwraps a box containing a bobblehead of Yutaka Katayama, the former president of Nissan USA.
Clarkson: You are joking.
Hammond: His head wobbles, look!
Clarkson: I don't care!
- Clarkson then rips the bobblehead's head off, leading to this exchange:
  Hammond: You've just pulled the wobbly head off the former president of Nissan USA!
  Clarkson: Nobody's ever said that before.
  Hammond: No, I don't suppose they have.

Series 11

Top Gear did a challenge on alternative police cars:
- High points included the sirens (James May's ice cream truck, at one point playing the Monty Python's Flying Circus theme); the effects of Clarkson's Boadicea wheels on handling (Hammond: "I'm hearing a lot of noise but not a lot of movement; it's very much like Jeremy, that car"); James May in a hot pursuit situation (Clarkson: "How long have you got until you have to go home tonight?"), and then everyone's car-stopping techniques backfiring spectacularly:
  Clarkson [narrating]: Sadly, there was one invention James hadn't considered. [The Stig turns on the wipers to remove May's layer of paint]
  ...
  [Hammond's doormat-and-nail construction fails to stop, or for that matter reach, the Stig's BMW]
  James May: Oh no, he's driven round it! [cracks up]
  ...
  Hammond: [watching the Boadiceas in action] I presume at some point there's going to be a simply hideous accident.
  [Clarkson's wheel comes off]
  Clarkson: Something's gone wrong with the handling!
- The motto on the side of Clarkson's car was "In jail, no one can hear you scream."
Episode 3, during their trip to the local Concours event in second-hand Alfa Romeos:
Clarkson: I have been rescued [Referring to the two women with him] and I haven't even broken down.
Hammond: Well then you don't—
[Cut into James, who just arrived]
May: Hello.
- Also, when they take their cars to the track and compete with vastly superior performance cars. Then Richard and James suffer mechanical failure and spend the rest of the track day in the pits. Jeremy tries to pass another car, then discovers he's going into the turn too quickly. Cut back to Richard and James.
  Richard: You know, I wonder how Jeremy's doing.
  James: Go on, ask him.
  Richard takes out his radio.
  Richard: Jeremy, how are you doing out there?
  Jeremy: Not brilliantly.
  Cut to Jeremy's car lying on its side.
Episode 5, the Old Car Challenges:
- When Jeremy tries to show off the curtains for the passengers in the back seat.
  May: Curtains?
  Clarkson: Curtains!
  May: No, they go in caravans.
  [Clarkson turns angrily towards May]
- James May's response when Jeremy Clarkson showed his automatic boot lid. One of the finest moments of Deadpan Snarkery in history.
- Later, they race their cars... by pushing them.
  [Clarkson and May attempt to push their cars, with no success]
  Title Card: several days later
  [Clarkson and May are still pushing, and the cars have just begun to move]
- In a comparison of running costs.
  Clarkson: Read it and weep. That’s the last service bill.
  May: Eh? (Clarkson starts smiling in anticipation of his reaction)
  May: Fifty-*laughs*. I misread that at first - fifteen thousand-
  Clarkson: Yeah and-
  May: Nine hundred and fifteen pounds and fifty-nine pence.
  Clarkson: Yes, fifteen thousand nine hundred pounds for a service.
  May: Is that-
  Clarkson: There was a quite a lot need doing if I’m honest.
  May: What did they do? Buy you a [Volkswagen] Golf? *laughs*
- Clarkson spends most of the challenge claiming that his horn is incredibly loud. When May causes a bunch of other drivers to start honking their horns at him, Clarkson finally proves that he wasn't kidding. It gets them kicked out of the parking garage and can be heard from across the city.
- The Long List of famous people who owned either a Rolls Royce Corniche or a Mercedes-Benz 600 Grosser.
  Jeremy: There is only one way we can settle this. I have here a list of famous people who, in the past, have owned a Ford Zephyr with a chrome nose. Elton John, Liberace, Dick Emery - remember [in a campy style] "ooh, you are awful but I like you" - and James May. What do they all have in common? Um...
  James: What you're trying to say is that because I've got a Corniche, I must, by association, have a wardrobe full of spangly jumpsuits. Is that it?
  Jeremy: That's it! Yes! Yes! Spangly jumpsuit-man!
  James: Right, okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Let's have a look at The Big's, uh, famous former owners. They are...
  Richard: [off-screen] Is Max Mosley on that list?
  James: No. It's worse, it's worse. Look, Amin, Brezhnev, Ceaușescu, Tito, Hoxha, Hussein, Castro, Klerk, Hirohito, Pot, Tung and Elvis Presley.
  Jeremy: An impressive list.
  James: It is an impressive list. But if your theory is correct, that means you're either gonna murder millions of people or you're gonna die on the bog trying to get 500 cheeseburgers out of your poo-chute.
  Jeremy: So really, it comes down to a simple choice. Camp...
  James: Or kamp kommandant.
  Jeremy: Exactly!
Then there was their competition against German motoring show D Motor, set in Belgium. It began with the Top Gear presenters arriving in Spitfires, followed by double-decker car racing, a drag race between cars representing the nations of the Axis and the Allies (in which Clarkson cracks a joke about hoping the Italian Lamborghini switches sides in mid-race), copious amounts of cheating and an apparent last-minute switch from James "Captain Slow" May to The Stig for one of the races. Add in a few more references to the Second World War and The Battle of Britain^note the 1969 film as well as the 1940 World War II battle than you'd think would be allowed on The BBC and you have one of the funniest episodes of the series.
- The car list for the drag race consists as follows: For the Axis side, the Porsche 9FF representing Germany, the Lamborghini Murciealago LP-640 representing Italy, and the Mitsubishi Evo 10 representing Japan. For the allies, the Ariel Atom for Britain, the Chevrolet Corvette C6 for America....and a dinky little car ^note the REVAi from India because they couldn't find any good performance cars from other allied countries. ^note They could have chosen the Dutch Spyker C8.
  - James, driving the Indian car, places dead last, finishing after the others had already parked their cars and got out.
- Jeremy explaining how the Double Decker car challenge worked.
  You need eight people to operate the four cars. Each team is allowed to get someone from the film crew to help out, and that's a problem for the Germans because while they have a cameraman, a sound recorder and a director, he is the same man. So their coverage of the race is going to look like this. [static] Mind you, it's not that brilliant for us. Although we have a very large film crew, there was only one volunteer to sit above me, and if I'm honest, it's not the one I would have picked. [Kiff the One-Armed Soundman] Still, he is very brave. He once fought a shark. He lost, but anyway.
  - Kiff runs into a bit of trouble while steering Jeremy's car.
    "My arm's come off! My arm's come off!"
Clarkson's bizarre comment at a pretty young American woman in the audience:
Clarkson: You're American!?
Girl: ... Oh...
Clarkson: [looks her up and down for a moment] You can't be, you're nowhere near fat enough!
The whole Running Gag about the Dacia Sandero.
- Special mention goes to the one where James goes to introduce the news as usual, only for Jeremy to shout "WHAT?" in an unexpectedly enthusiastic way. Cue James, then Jeremy, and then everyone else Corpsing.
- Another special mention goes to this line:
  James: Bad news!
  Clarkson: What?
  James: The Dacia Sandero... it's delayed.
  Clarkson: Oh no! Anyway...
I went on the Internet, and I found this...
Clarkson uses a Bill Oddie face cutout to confuse Japanese speed cameras^note, and then uses it to amuse the petrol pump attendant.

Series 12

Who could forget the Lorry challenge? Far too many funny moments to list.
- At the start of that episode, well...
  Tonight, James races a man in wellies, Richard crashes some motorhomes, and I close down Manchester Airport.
- Their first task, after purchasing their lorries, is to "personalise" their vehicles in whatever way they see fit. Richard adds an American-style "bonnet" to his, which is obviously a dog house bolted to the front. James goes for an "Indian look", covering his in multicoloured flowers and swags of material. Jeremy turns his lorry into "Stealth Mode" by painting the whole thing black...including most of the windshield. This immediately backfires as he can't see where he's going, so he has to spend several minutes chipping paint off the glass so he can see properly.
- One of the challenges involves driving a course with a lot of twisty hills while towing a trailer filled with "valuables". James has a large wedding cake, Richard has a car that hasn't been fastened down and Jeremy has a large pile of hay and an electric heater that's plugged in. Partway through the course Richard's car falls out of the trailer and he completely fails to notice. It isn't until James opens the trailer to check for him that he finds out it's missing.
  Richard: (looking into the empty trailer) ...is that bad for my points?
  James: Yeah, but more to the point: where is it?
  Richard: (sheepishly) I don't know!
- Jeremy then shows up last with his trailer engulfed in flame. Richard and James yell about how his trailer is on fire, but Jeremy would rather discuss how the others did.
  Jeremy: So anyway, how's your car?
  James: Car's interesting.
  Richard: (simultaneously) Stolen! That's what it is, I've just thought of it now, stolen. The damndest thing!
- Then there was the hilarious (and rather painful) moment Clarkson tried a bit too hard to power slide his truck and subsequently fell off the chair while trying to cling to the wheel, his backside ended up going right onto the gear stick.
  Medical Staff: Have you doing something to your leg as well?
  Jeremy: Yeah, the gear lever's gone up my arse.
  Medical Staff: Right, okay.
  James: [speaking nonchalantly in a cutaway] After the gear lever had been removed from Jeremy's bottom, we moved on to the next challenge.
This is the Series that gave the world Clarkson's two hilariously infamous V8 engine powered appliances:
- First off, The V8 Meat Blender.
  - May, who looked genuinely intrigued by the whole thing, is the first to take a swig, the look on his face is... well... priceless.
    May: [after a good few seconds of struggling with the "drink" and having his face make some spectacular expressions] ...I've got the name for it: the Bloody Awful!
  - Clarkson then makes sure Richard takes a sip...
    Clarkson: That will put testes on your chest!
    Richard: ...It's put hairs on my eyeballs!
  - Arguably though, the best bit was the wrap up having Clarkson coming to terms with his creation after the taste tests:
    Clarkson:...I'm not sure this works! [laughs]
- Then came The V8 rocking chair later in the series. When Clarkson fires it up, the shop mannequin being used as a test subject falls apart, followed by the chair itself, in less than five seconds. Clarkson declares the test a failure...because the engine noise would make it impossible for the person in the chair to hear the television. The best part of this one is probably seeing Jeremy and Richard struggling not to corpse in the immediate aftermath.
  Clarkson: The noise is so great, you'd never hear television, would you?
  Richard: There is that, and the fact that the old lady has disintegrated.
Top Gear brings a Morris Marina out to the track.
- Later in Series 13, James May is forced to drive a Morris Marina in the Ice Race challenge, which actually beats Hammond and Clarkson's cars..... only for another piano to randomly drop on it.
- In Series 14, Hammond "[drove] at the same time on the same track" a Marina against Clarkson in a Lancia. Given their poor history of Marinas and pianos, they gave him one which had already had a piano dropped on it. You'll never guess what happened when it conveniently "broke down", and Hammond got out for a minute to find a toolkit...
Jeremy tests a Ford Fiesta old-school style...and then he just gets silly. He drives it through a mall, and then during a beach assault. Made of Win, that.
- "I am now breaking the speed limit, INDOORS!"
- Even funnier with the Beach assault. Especially when the Royal Marines beach, to the soundtrack of the 1812 Overture, complete with explosions filled in where the original piece was supposed to have cannons. It provides such gems as :
  Jeremy Clarkson: The kids are being annoying, shoot them.
  Jeremy Clarkson: Ah look at that! [points downward.] The smoke grenades fit perfectly in the cupholders!
- "Is it green?" "Yes. Very." Over a shot of a green Ford Fiesta.
The entirely factual and not in the least bit entertaining American super-cars segment.
- James May being so disgusted with his muscle car (it grows on him later) that he tries to win a motorbike in a Reno casino to ride instead...while American bystanders ask him if he's from Australia. (It's something of a memetic Running Gag among Britons that Americans will always assume any British accent other than an old-fashioned BBC English one is Australian instead).
- Partway into the episode, "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers comes onto the radio...better known to fans of the show as the opening theme.
  James [points at radio]: I wasn't expecting that!
  Jeremy [in his best announcer voice]: On tonight's program... [laughs]
Jeremy Clarkson's interview with Will Young. Particularly when...
- ...they got completely off topic and started talking about home decorating.
  Clarkson: Maybe we should start a program.
  Young: "Jeremy and Will Do up Surrey Houses", eh?
  Clarkson: Oh, I'd love to do up Surrey houses.
  Young: Us fighting over shagpile carpet. I can see it.
  Clarkson: I don't like shagpile.
  Young [a little too quickly]: Neither do I.
  [awkward pause while audience laughs]
- And then just kept going.
  Clarkson: Have you ever been to the Chelsea Flower Show?
  Young: I — [laughs, embarrassed] — I have, actually!
  Clarkson: See, I went to the Chelsea Flower Show to get a water feature — [aside, to the audience] I'm sorry, talk among yourselves — and they are pathetic! Useless water features!
- And then, after they finally got back to the subject of cars (specifically, Young's lap), Clarkson is trying to decide how to mark the strip for the track condition:
  Clarkson: I'll put a D on it. Or an M. Which do you want: do you want a 'moist' or a 'damp'?
  [beat]
  [general laughter]
  Young [shaking his head]: We got to do that show, you know, it'll be brilliant.
- Add to that all the times Richard's teased Jeremy about it.
  Hammond: Jeremy's in love!
- To cap it off, the said segment won the 2008 Top Gear Award for "The Most Embarrassing Flirting on Television". Jezza was not amused, obviously, especially with Hammond continuously teasing him on about it.
(To the audience, after the said award)
Jeremy: Who here would like to see Richard Hammond strangled on television?
The expressions on poor Mika Häkkinen's face when James May drove him around Finland.
Episode 1: Clarkson reviews the Porsche GT2. Normally these segments are seven to ten minutes long. Here is a full transcript of this one:
Clarkson [driving]: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Clarkson [narrating]: — and that concludes my road test of the GT2. It's terrifying.
Also in the first episode, Clarkson made a joke about truck drivers killing prostitutes (an allusion to a serial killer recently in the news) and received quite a lot of complaints. So, naturally, in the news from the next episode:
Clarkson: Now, the time has come, I fear. Lots of complaints after last week's program — Internet kind of awash with hate, people demanding an apology — and I am only too happy to give one. I am very sorry that I didn't put the [Porsche] GT2's time on the board ...[general laughter]... really, I don't know what to say.
The Race to Blackpool, where the presenters have to drive all the way from Basel in Switzerland, whoever gets there first gets to turn on the Blackpool Illuminations but they have to ration their fuel to make sure they make it, and if none of them arrive then the Stig is on hand to do it in their place...
- James finds the other presenters have packed heavy items into the back of his car, including a lorry gearbox.
- Clarkson declares the whole thing impossible and gets a fuel-thirsty Jaguar with the intention of running out of fuel outside his front door in the Cotswolds. He not only reaches Blackpool but with petrol left in the tank!
- The Stig passes the time in Blackpool by visiting the Pleasure Beach amusement park, and falls asleep on Britain's biggest rollercoaster.
- After Clarkson and Hammond both make it, they argue about who should turn on the lights while in the background the Stig steps up and does it.
James and Jeremy exploring the rampant insanity that was the Soviet car manufacturing industry. Highlights include:
- A car whose driver's side door wouldn't close with a hole in the bottom for ice fishing.
- The drag race in which two of the cars lost against a dog.
- Getting a face full of dirt trying to emulate Erwin Rommel.
- The three-wheeled...thing with a body made of leather.^{If you wonder}
- ...and the GAZ Chaika luxury sedan:
  May [after attempting to push the button to change the gear]: It's disappeared into the bloody dashboard...
- The Polish FSO Polonez pickup truck and their attempts to put it through the same tests as the Toyota Hilux. The Polonez doesn't even survive being dropped from a crane.
  May: Maybe we try dropping it from a slightly lower height.
  Clarkson: It's a bit late now! Isn't it?
In the powerboat vs. Ferrari Daytona race to the Riviera, the revelation that the powerboat has a carbon fibre toilet leads to it being nicknamed "the HMS Carbon Khazi".
The complaints after they burned a Morris Marina (actually a rusted shell repainted and with candy glass instead of real windows and packing peanuts and flour to mimic an interior fire).
Clarkson and his cronies should be hung, drawn and quartered or is that to good for them. (Jeremy: Should be "too", T-double-O. Small point.) He doesn't deserve to be classed as British.
I'm going to write the BBC an email and I don't care if they don't read it. (Richard: Well, we did!)
If I see Jeremy Clarkson in the street, I will poo into my hand and throw it at him.
When Richard had to perform hosting duties.
Richard: Now it's time to see how it does on our track and for that, we must hand it over to our tame racing driver. Some say that one of his legs gets longer whenever he sees a pretty lady.
(Very long pause.)
Richard: And that I haven't done one of these in some time and I've forgotten to make up a second thing. All we know is he's called The Stig.
- Also, when we find out why Richard had to perform the hosting duties.
  James: And now the news and it's great news, ladies and gentlemen. It's news to warm the hearts of nations. Jeremy Clarkson has lost his voice!
- During the interview with Harry Enfield returning for another shot at the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment; Jeremy acknowledges and proceeds to demonstrate the proper delivery of one of his signature lines:
  Jeremy: That is the best car...
  (a long pause...)
  Jeremy: [turns to the audience] the pause is everything...
  (another long pause follows)
  Jeremy: ...in the world! [applause]
The "CLARKSON!" moment of episode 2: Clarkson has decided to do a test run of the Bonneville Salt Flats before the course opens in the guys' camper van! As it's early in the morning Hammond is still asleep in the bed at the back. As for May? He was using the bathroom.
May: Clarkson you infantile pillock, you're tidying that up.
The Running Gag form Series 11 about the Dacia Sandero gets continued but with a twist: Jeremy is the one enthusiastically introducing the news story about it and just about ready to jump out of his chair with the announcement while James just looks at him like he's lost his mind in doing so.

Series 13

During the 17-year-old's car challenge:
Clarkson: Guys! Problem! I've shoved my anarchy flag through my water lilo!
Hammond: Nobody's ''ever'' said that before!
- He also crashes into the summer house later.
- Oh, and turning on James May's stereo on the 'parking quietly' challenge. (James improved his car by giving it "a banging stereo for me tunes", Jeremy and Richard exploit this by changing the music, gluing up the control unit and "borrowing" the remote control.)
- Also during the 'parking quietly' challenge was the beginning of Jeremy's go "with the big, heavy Volvo."
  OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!
  - And with that outburst, he had already recorded a worse score than Hammond.
- Blink and you'll miss it, but when Hammond's talking about the premiums for girls being cheaper you can see Stig walk up behind him and put his head in the photocopier!
  - Also in the same category, James has a framed picture of the Queen on his desk. Hammond has a box of teeth whitener. Clarkson? He's got a picture of Will Young.
  - The whole segment is practically comprised of these. The Top Gear BBC office is apparently full of random clutter like stacks of gold bullion, bits of Dalek, all sorts of weird stuff is cluttered about.
- Also Richard Hammond says he hasn't had any car crashes in the last 5 years when asked by the insurance company. His guilty look to the camera is the thing that really sells it, though.
- When the man in the forklift starts overturning their cars, the look on Clarkson's face is priceless.
  May: This man is destroying your Volvo. Are you going to sort him out?
- In the studio:
Hammond: Can I just point out before we do move on, if you do decide to put yourself on your parents' insurance, and you have a crash, and the insurance company find out that it was really your car...
Clarkson: Which they will if it's got a body kit on it. Or even half a body kit.
Hammond: Alright, whatever. The point is, if the insurance company find out that it really was your car after all, they won't pay out. And then they can prosecute you, and then you might have to go to jail. And then one day you'll be in the showers and a big, strange man will come and-
Clarkson: [interrupting] Oookayy! Okay...
- Finally, when they are adding up the totals at the end and May needs 4 points from the judges to win.
  Clarkson: So if you've got four— The girls gave you four poi— they did, didn't they? They did. What did they give you?
  May [after holding out and looking smug for as long as he can]: Nothing.
Steam train v. car v. motorbike. Captain Slow triumphs!
May [to an exhausted, soot-covered Clarkson]: You have permission to say "Oh, cock."
The Return of the Cool Wall. After one short joke too many, Hammond brings out a scissor lift. Too bad it has an emergency stop button that's easily accessible from the ground...
- Upon reviewing the Lamborghini Murcielago SV, Clarkson makes an argument:
  Clarkson: Every time I see a man get out of [a Lamborghini], and it is invariably a man, I immediately think "That man is wearing a thong."
  Hammond: Sorry, is this just something you like to think about? I'm confused-
  Clarkson: Nobody with boxer shorts has ever bought a Lamborghini.
  Hammond: Oh, what?
  Clarkson: S**t, I bought a Lamborghini.
  Hammond: OH MY GOD! YOU IN A THONG!
13x01: The belated Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car lap: "MICHAEL SCHUMACHER IS LOST!"
The second Stephen Fry interview, where Fry shows off his new iPhone application, Grindr, to a mildly Squicked but quite amused Clarkson.
Clarkson: You can find the nearest cruising homosexual with one of those?
The news segment of Season 13 Episode 1.
Clarkson: If you had a pistol, you'd have shot yourself by now?
May: Oh, years ago.
Two words: Car Sauna — a game played by waiting for a hot, sunny day and getting into a car with the windows rolled up and the heater at maximum. The first person to exit the car loses. The lads played it, and Clarkson was the first to abandon ship when the internal temperature reached 62 degrees C (143 degrees F). If that's not funny enough, Hammond points out that because they're all sweating, they're breathing each other. Jeremy looks horrified, James looks disgusted, and Richard starts retching.
Jezza and Captain Slow attempting to make car commercials.
- The entire Volkswagen Scirocco TDi episode was absolutely brilliant, but the final ad absolutely takes the cake. Black Comedy at its best.
Jeremy Clarkson reading off Jay Leno's list of cars.
Clarkson: "How the hell do you decide what to go to work in in the morning?!"
- Jay Leno recounting a story of giving two strangers a ride in his McLaren F1 and finding out they were undercover police officers posing as gang members when he gets pulled over for speeding.
One episode had Hammond buy a 1953 London taxi. His car was falling apart on the way home and when they came back, he showed a piece of paper that showed everything that was wrong with the car. As Jeremy was saying "Oh, that's not so much..." Hammond releases the rest of the spool of paper to unroll, fall to the ground, and pool around his legs from about head height.
- Hammond specifically bought it because his grandfather worked at the Lanchester factory in The '50s. Every time something breaks or falls off, he says "Granddad didn't install that." At the end of the episode, Jeremy looks up the car and finds it was built in the other Lanchester factory, so his grandfather couldn't have built it.
- The whole segment is beautiful comedy. It was a classic car auction and they each had different reasons for the cars that they bought: Hammond bought his because it was the first one in the lot (ending up with the taxi that had a MOT list as long as he is tall), Clarkson bought his because it was convertible (ending up with an Austin Healey that he barely fits in and went over budget on) and May decided to hold off as long as he could (which ended up him getting a Pale blue Citreon that requires a hand crank to start that he had to take by default).
Michael MacIntyre's account of driving and Austin Princess in the "loser lane" and trying to overtake a Porsche. It made Clarkson laugh so hard he cried.
During the news segment on the new Jaguar XJ, the team veer off into talking trash about Jaguar owners.
May: Come on! Nobody gives a pig’s arse about all that diesel stuff. (Crowd Laughs) It’s the new XJ; the important question is “Is it a proper Jag?”
Clarkson: Now what you mean is “Is this car slightly caddish?” Is that what you actually mean?
May: (nods) Yes.
Clarkson: Is the person who drives it a bit... um, what’s the word? Im not quite sure how to sum it up, but it’s the sort of person who would go away for a weekend with his wife to a hotel, to some romantic place, and spends the entire night... flirting outrageusly with the waitress. And it’s okay because he’s got a “Jaaaaag.”
Hammond: That’s the Jag driver; he’d get away with anything! (mimics said driver) "I'm terribly sorry, I ran over your dog..." "Oh!!" "...in my Jaaaag." "Oh, well, never mind."
May: Is it fair to say? Do you think that no Jaaag driver is ever entirely trustworthy, but it's in a really nice, likable way?
Clarkson: Yes! If you would go to a prison, forget the sort of "stabbists", and you know the stranglers. The ones who are in there for a bit of Tax Dodging...
(Hammond laughs briefly)
May: Yeah.
Clarkson: I bet eighty percent have got “Jaaaaags.” (Crowd laughs) You know what I mean now?
(Turns to someone in the audience)
Clarkson: You got a Jag? Who here’s got a Jag? (Stands up then points at someone who responded) You got a Jag? Look at him!
(Audience laughs)
Hammond: Yup, he’s a Jag driver.
Clarkson: He goes away with a sort of girl for a weekend, and then goes... “Awfully sorry...”
Hammond: ... bit of an issue with the wallet.
Clarkson: “Would you mind awfully settling this while I go warm up the “Jaaaaag?”
"She's effectively saying You've given me the baby, now get in the back." The only thing keeping Clarkson from literally ROFLing was probably his back. The best part is that everybody's mind goes there at approximately the same time as Jeremy's and the audience cracks up again; meanwhile James realises what he said and shouts "NO!"
During the RWD challenge, the producers of the show set up the hosts' prized possessions - Jezza's drum kit, Richard's motorcycle, and James's piano - at the end of a drag strip and challenge the boys to accelerate up to 60 MPH and then brake before hitting them. Richard stops with plenty of clearance. Jezza brakes just in time to gently tap his drumkit with his front fender. Then James comes careening past and smashes into the piano, utterly destroying it.
James: Cock!
- The timing of the shot in which Jezza brakes just in time and then James curses, comes zipping across the screen, and crashes into the piano is perfect.
- James is more worried about the piano than his car.
  Jeremy: Look at your Capri!
  James: Never mind the sodding Capri, look at THAT!

Series 14

In the fourth episode of Series 14, during the News segment: because of the New Year's-related delay between taping and broadcasting, the boys struggle to keep straight the discrepancy. Jeremy giddily talks about the Citroen DS3 and says it'll be one of the best cars "that will be coming out next year", (which at the BBC 2 2009 airing means the US BBC America 2010 airing). He beams for a moment at his own magnificence and thumbs-ups the audience, thinking he's got the discrepancy nailed. When Hammond and May correct him ("this year"), he drops the mother of all F bombs. Cue despondency.
While reviewing a Range Rover during episode 4, Jeremy turns the demonstration into a snuff film when he GOES AFTER THE CAMERA CREW. There's then a screen card saying: "Due to new compliance procedures at the BBC, it is no longer possible to show images of film crews being run over."
The group's discussion about unnecessary speed restrictions on motorway roadworks is already pretty funny...then Jesus shows up. Read the whole thing here (it used to be on YouTube but sadly it was taken down).
From that episode 8, we have the Gocycle, and May thinking it is pronounced Gock-ickle. Then he finds out he had to BUILD it instead of it being a fold-up.
- Also, James May saying "Isn't wasn't".
- And Clarkson talking about his cycle thing as Hammond comes round a corner with his electrically-powered skateboard and almost falls off. Then they race and Clarkson almost falls off his vehicle.
Also the news section in episode 6, when the Trio suggest useless items to put car-manufacturer-badges on. Jeremy starts off with a plate of vomit (with a BMW badge), Richard suggests a wizard's sleeve... and then James pulls out a literal pork sword.
Jeremy: James, don't do the pork sword. (Pulls out a stuffed rooster) This cock...
Richard: Has it got four rings on it?
Jeremy: Yes, it has. [turns it to reveal an Audi badge glued to it]
From the Romania trip (looking for the best driving road... in the world). Clarkson gets James an actual Dacia Sandero to drive. It's then wrecked when a semi hits it.
- Could also slip into Tear Jerker territory when you think about how damn happy he was to get it and drive it...
- Hammond's Ferrari spontaneously and randomly deciding to ring up Vernon Kay.
- And it just continues the Refuge in Audacity with all the references to gypsies in Romania.
- At one point, James gets the trio lost in a small village, leading to them being mobbed by local children.
  Jeremy: (v.o.) We wanted to hit James over the head with a hammer, but the kids beat us to it.
  James: (being hit by a child with an inflatable hammer) Ow, ow, ow...
  - One of the kids writes John Cena's name into the dust on his car.
The crash test and side impact test of the Hammerhead i-Eagle Thrust. "Tuokool!"
- Yes, that was funny as hell, but EVERYTHING about the "Geoff"/Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust film was completely hilarious! From the mustache on the front to the box for Hamster's head to Clarkson not saying the name the same way even TWICE in a row... honestly, that episode is one gigantic CMOF for the boys!
- "James, you're being overtaken by children!"
- It gets even more hilarious if you read Autocar (yes, the review the boys cited was a real one), and line Clarkson during the segment, they can't even cite the car's full name properly. The Hammerhead i-Eagle Thrust was nonetheless given a rating of one star, higher than the "direct competition" the trio used (the Reva G-Wiz was given half a star.) That has to be the ultimate Take That! against the G-Wiz. Notable quotes:
"It is, in fact, a genuine hybrid. There are so many contributory factors to its makeup that it could, in fact, be more accurately described as a freak."
"It's intrinsically unsafe — lethal, even — but surprisingly amusing at the same time."
"There will only ever be one i-Thrust, and that's probably a good thing."
- Jeremy's 'Mood Room'. "Big cats, jet fighters... the actor Peter Bowles." And yet, the i-Eagle Thrust never borrowed any design feature from them, save for a random mustache.
The segment of the Twingo Renaultsport 133, which is done in a serious manner. This includes Clarkson making a metaphor about how driving the car is like driving a mosquito (then saying "Not literally" because the segment is for a guy that wrote in about how the show wasn't serious) then Jeremy driving it on a hockey rink in the middle of a team's practice, him trying to catch the ferry by jumping (and failing miserably) and then the fact that they put Ross "Ultimate Force" Kemp in the back, who gets abused constantly throughout the time he's in the back. Then there's one question that asks "Is it green?" Jeremy's response?
Jeremy [as the camera shows the bright red 133]: No. It's red.
- Being a callback to the last time they did a 'sensible' car test, which involved a (green) Ford Fiesta. And some terrorists. And a shopping centre. And the Royal Marines.
Episode 5: Jeremy sprays himself in the face with minicab perfume. "MY EYES! I'M BLIND!"
This from Episode 7's news segment.
James: Between now and whenever you're watching this, anything could've happened: we might've invented a car that, errr, I dunno, runs on jelly, we might've declared war with France... [Slasher Smile]
The airport vehicles race, in which the driver of a catering truck, after raising the rear body and dispersing the carts in order to shed weight, forgets about the laws of physics and rolls his vehicle. Also, there's a "no contact" restriction. Guess what happens.
During the discussion of the Porsche Boxster Spyder's gearbox, known as Doppelkupplungsgetriebe,^note roughly, "double-clutch gearbox" it is revealed that the only sentence James can say in German is "Aber ja, natürlich Hans naß ist. Er steht unter einem waßerfall.", which he then translates as "naturally Hans is wet. He's standing under a waterfall."
James May gets a "fizzing sensation" when he drives a nice car.
The lads are challenged to try and make an art gallery more popular by adding car themed works of art. It… didn't go well.
- James' sculpture was the hottest thing in the gallery, mainly because it kept catching on fire.
- Having been to art college, Richard recreates Constable's The Hay Wain, replacing the horse and cart with a Pagani Zonda. Along with a smear of river water and some leaves, as it fell in the river while he was painting.
- Clarkson, meanwhile, foregoes the traditional mediums of art and instead goes for paintballs smeared on a canvas. Paintballs fired from the exhaust of a 2005 Red Bull Formula One car, the RB1. Unfortunately, the canvas wasn't quite sturdy enough to withstand the high-speed projectiles, and tore straight through, impacting Jezza in the plums. As he writhes on the ground in agony, David Coulthard watches on rather bemusedly.
David Coulthard: I tell ya, I'm not giving him mouth to mouth, that's for sure.
- When they bring in an art dealer for his opinion, he has only seven words to say:
  Clarkson: Is there anything here that catches your eye?
  Rupert: No.
  Clarkson: Does that one work?
  Rupert: No.
  Clarkson: Is this no good?
  Rupert: No.
  Clarkson: Does it work on any level for you?
  Rupert: No.
  Clarkson: Does it have artistic merit?
  Rupert: No.
  Clarkson: So all of this is terrible?
  Rupert: Well frankly yes.
  Clarkson: Well, thank you very much for coming along.
  Rupert: Thank you.
  Clarkson: And I value your opinion, I won't necessarily pay any attention to it. In fact, none of us will.
  Rupert: Good.
In one episode, Hammond's road test goes far over budget. Clarkson promises to do his road test on no budget at all, then proceeds to immediately break his promise by traveling all over the world to exotic locations as part of his test. Upon cutting back to the studio, James May drops a legendary insult on him.
May: You are an apocalyptic dingleberry.
During the news segment of Episode 4, Jeremy is talking about a newspaper piece that claims gay couples are banned from the studio audience. He dismisses the claim as utter nonsense; cue five men dressed as the Village People standing directly behind Hammond and May for the rest of the segment, complete with huge fake mustaches.

Series 15

Season 15's Second Hand Sports Saloon Challenge:
- James' Mercedes that put first gear and reverse on backward, making James back up when he wanted to go forward.
  Clarkson [in a poor German Accent]: Vorwarts!^noteForwards!
  May [accidentally backing the car up]: Scheisse!^noteShoot!
  - Some who have driven that exact model of car would like to testify that the gears are indeed shit.
- Clarkson's emotional reaction to catching a glimpse of Hammond's M3's interior.
  Clarkson: (Spots the interior of Hammond's car and gives the most horrified gasp in the history of all horrified gasps to have ever been horrified)
  Hammond: What?
  Clarkson: OOOOOH MYYYY GOOOOOOD!
  Hammond: Ah, the interior, yeah.
  Clarkson: Have you SEEN the inSIDE of his CAAAR?!
  Hammond: Toffee and caramel, that interior is.
- Staying the night in the hotel that now occupies Colditz. Hammond and May stage their own Great Escape. Clarkson just pays with his credit card.
- After receiving a dismal score of only 6 ^noteout of a possible 150 from the ADAC test, Hammond is shown driving his BMW... very slowly. Cut to Jeremy in his car imitating the show's opening sequence.
  Clarkson: Tonight, on First Gear. Richard Hammond drives across Germany in a death trap.
  - James' Mercedes isn't much better, overheating on the dyno and lots of play in the wheels.
    James: I went 140 in that...
- James spends most of the challenge claiming Martin Brundle called the Mercedes 190 Cosworth the finest rear wheel drive chassis ever, better than Hammond's BMW M3. Jeremy phones Brundle just to shut him up.
  Martin Brundle: When did I say that? I've had a few knocks on the head, but I don't remember saying that. I mean, it's not a bad engine, but no, it's really not that good. You need the M3 for the best chassis from around that time.
  - James hangs up and claims Brundle confirmed it and called the M3 a "shadow" of the 190.
- At the end, they have to upload videos of their laps. Jeremy's lap where he lies about its speed ("Naught to 60 in one second, which is the important figure children need to remember"), James' lap in which he gets lost, and Richard's lap which is just a test pattern with audio of Hammond making engine noises.
In Episode 1, it is implied that James May possibly set off the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland while filming a segment in which he drove up the volcano.
Clarkson: James, have you been working on any oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico recently?
Clarkson's look at the Reliant Robin three-wheeler/tribute to South Yorkshire in episode 1 of Series 15. Especially Clarkson crashing a meeting of a Reliant Robin owner's club. Emphasis on 'crashing'.
- He rolls the car seven times during a 14-mile drive, and his car is righted by "friendly locals" including Human League lead singer Phil Oakey, nightclub mogul Peter Stringfellow, veteran cricket umpire Dickie Bird (after Clarkson rolls across a cricket pitch), and BBC Look North presenter Harry Gration (after Clarkson rolls in the background while Gration is doing a piece to camera... twice).
  - Then when he tries to add stabilizers to the thing, he first drives into an inspection pit, then crashes the car into a canal.
- Made better in the next episode, when a Reliant Robin enthusiast sends a letter claiming Clarkson's many crashes and flips are due to his being a terrible driver. The boys accept his challenge and attempt a lap around the studio track in a different Robin only to flip it on the first turn. Who was driving this time? The Stig.
- In the next episode, they apparently got a challenge from rally car driver Ken Block that he could do better with the Robin. The show decided to take him up on it. The Robin made it to the first turn... and he rolled it over, just like Clarkson and the Stig did before him.
- Before even setting off on the challenge, he stated that he was wearing a crash helmet and had a four-point safety harness fitted because driving it was as dangerous as "Invitin' your mum around for an evening of Chatroulette."
The Caravan challenge and Jeremy proving why you shouldn't put a three-story building on your car.
Clarkson: [as the camera shows his car wobbling violently from side to side] Ahhh! Uhh! Ahhh! Ohh! Oh my God! No, this is terrifying! [cutting to an inside view] I - it - it's un- I can't begin to describe what this feels like. It's - it's- [car shakes back and forth] ooookay, wallowing quite badly...
Clarkson: [narrating]: I asked James to pull in behind and assess the gravity of the situation... but he wasn't much help.
[shot of May laughing uproariously as Clarkson looks terrified]
Clarkson: [narrating]: And, to be honest, nor was Hammond.
[shot of Hammond, unable to speak for laughing]
Clarkson: [gasps in shock] I've- I've cocked up, I've- I know I've cocked up- ohh, uhh, ohh, low bridge! [the "caravan" narrowly misses the underside of a low overpass]
Hammond: [into walkie-talkie] Jeremy, did you make a note of how tall it actually is?
Clarkson: [to himself] ... no, I didn't. [into walkie-talkie] Yes.
Hammond: [to himself] He hasn't got a clue.
- ...and just when Jeremy thinks it couldn't get any more terrifying, THIS HAPPENS...
- Clarkson's engine blows up and sprays the inside of the bonnet with oil. Which leads him to this rather crude exclamation.
  Holy moly! What manner of terrible thing has happened under my bonnet? It's actually had diarrhoea, is what's happened here.
- When they're trying to cook a three course meal, Clarkson talks about how the last time he cooked in a motorhome he wound up setting it on fire, while in the background Hammond's bursts into flames.
  - Following the incident, Clarkson narrates that the boys 'abandoned the cooking and cracked open a 'liquid supper' instead.
- The night after the fire a couple of sheep infiltrated Hammond's collapsible motorhome and shat all over the floor.
- The final misadventure: The boys parked near a scenic cliff and Clarkson went off for a walk. While he was gone Hammond and May decided to prank him by pushing his motorhome to the very edge of the cliff... but they failed to account for the slight slope. Meanwhile, far off in the distance, Jeremy was doing a piece to camera while eating an ice cream cone, oblivious to the inevitable fate of his caravan.
  - Then when back at the studio we see May's and Hammond's caravans, while Clarkson's is just a big pile of scrap.
Episode 4: When Jeremy Clarkson mocks James May for not even passing a bus.
May: That's because, Jeremy, the bus said "Guildford" on the front and that's where I wanted to go.
The British sports cars. Not just the bare-faced lying throughout the show. THAT anagram....
- Having windows that won't shut is a safety feature in a British sports car. As well as the really uncomfortable seats that have you keep on taking breaks.
- The Stig drives his non-British non-sports car into a car wash, and when he comes out he's underwater.
While Hammond is looking at muscle cars, particularly the Chevy Camaro.
Hammond: Now if you're under 12, then to you this car is Bumblebee from the Transformers movies. And in a minute it's going to stand up and throw an oil tanker at my face.
While discussing the Stig revealing his identity (which was treated as a Face–Heel Turn)
May: Well at least we know now what his real name is. (Beat) Judas Iscariot!
The Christmas episode, where Jeremy takes the lights out with the little remote control plane, so they light candles to great "romantic" effect, then Hammond lights his notes on fire, Jeremy tries to put it out but instead sets the tree on fire, and then James calmly suggest they "Pour some pussy on it." (Pussy being the name of an energy drink they'd been discussing previously.) How he managed to say that with a straight face beggars belief.

Series 16

Despite it eventually going well for once, most of the combine snowplow challenge ended with breaking things and/or setting them on fire.
- Just so you know. Somebody let Jeremy put a flamethrower on back. Then let him use it. And he ended up burning a sign, setting a car's hood on fire, and setting a man on fire^note.
- Jeremy's foolproof plan to measure the amount of snow on the ground - diving headfirst into the snow akin to a fox - goes wrong when he bonks his head off a particularly low patch of snow.
- Then there was the fact that they're in the newspaper the next morning, being called vandals. They then look around the restaurant they're in and leave as quickly as possible.
Jeremy on helium. When it's Richard's turn, he gets out of the car, thinking he'll have a squeaky voice... and his voice sounds perfectly normal.
Richard: Ah, you see, mine's had a new— Oh!
Challenged to purchase four-seater convertibles for under £2000, all three presenters proceed to share a braincell:
Jeremy (arriving in his '88 BMW 325i): Oh no.
Richard (waiting next to his '87 BMW 325i): ... that's awkward.
James (arriving a few minutes later, while visibly facepalming, in an '89 BMW 325i): Oh... cock.
- Richard's car alarm goes off continuously in the background while Jeremy and James are talking.
- The guys get their secondhand cars tested at a forensics lab. Jeremy's is pretty benign (with the worst thing being some crisp fragments), while James and Richard find out theirs have mucus, feces, blood and pubic hair in them (the latter three were mainly in Richard's car). James wears a face mask and surgical gloves, while Richard goes for a full biohazard suit.
- Jeremy gives this description: "Having a drag race in a car with an automatic gearbox is like being in a 100m sprint while wearing wellies^noterubber boots for the Yanks...full of tadpoles."
James May picking up (who he thinks) is Cher in Las Vegas:
[Long, uncomfortable silence]
May: Er... are... are you a bloke?
Cher Male Impersonator: Yeah.
In Albania, Jeremy warned that they can't say the word "car" or "peach" because both words are slang for private parts there. Richard decides to play with this.
Hammond: And I have never experienced a car this big and so powerful.
- After the first segment of the Albania film the episode cuts back to the studio where Jeremy points out a girl in the audience who's from Albania. Richard and James awkwardly greet her and ask her to confirm that "car" does in fact mean what they said in the film.
Also in Albania, Jeremy couldn't get a Bentley to drive around in and so he had to pass a Yugo as a Bentley. He spends the entire trip expressing disappointment at the poor quality of his "Bentley".
- The end of the Albanian challenge deserves special mention. The trio are tasked with evading local police like an Albanian mobster would and getting to a nearby ferry to escape. James, driving the Yugo, and wearing pantyhose on his head, unfortunately gets a roadblock set on him, which leaves him with only one option: driving off a cliff, Thelma & Louise-style. Cut to the Lada rolling down the cliff, James ADR-ing in ham-fisted grunts of pain.
  - Even better, when it comes time for the sign-off of the show, they come to use James' "death" as a bombshell to end on, which Hammond refers to as "an inconvenience."
    Jeremy: And on that inconvenience, it's time to end the show. Goodnight!
Jeremy evaluates the Skoda Yeti. Among his criteria is the crucial question - which lots of people ask him - of whether Sienna Miller can fit in the glovebox. She can; he opens the glovebox, and she says she fits and is comfortable. He says goodbye and good mark for the Yeti. Cut to the next bit.
In the Top Gear Ashes episode, the Australian team arrives "in the same way their ancestors left" - in a prison lorry. The guests are not thrilled and return proverbial fire upon disembarking.
S. Jacobson: Two hundred years to come up with a bit of gag, and that's it.
The challenges itself were no shortage of laughs either as the Top Gear UK team acted in such a matter that just calling it cheating just doesn't seem appropriate.
- The first challenge was a drag race with the Aussies in a HSV Maloo pickup with the UK team using a utility truck. After the UK team won they revealed it had a Jaguar XJ 220 engine installed.
- The second challenge was the double decker car challenge that was done in the UK vs German episode, except the Aussies top car was inverted. As well the UK team had a professional driver Jodie Kidd, while the Aussies had a paparazzo by the name of Darryn Lyons.
- The third challenge was synchronized donuts with the UK team with high end sports cars easily capable of the task while the Aussies were given mid range sedans. As well the judging was done by Hammond and May and the UK team only lost because Hammond grabbed the wrong number card giving the Aussies the win.
- The fourth challenge was motorcycle sheep herding. The Aussies were supposed to be given poor quality bikes but they got switched around leading to an Aussie win.
- The final challenge was a rally cross race where, like with the German competition, the UK team put The Stig in, saying he's James May. Despite a 15 second head start for the Aussies, the UK team beat them out by a large margin.

Series 17

Marauder test drive in Johannesburg:
Hammond [driving a red Marauder] Oh, that gap's big enough.
[crashes through wall]
Hammond: Well, it is now.
- Try ordering a cheeseburger in one of those bad boys.
- The South Africa Rozzers bring in a tow truck to nick the Marauder after Hammond parks it somewhere he shouldn't have. He responds by getting in, putting the Marauder in gear, and having a tow truck tug-of-war. The tow truck loses. Bonus points go to one of the workers sitting in the left-most of the tow truck as it was being pulled away, he has his hands over his mouth with a look of disbelief.
  Hammond [points forward] We're going that way.
The news regarding the E-Type replica, the Vizualtech Growler E.^noteLater renamed the Lyonheart K; not even a single prototype was built before Lyonheart Cars dissolved in 2017
- Reaches its peak once Jeremy goes all fake German, even though said car was made in Switzerland.
  Clarkson: GOTT IM HIMMEL! Wolfgang, ve have accidentally named ze car after ein fräugarten!
- More so when Jeremy makes a Shout-Out to James's slip-up in Series 13:
  May: If [the Growler] is based on an XK, has it got four seats?
  Clarkson: No, you can't get in the back.
  [beat, followed by laughter from the audience]
- James does cap the news off with one epic punchline:
  James: There's a bloke at some point who's gonna say "I'm just gonna go outside to wax the Growler."
  (Cue everyone laughing very hard)
  Jeremy: "Wax the Growler..." (Still unable to contain his laughter)
  Richard: Oh, you dirty booger!
In the "Hot Hatchback Challenge" Richard Hammond spends the whole episode bending the rules which comes back to bite him hard when he keeps getting zero points at the tally. And then loses what few points he did get at the end for his car not counting as a Hot Hatchback.
In one episode, the presenters were tasked with building their own trains. Jeremy went for a "sports train" which was a Jaguar pulling a trailer while James and Richard went for four caravans being towed by an Audi. Jeremy ended up being stuck behind Hammond and May, then got involved in a Mexican Standoff with an actual train. However, one of the caravans (the buffet car) on Hammond and May's train caught fire, and then, after the passengers had fled, a passenger train smashed the rear caravan to scrap iron.
- James explains why he and Richard chose an Audi S8.
  Also, I have feet made of flesh with nerves in them, like a human being. Not lumps of lead yoked to an incompetent oaf.
- And when Jeremy nearly crashes his sport train into the back of a stopped train in front of him, we get this gem:
  Clarkson [still in his car which has stopped just inches away from the other train]: SOME POO'S COME OUT!
- Hammond and May fighting over who makes the announcements.
  May: Ladies and gentlemen, please brace yourselves, the incompetent steward is about to pour tepid coffee into your crotch.
  Hammond: CHRIST'S SAKE, JAMES, STOP MAKING (Sound-Effect Bleep) ANNOUNCEMENTS! THAT'S MY JOB! I'M THE STEWARD! YOU DRIVE, I STEWARD!
  May: It's my train, and the driver makes the bleeding announcements! That's the way it is!
- And then it just gets childish.
  Hammond: Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.
  May: Penis penis penis penis penis penis penis...
The demolition challenge, in which they had to take out six buildings before a trained demolition team could. In ex-military vehicles. High points included:
- Clarkson trying to convince May and Hammond of the virtues of his demining machine by claiming Princess Diana owned one. You can hear the crew crack up behind the camera.
- Richard Hammond firing his harpoon thingy at the roof of one building, missing, and destroying a Porta-Loo instead.
- Clarkson losing control of his demining machine and mincing someone's car.
- Clarkson arriving in demolition suit saying that he had put "some explosives" into the house:
  Clarkson: FIRE IN THE HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLE
  (Less than impressive explosion leaving entire house intact save for door)
  Hammond: (beat) You've only blown the bloody door off!
- Just generally, it turns out that the Top Gear crew is better at destroying buildings when they're not trying.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you, The Interceptors!
In Episode 4, crossing over with Awesome, Rowan Atkinson's reaction to his lap time in the Kia Cee'd . He claims that he didn't have a good feeling about his time, footage of his lap reveals him saying "hopeless, hopeless, hopeless", and he reiterates that despite being a massive car enthusiast and amateur racer, there are no guarantees that he'll put in a respectable time. With John Bishop's 1:42.8 as the best time on the board, Clarkson announces:
Clarkson: One.
Atkinson: [completely deadpan] Good.
Clarkson: Forty.
Atkinson: [with a serene smile] Excellent.
Clarkson: Two.
[audience gasps and Atkinson's eyebrows shoot up in surprise]
Clarkson: Two.
[audience erupts into applause, and Atkinson bows to them]
Episode 5: Due to a sports broadcast, the boys have had to cut the broadcast short, to 59 minutes. As the deadline approaches, Jeremy keeps rambling...
May: We really must finish.
Clarkson: What are they going to do? Cut us of—
- In the original broadcast, this was followed by:
  Continuity announcer: Well, we did warn them.
- In reruns, after it cuts to black, Jeremy just matter-of-factly says "Oh, they did."
Clarkson brushing off May's criticism of the black edition of the Mercedes C-Class.
May: I think it looks infantile.
Clarkson: James, you are so old you think Werther's Originals are infantile.

Series 18

"Do we - under these unique circumstances - merely leave him? Or shoot him and leave him?"
In the Italy road trip, as Jeremy and James compete to get to a restaurant (and find a parking spot) in Rome first, they both scrape their supercars against the exact same curb, with James erupting into a Cluster Bleep-Bomb in response.
James: *bleep* hell. S*bleep* bum *bleep* arseholes!
In episode 2, Clarkson starts insisting that Hammond is actually an American because of his love of NASCAR, owning a cowboy hat and boots, and putting cheese on everything among other reasons, much to Hammond's protests. And thus begins a Running Gag.
- In the same episode, Hammond is introduced at the driver's meeting as the pace car driver. After a high-ranking air force officer and his wife and nearly given a standing ovation when introduced to the crowd, Hammond is given a few scattered claps and gives a sheepish half-stand and wave in response.
- Later, once he finished his job as the pace car driver, he was recruited by Hendrick Motorsports to become... the person who brings the tire sets for the #5 team.
- Richard completely shitting the hell out of himself when he drove a NASCAR car the next day. This only grew worse when Kyle Petty joined him & drafted his car.
- Also in the same episode, Clarkson and May go to China to look at Chinese cars and consider the claim that the Chinese are going to take over the car industry in a few years. At the end of the segment, it cuts back to the studio to reveal that the presenters have been replaced by Chinese analogues.
  - Also, the Attack Stig.
- The running gag of "Hammond secretly an American" comes back when Jeremy and James insist that Americans are easily amused all because they like NASCAR. When Hammond tries to defend that it is a good sport, they immediately go off on him, with Jeremy even poking fun out of Hammond's role on Total Wipeout:
  Hammond: I'm not an American! I'm from Birmingham!
  May: (listing things of his fingers) Hammond, you've got a Stetson, cowboy boots, chaps, a Harley Davidson, a Mustang, you'd like to get a beer and you put cheese on everything!
  Hammond: I don't—I'm not American!
  Clarkson: You have made a living out of being an American! Your Saturday Night program is a fat man falling off some foam rubber. 'OWRIGHT, HAY, WE'LL WATCH THAT!' And they turn up in their millions!
FENTON! FENTON! FENTOOON! JESUS CHRIST!
The episode 5 news includes Jeremy and Richard revealing James May's Fiat Panda parked in front of the loading bay doors at the BBC studios underground car park. What makes it funny is that no direct accusation is made, but everyone in the audience seems to simultaneously make the realization of whose car it is and begin laughing at James while he looks more guilty than ever before. Made funnier when you rewatch the bit as you see James looking everywhere but Jeremy and Richard when Jeremy asks Richard where he parks, well before his Panda is shown.
- Also from the news is James May driving a Suzuki Swift around the track while completely cocooned in a sleeping bag. Just to see if he could do it.
  May: Shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle!
- There was, however, a small problem...
  May: That blithering idiot Hammond has turned the heater up to full blast because he thinks it's funny, and, of course, I can't reach the knob.
In Episode 6, the three presenters offer different suggestions for the ultimate track day car - James nominates a Caterham Seven, Jeremy goes for a KTM Cross-Bow, and Richard chooses a Morgan three-wheeler. The hilarity begins when the producers tell them to have a race from 0 mph to 100 mph and back to 0 mph again.
- Richard insists on a Le Mans-style start for the race. While he jumps straight into his car and drives off, Jeremy gets lost navigating the technologically convoluted starter for his car, while James takes an inordinately long time to strap on his safety belt - and then realises he's left the steering wheel out of reach (having had to remove it to get into the car).
- Richard takes pity on the other two and agrees to scrap the Le Mans-style start. As they race off, Jeremy stops after a surprisingly short time - and only then realises that it was the fuel pressure that reached 100, not the speedometer.
- The third attempt is ruined when James jumps the gun and drives off when the starter has only counted down to 2.
- And on the fourth attempt, it's James' turn to stop surprisingly soon... only to realise he's gone up to 100 km/h and back, not 100 mph. Richard, meanwhile, goes around the entire track several times, never able to quite get up to 100 mph before he has to slow down for the next corner, as James tries to use maths to argue that his car is faster than Jeremy's.
Clarkson's description of the bright yellow (and ironically named) Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black as "Winnie the Pooh with road rage!"

Series 19

Clarkson's P45 road test from the first episode, replete with Clarkson headbutting the helmet every time there's a bump in the road (and demanding it be edited out), and appearing on Dragons' Den.
- Clarkson insulting Duncan Bannatyne has to take the prize for the episode's funniest moment.
  Bannatyne: Well, Jeremy, I'm the last Dragon in, and I tried to tempt them by making an offer and hoping they'd come in with me.
  Clarkson: I'm sorry, I can't understand a word you're saying.
  Bannatyne: That is... I'm out.
- As well as him taking it on the A3. Most of his dialogue consists of screaming.
  [a semi-truck passes him]
  Clarkson: A LOT OF POO SHOT OUT JUST THEN!
- Then there's Damian Lewis' lap in the same episode. The conditions are terrible and the entire track is covered in snow. Not only does Lewis cross the finish line sideways, but he also sets the slowest lap time in the history of "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car". However, because of the conditions, Clarkson declares it instead to be the fastest snow lap time and puts it at the top of the board.
- The news that James May has turned fifty.
  Hammond: Yes, but mate, you were born in your fifties.
Episode 2
- Clarkson referring to the police drag race in Las Vegas as "Beat the Meat".
  Hammond: No, it's probably "Beat the Heat", because "heat" means—
  Clarkson: Yeah, I meant that.
- Which he then does again right before the news segment.
  Clarkson: Can you imagine the British police trying to do "Beat the Meat"? ...Heat! Heat.
- On the circuit at Willow Springs, the team has a game of laser tag against two SIAI-Marchetti SF.260s. Richard's Viper is hit 23 times, James' Aston Martin is hit 17 times, and Jeremy's Lexus... 48 times. James gets even smugger when the other two reveal that the fighter pilots said the only reason they kept missing his car was that he was driving more slowly than they anticipated.
- For the final race from Palm Springs to Calexico, the loser of whom has to cross into Mexico to review the Mastretta MXT - which Richard had infamously slagged off in a previous episode, earning the outrage of Top Gear's Mexican audience - Jeremy and James decide to engage in a bit of sabotage to ensure that Richard is the one who has to atone for his own ill-chosen words. They stuff fruit in his exhaust ports, move the seat as far back as it can go and the pedals as far forward as they can go and remove the fuses from the circuits that adjust them, and then disconnect two of the engine's HT leads, reducing his V10 engine to a V8. Though it doesn't take him long to fix the sabotage, Richard's thoroughly unamused reactions are the funniest part of the prank war.
  Richard: [finding the fruit in his exhaust port; angrily] Oh. Funny. Funny. Also funny. [crouches down and pulls a lime and a kiwi out of his exhaust port] Thank you. Chi- yeah. Right. We live in a cartoon. Really.
- James arrives second, after Jeremy, who does the Loser 'L' with his fingers. James promptly declares that he doesn't care that Jeremy won, as long as he beat Richard; when Richard arrives, James, who has, indeed, beaten Richard, has joined Jeremy in doing the Loser 'L' with his fingers, but to Richard.
It's time to build a car for the elderly, so let's have an A-Team Montage! But a nice, quiet one. After all, you don't want to upset the poor dears now.
- And the bollocking they give May during the segment, culminating with them naming the car "the James."
- And Jeremy's solution to the problem of elderly drivers going the wrong way on a motorway; set up an alarm to warn them when they're going the wrong way. And if that doesn't work? Rig their cars to blow up if they continue going down the wrong lane. Made even better by Clarkson and Hammond's reactions to it-
  Clarkson: [With a big smile on his face] There you go!
  Hammond: [Visibly terrified] You idiot!
  Clarkson: What?
  Hammond: Well, it's ruined!
  Clarkson: Yes, but it can't go on the motorway going the wrong way!
  Hammond: No, we can't go anywhere-
  Clarkson: Exactly!
  Hammond: -because you've exploded the car!
  Clarkson: We're alive, everyone on the Motorway is alive, this is the best solution ever!
  Hammond: I've wet myself again!
After the boys have had a rugby match on the field at Twickenham (England's national rugby ground) using cars, Clarkson displays how absolutely knackered the field is. Cutting to the studio, Hammond begins to berate them about how that field was considered "hallowed turf". It leads to this:
Hammond: Do you know what "hallowed" means?
[Beat]
May: Temporary?
Hammond: Oh yes, James. "Our Father who art in Heaven, temporary be thy name".
- On the same episode, it's Lewis Hamilton's second time to lap the test track. Almost as a nod to his previous attempt where he was singing at one point (earning some criticism from Jeremy), he does it again, as well as a few other things (like flashing a Peace Sign and yelling "Peace!") that seemingly imply that he's just joyriding and not seriously doing a fast lap. Nevertheless, he ends up beating Sebastian Vettel's time by over a second and tops the board.
  Clarkson: My guest tonight is a young chap from Hertfordshire who recently got a new Mercedes and wants to come and tell us all about it. Normally we'd tell him to get lost, but we decided to make an exception on this occasion because...(deep breath)...his name is Lewis Hamilton!

Series 20

In Episode 1 before Jeremy and James start their race around the northern part of New Zealand.
Jeremy: I do realize the enormity of the challenge I face, which is why I have gone for the fastest car in the world. Here it is. [gestures to blue Toyota Corolla]
James: It's a Toyota Corolla.
Jeremy: Yes it is.
James: It's a 1.8 litre Toyota Corolla.
Jeremy: Engine size is irrelevant, James, because do you know what makes this so fast? Look in the window. [camera zooms in on Avis Preferred Service tag on mirror] I've rented it!
James: Oh no.
Jeremy: Yes. And this is the thing, with the Bugatti Veyron sometimes you're using 15 horsepower, sometimes you're only using ten. This, you've got 140 horsepower from the moment you start it up to the moment you crash it.
James: Did you pick up one of those, what do they call them, collision damage waiver forms?
Jeremy: No, I picked up six.
- During the race, Jeremy goes over a bridge to find another car passing at the same time, and thus he scrapes his side on the barrier in the process, resulting in Jeremy pulling over and filling in an accident report form, with some hilarious tidbits:
Jeremy: Explain how accident occurred: A MANIAC CAME THE OTHER WAY!
Jeremy: State who in your opinion was responsible for the accident: HIM! HIM! HE WAS MAD!!
In Episode 2's news, they cover a Volvo that can park itself after you get out of it and discuss the various problems of the design. Like what happens if it gives up and goes home?
Hammond: What worries me about this is that the roads are going to be packed with driverless, slightly panicky Volvos. "I'm gonna park here! I'm gonna park here! No, where can I go?!" It's gonna be terrified!
Clarkson: All the lamp posts are going to have "Missing Volvo" pictures on them. "He's only a year old and his name is Tiddles and he went off to find a parking space and I haven't seen him siiiiiince!"
Episode 3 involves the boys finding the perfect budget supercar and going on a test-drive in recession-hit Spain. They visit a major airport that has no one in it. They never find anyone during their entire time there, and they just take the runway to use as their own!
- With nothing else to do, James notices that all of their cars are convertible and their roofs can be operated from the driver's seat, but they won't close if the car is going above a certain speed; Jeremy's McLaren MP4 takes 14 seconds to close its roof, which it can only do under 19 miles an hour, James' Audi R8 takes 19 seconds to close under 31 miles an hour, and Hammond's Ferrari 458 has to be completely stopped for the roof to close. James proposes a drag race where they all have to start with their roof open and finish with their roof closed, and in the first attempt, Jeremy wins...at a normal, street-legal pace, because he noticed in the last few seconds that he hadn't closed his roof properly.
- While at the airport, the cars gain dust damage from the unused runway. The Audi James was driving suffers no damage.
  Clarkson: Why do the Germans put the paint on in such a way that it is impossible to get off?
  May: Because they are Germans and [puts on accent] it is impossible to paint a car badly!
- During the News segment: Samuel Chuffart.
- Whilst driving through Spain, Hammond hits a bollard, damaging the front of his Ferrari. Naturally, James and Jeremy ridicule him for it.
  Clarkson: (whilst looking around another ghost town) Still, look on the bright side. There’s no one for Hammond to run over.
The attempt to build a hovervan in Episode 4 goes awry almost immediately, resulting in a scene of Jeremy Clarkson in a wetsuit with a fountain of water spouting from a hole at the small of his back.
- The van is built and tested in Penistone, West Yorkshire, which all three of them insist on pronouncing as "Penis-tone" (it's actually Pennis-tun).
- The sign reading "Top Gear Penistone Engineering Workshop" being rendered as "Top Penis Engine Work" when the gate is open.
- After refitting the hovervan with a 600 horsepower engine, Jeremy's reaction to learning that they didn't give it a bigger fuel tank, meaning they have to refuel again after just 10 minutes.
- The chaos the hovervan causes in Stratford. Crashing into trees, crashing into other boats, crashing into historic bridges, knocking a man out of his boat and blowing away several restaurant tables with the exhaust fan. Cue them quickly deciding to test how fast the van can run away.
- When Hammond and May take too long to open the lock, Jeremy decides to get out of the van to shout at them.
  Hammond: Who's driving the van?!
  Clarkson: Well it's—
  [Clarkson realises it's drifted off]
- Hammond getting drenched when he and Clarkson attempt to recapture the van.
- After going the wrong way due to James' terrible sense of direction, they come across a weir and manage to successfully navigate their way down it! Naturally, Clarkson gets cocky and attempts to reverse up the weir to do this again. Except his attempt to do so overtaxes the engine, burns it out and causing them to begin sinking. Oops.
  May: YOU PILLOCK!
During Hugh Jackman's interview, he relates a story about visiting an onsen in Japan while filming The Wolverine, and accidentally scandalizing the other patrons by misunderstanding the purpose of one of the towels. Jeremy admits he's never been to an onsen:
Clarkson: "Er, no, couldn't go in one, my penis is too small."
(Laughter. Jackman doubles over laughing.)
Clarkson: "You know what I mean?"
Jackman: (smiling) "No."
(More laughter. Even from Clarkson.)
From the beginning of episode 5:
Clarkson: 1963 saw the birth of two things that I'm not very interested in: the Porsche 911 and James May.
- The news segment covering David Cameron's attempt to restrict porn access in Britain, ending in Jeremy referring to the past Africa Special in a special way in the hopes that the porn filters would erase the quote from the internet.
- During the crossover test, Jeremy stops his Mazda in a car park after a minor accident puts some warning lights on and wrecks the intercooler. They decide to wait for a tow truck... Then they spy Phil Mitchell.
  May [narrating]: We were waiting in the car park for quite some time. And the following morning, the memories were still with us!
  [cut to Clarkson and May with a thousand-yard stare at the camera]
- The Running Gag about caravanners going to recycling centers and throwing away perfectly good furniture and appliances, culminating in them throwing The Stig away after he finishes his lap tests. Most notable being the items bought from a hardware store: Quicklime, shovels, zinc tub, axes, duct tape, saws, and rope. Combined tend to be things attributed to a serial killer.
- The list of bumper stickers on May's caravan:
  It's not our fault it's the Allegro in front
  Relax...and enjoy the view of our lovely caravan
  BACK OFF! I'm doing the speed limit!
  Made from recycled Concorde
- Clarkson and May both deciding to take off-road routes when racing to their caravan site. Turns out caravans are not great at off-roading.
  Clarkson: James, are things as bad back there as I suspect they are?
  May: Well, let me put it this way: I've run over your left hand wall. Oh, and your portable lavatory! [cracks up]
- The sudden reveal of a pair of fuzzy handcuffs hanging inside May's caravan.
From Episode 6:
- The news segment discussing Highways Agency Traffic Officers and their tendency to close down roads for minor accidents and slow down traffic.
  Hammond: I think they should only be allowed to close the roads if certain words have been used to describe the incident. "Inferno", "Crater", "Apocalyptic".
  Clarkson: "Felt in Japan".
  May: "Can't find the head".
- Followed by suggesting that they be restricted to picking up trash, which ends in a suggestion that they be dressed as The Wombles. Because "nobody would run over a Womble! They'd be heartbroken!"
- Clarkson responding to a milkman's truck being on a commemorative stamp related to British motoring by comparing it to Germany releasing a stamp that features "A half-track sitting just outside Warsaw."
- Clarkson mentioning that their campaign to get better parking arrangements in town centers has a powerful ally. Hammond suggests Barack Obama and Darth Vader, but...
  Clarkson: Eric Pickles.
  - It gets worse when Clarkson draws him on his thumb...
- James's attempt to get the New Bus For London to work. TIRE PRESSURE SYSTEM OKAY.
In one episode Jeremy reveals he's got a bicycle that he rides through town, but he can't say what kind it is because he thinks all bikes are the same. So Richard asks any viewers who see Jeremy on his bicycle to send in a picture. The next episode Richard says that someone has sent in a picture. Cut to a photo of an orangutan riding a child's bicycle.
- Jeremy takes said photo in good stride.
  Clarkson: That's not my bike, I haven't got stabilizers. Others, it's pretty accurate.

Series 21

From Episode 1, the "supermarket sweep" challenge. Specifically, Clarkson and Hammond's attempts. Clarkson hits virtually every shelf in the supermarket while shouting in panic, while Hammond manages to hit the few shelves Clarkson didn't hit and thanks to his car's tendency to roll manages to end the lap on his side, prompting a textbook classic Double Take from May.
- Jeremy ends up misplacing his VW Golf's keys and has no idea where the buggers have scarpered. At least, until Richard points out a vaguely key-shaped lump on the roof of his velvet-covered car…
- Before that there was Hammond's attempt at the hill-climb. He set the fastest time going up, decided to go at full speed back down the hill... and promptly rolled into a ditch.
- The start of the supermarket sweep challenge: "Dear Granddad..."
- The various stickers on the back window of Jeremy's Golf: "THIS STICKER ADDS 5.BHP" and "DON'T WORRY, I WELDED IT" are included.
- Clarkson presenting a fatal flaw in the Vauxhall Nova's electronic that allows to start the car without the key or hot wiring.
- James May escaping arrest by being slow.
- Hugh Bonneville calling Jeremy's sister a bitch.
- As the episode becomes goofier, the Top Gear presenters went back to the storage for decommissioned military vehicles and picked a few for the Top Gear Police Force, resulting in an escalating number of heavy vehicles attempting to bring down a 30 years old hatchback. It culminates in Richard driving a tank to try and take out James.
  Richard: The first thing you should know is.....I have an erection.
- Jeremy's pursuit lasts so long, that James and Hamster decide to break out the big guns. Namely, an electromagnet suspended from a crane. They position it over the road and wait for Jezza to drive by. He approaches, drives up to the magnet and... he drives right by it.
Jeremy: Blithering idiots, do they not realise you can't use a magnet to pick up velvet?
- Whenever the other two drive the police cars, they wear fake Seventies moustaches. Hammond later claims that it made it impossible to concentrate on catching Clarkson because all he could think about was "I've got a moustache...I've got a moustache...I've got a moustache..."
- The ends of the three police chases:
  - Okay, Hammond's is anticlimactic (his Vauxhall Nova stalls out and dies in eight seconds):
    James: "Excuse me sir. My moustache would like a word with you."
  - But Clarkson's velvet-covered VW Golf GTI runs for about fourteen hours until Hammond and May deploy a remote-controlled car:
    Jeremy: This car is simply.....invin— [Cue huge explosion].........[sitting in a twisted, smoking car chassis while holding a detached steering wheel] So it turns out that velvet is impervious to magnets, but it is pervious to dynamite.
  - And finally, May's Ford XR2 is about to beat Clarkson's record when Hammond intervenes with the tank:
    James: [sitting in the middle of a flaming crater big enough to swallow all three hot hatchbacks plus the tank, holding a steering wheel which is the only vaguely car-like thing left] And on that bombshell, back to the studio.
- Teenage Stig. AKA, The Stig with headphones, a mobile, and exposed underwear.
From episode 2:
- Richard reveals that he had painted a Confederate flag on the roof of his car when he was 17....in North Yorkshire.
  Jeremy Clarkson: Ladies and Gentlemen, 12 Years a Hammond.
- Tom Hiddleston was the SIARPC in the said episode, and immediately Jezza drops the all-important reference:
  Clarkson: (To Tom) I was half-expecting you to ask the audience to "Kneel before you."
  Tom: (Chuckles along with the audience) Not here; don't got my horns with me.
  - Then the Call-Back from Series 13:
  Clarkson: Well, does Loki drive a "Jaaaag"?
  Tom: I think Loki drives a spaceship.
  Clarkson: Yes he does. Is it a "Jaaaaag" spaceship?
  - During the preview of Tom's run, he stalls the Astra. Then later on, during the "actual lap"...
  Tom: (singing after getting past Chicago) "I'm forever driving in puddles..."^note
From episode 3:
- Richard Hammond gets a little excited during the talk about how a drunken Queen Elizabeth II could use her power to declare war on anyone.
  Richard Hammond: I want to be a drunk queen! [beat] dawning realization
  Jeremy Clarkson: Let's move on!
- James Blunt is the star for the episode, and (among other things, like admitting to maaaaaybe running over a paparazzo intentionally), he gets his lap time:
  James Blunt: [dreamily] And I'm just under Joss Stone! I'm always under—well, anyways!
  Crowd: [laughs]
  James Blunt: I can feel the eyes on the back of me head!
  [cut to a pretty blonde (his fiancee) behind him laughing hysterically]
- Hammond getting so bored by the lack of scenery in Ukraine that he takes a bite out of his car's sun visor.
- The trio making themselves "better people" to take care of the boredom during the drive: Jeremy teaches himself Ukrainian, Richard learns to play blues harmonica, and James demonstrates magic tricks.
- Jeremy's failed attempts at speaking Ukrainian.
- Jeremy "putting away his breakfast" by tossing the whole head of cabbage out the window and across Hammond's bonnet.
- When examining a decommissioned Soviet-era SS-18 ballistic missile, James May flicks his lighter behind it like it's a giant firework. All while Jeremy and Richard are laughing their socks off.
  James: I think it must be damp!
- James' doves escape from his magic kit into the back of his Dacia Sandero. He throws one out of the window to keep it from pooing on everything. It promptly gets hit by a truck, much to his distress and Hammond and Clarkson's taunting.
- Hammond's attempt at wasting fuel in his Ford by zig-zagging the entire 100-mile drive gets the whole convoy of camera and producer trucks pulled over with him by the police. Hammond continues to sit at maximum rev just to keep wasting fuel during the stop.
- Jeremy saying that, because he was forced to walk out of Pripyat, he's had to do the entire show with two penises. Then joking that it's not that strange since he's had to present Top Gear with two penises for the last eleven years.
Episode 4:
- After Jeremy reveals that Madame Tussaud's is going to make a waxwork of him, Hammond and May needle him about how much wax would be needed for the statue and how horrifyingly ugly the end result would be. Jeremy instantly gets his revenge on Hammond by bringing up a fault with the new Porsche GT3 - which Hammond had recently bought - that could cause it to catch fire, culminating in him testing his theory that pizzas are fire-retardant by strapping a couple of deep-pan pizzas to Hammond's crotch and taking a blowtorch to them. Luckily, Hammond comes away from it seemingly unscathed.
- Hammond, while driving the six-wheel Mercedes G-Wagon in the United Arab Emirates, notes that it has more wheels than anything else...at which point an eight-wheel Nissan drives past. One Verbal Backspace later, Hammond claims it's the most bonkers Mercedes; a Mercedes with monster-truck wheels promptly drives past. After another Verbal Backspace, Hammond claims that at least it's the biggest car out there, larger than a Range Rover or that little Jeep in the distance. The Jeep turns out to be not so little.
- Jeremy tries to pull off the Tablecloth Yank trick using a Nissan GT-R, to emulate an old advert showing a BMW superbike successfully pulling it off, and prove to Hammond that cars are better than bikes. The GT-R isn't quite as successful.
  Clarkson: (viewing the resulting carnage in slo-mo) There's the problem, he's going too slowly! ^note
  Hammond: Obviously that's in slow motion.
  Clarkson: If he hadn't been going in slow-motion, he would have succeeded!
- Christ on a bike!
Clarkson's Take That! towards Piers Morgan, in the form of a Stig introduction:
Clarkson: Some say that his hair is the exact same shape as a hat...
(audience laughs)
Clarkson: ...And that if he worked for CNN...
(audience laughs again, as Clarkson psyches himself up for the punchline)
Clarkson: ...He wouldn't get such pitifully low ratings that his show got cancelled.
(makes trademark smug face, as the audience applauds while laughing harder than previously...)

Series 22

The race in Saint Petersburg, with moments such as:
- Jeremy in his hovercraft trying to figure out how to work it (due to the controls being in Russian) "I don't know what any of that means!", and then his attempts of controlling it.
- The Stig, utilising public transport in the race, doesn't reach the finish line, because he spots a Porsche 911 and is banging his helmeted head against the railings of where it's parked.
The ambulance challenge, giving us such howlers as:
- Their first attempt at creating an ambulance, which is merely dressing up a P45 in ambulance colours, then towing a stretcher behind it. Which predictably, results in them "killing the patient" and the producers calling them "idiots", before telling them to come back and do it properly.
- The electric-driven rear door on James' Hearsebulance (a coverted Ford Scorpio Cardinal), which when James demonstrates it's opening, Jeremy and Richard can't help but crack jokes on how slow it is and how unhelpful to a patient in need it would be.
- The initials of the Traffic Urgent Rerouting & Dispersal System in Richard's ambulance.
- One of the tests included a lap around the track, with the Stig driving, while Jeremy, James and Richard were to be in the back, with the "patient", and during this one lap (which has three speed bumps), they were to put it's intestines back in, insert a drip and fit a catheter, with points awarded for speed and which one of the medical challenges they completed successfully. James then inquires if the catheter is the same thing that "goes up your old chap?" And then, James asks "Not on it?"
- Richard's run in his Chevy, in which his choice of using a simple, wheeled computer chair in the back was a mistake due to nothing holding it down to the floor. Then after he put the guts back in the patient, he checks for the airway, which results in the patient spewing out vomit, and Hammond's reaction to that is just hilarious. And to add to that, when he tries to fit the catheter:
  Richard Urgh! Now I'm covered in wee!
- James' run, which starts off with the Hearsebulance's tailgate slowly closing before immediately falling open and breaking as he sets off, causing Richard and Jeremy to absolutely crack up-
  James: [Completely straight-faced] I think you might've overdone it slightly on closing the tailgate, Stig.
- Jeremy's run in the Rambulance (a Porsche 944 Turbo), which proves to be a problem for him as he tries to get in, resulting in him "kicking" the patient. Plus it was a very uncomfortable ride for Jeremy, especially going over the speed bumps, and he remarks that he's "in a scene from Carrie" before wanting "Josh back from CASUAL+Y".
  - As the Rambulance sets off, Richard wonders something about Jeremy.
  Richard Is he focusing on getting the drip in? Or is he focusing on....?
  [cut to Jeremy transfixed by the fake penis]
  Jeremy: Trust in meee, trust in meee...
- Jeremy's rant on Speed Humps following his loss to Hammond in the lap time challenge-
Jeremy: Speed Humps... 600,000 people a year are killed in the back of ambulances by Speed Humps.
Richard: What you're doing is making that up.
Jeremy: Yes, but it- making a point. Making it up to make a point!
James: If it's one or more, it's an issue!
Jeremy: Go over it too fast, patient dies. Slow down to make it more comfortable, patient dies because they don't reach the hospital in time. Until this government gets rid of every single Speed Hump, we're all going to die.
- Richard Hammond's patient delivery system... an air cannon. The first time he fires it, the patient ends up under the wheels of a nearby ambulance whilst also destroying the door on Hammond's ambulance. The second time, during the final challenge:
  Richard: (when preparing to shoot his patient into the hospital) And now, 'coup de grace'. (presses button to open rear flap) Patient to hospital. (presses the cannon button, which launches the patient to the hospital, through the window)
  Jeremy: Hammond, you blithering idiot!
- James May walking like a Gerry Anderson marionette.
- In the final challenge, James encounters a Peugeot driver, and tries nicely to make him move out of the way,
  James: Sorry to disturb you, gentleman in the silver Peugeot, but this is an ambulance and this is a emergency. It really is a matter of great importance that you make way for the ambulance. Thank you.
  - Which is followed by, after the Peugeot driver continues to be unhelpful:
  James: I have been reasonably polite about this so far, I would like you to get out of the f**king way.
- Then when he turns up at the hospital, James's patient has fallen out the back of his ambulance, and he attempts to cover it up to Jeremy- claiming that his patient "got better" and decided to go to the Pub instead.
The episode following that...
- Stig is shown to be very angry with Daniel Ricciardo's extremely fast lap time in the Liana, going as far as punching cutouts of him and vandalizing the corner "Ricciardo is a co-(Cut by tyres)"
- Also when quizzed by Will Smith (accompanied by Margot Robbie) as to what went wrong in Argentina...
  Jeremy: Every f**king thing!
- After Jeremy asks Will about how filming in Argentina went for him:
  Will Smith: It was good, man. Argentina's fantastic.
  Jeremy: (completely straight-faced and dripping with sarcasm) Is it?
Ollie Murs' lap.
From the episode where they go to Australia, Jeremy lines the campsite at the farm with claymores "to stop any crocodiles from coming to eat them". One goes off in the night and it's revealed in the morning that a cow set it off by accident and got blown to bits. Hammond describes the blast site as resembling an abattoir.
- While failing to round up cows, a particularly stubborn cow starts head-butting the front of James's Nissan GT-R, much to Jeremy's amusement.
  - Even earlier than this, the cows actually end up surrounding James.
James: I've been herded by the cows.
- Speaking of James's GT-R, he and Hammond get into an argument over whether it or Hammond's Bentley is the best car.
  - James claims that it they strip everything off the GT-R, they find underneath the DNA of a racing car. Do the same with Richard's Bentley, it's a VW. Do the same with Hammond himself, you find the same basic skeleton of a racing driver when he was a little boy.
  - Hammond takes a jab at James's light-blue sneakers. James retorts with a jab at Richard's jacket.
Clarkson and May's "dramatic reenactment" of Peugeot's epic "breakfast meeting" where they randomly decide to make terrible cars instead of good ones. The Gratuitous French they spout is fantastic, but the pencil-thin mustaches drawn on everyone and the random accordion player really drive home the absolutely ridiculous French stereotyping. Even funnier is the disclaimer, which reads "Dramatic reconstruction: using actors", before adding "Not very good ones".
- Also, the pair driving like stereotypical Peugeot drivers.
  Peugeot!Jeremy: Maniac!
The show's decision to review a watch with an emergency beacon led to Richard getting stranded in a remote part of Canada... for four days. Since his rescuers were "supposed" to be Jeremy and James, it's not surprising the Hamster was quite furious at the end. Especially since Jeremy and James really took their time getting to Richard.
- When Jeremy and James get the call on Hammond's location at a restaurant in London, Jeremy remarks that they really do need to get a move on, and turns to face someone, supposedly to tell him that they're finishing up early, only for Jeremy to ask:
  Jeremy: Can we see the pudding menu?
- Jeremy, being stuck behind James in the snow at night, decides to turn on his "collapsed sun" to motivate him.
  James: CLARKSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!
  Jeremy: I've never ever encountered a light like this on the front of a vehicle.
  James: Seriously, very funny. Now can you please turn the big light off?
  Jeremy: Only when you speed up.
  (beat)
  James: TURN THE F**KING LIGHT OFF!
- Upon arriving in Canada, Jeremy and James make a bet that the first person to reach Richard does NOT need to take him back to Vancouver. Instead, the loser would be stuck with a most likely grumpy Hamster sitting next to him. Jeremy reaches Richard first and promptly drives away. Back at the studio, the audience learns that James' truck broke in-half off-camera^note so Richard had to be rescued off-screen by professionals. Richard is about to give his fellow hosts a piece of his mind but Jeremy reveals the show is out of time.
- Richard's rant up till then was pretty funny:
Richard: Hold on. THAT. Was. Shocking. I have seen Thunderbirds and I never saw Alan flying along, listening to Boston, eating a bar of chocolate. Neither did I see Virgil suggesting they stop for a cappuccino. They were both focused on the job in hand.
(after James reveals that his car broke)
Richard: Yeah, I did wonder if you were going to mention that, because it wasn't in the film. In the end, neither Thunderbird Fat nor Thunderbird Slow actually rescued me. No, an actual rescue person had to come and save me. And can I just talk about the four days - FOUR DAYS - of misery I endured whilst you two dawdled from breakfast to breakfast in your heated trucks.
Jeremy: No, I'm sorry, there isn't time.
- At one point Richard gets so frustrated he builds little effigies of Jeremy and James out of sticks and logs. Then he starts insulting them, in a rant that has to be seen to be believed. Then he starts throwing knives at them.
Richard: In the cock! Hah! Right in the nads!
The Finale, made out of two challenges that were filmed before the incident that ended the original run, sends the trio off on some good howlers.
- The intro plays as it normally would. (with the exception that Hammond is the one narrating what the trio will be doing) But once it cuts to Clarkson ("Hello!")...
Hammond: ["Voiceover"] Oh dear...this is a bit embarrassing....
- After the intro we see Hammond and May in the empty studio explaining The Classic Car Challenge despite the elephant in the room, figuratively and literally...
- The Classic Car Challenge: After seeing how their classic cars need some work, the trio takes them to the sheds to tinker with them... for 6 whole months while a time passage montage takes place.
- Hammond ordering "two pints of bitter, one rosary wine, large, a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, and biltong!"
- Hammond's victory in the Classic Car Challenge is a place in the air show. A seat on top of one of the biplanes. His dialogue consists of complaining or screaming at the top of his lungs. Possibly the best parts are Clarkson and May completely ignoring him screaming in the background as the plane goes past.
Hammond: Oh, dear God! Why did my car have to work?! Why didn't I pick a Fiat?! This is about the least happy I've ever been! And I've been pretty unhappy!
- Cheap SUV Challenge: Wouldn't be a finale without a little caravan destruction. Overtaking tag goes horribly wrong with Richard ripping his caravan in two after getting overtaken.
  Hammond: I see the problem there.
  - Also, James accidentally drives onto the surface designed to test suspension, and we're treated to him being bounced up and down repeatedly while he shouts, "That was a catastrophic mistake!"
- Their final challenge is to drive to a fancy gala for an environmentalist organization without taking any roads. The loser gets to recite the after-dinner speech. Hilarity ensues.
  - Highlights of the event include James getting lost in a sheep pen, Richard losing his shoes in the mud, and Jeremy getting stuck in a cold river and staying warm by wetting himself.
  - At the very end of the challenge, Richard gets the honor of reciting the after-dinner speech, and does it completely off the top of his head. The result is something to behold.

Series 27

During Episode 2, while testing their budget battery powered sports cars, Paddy, Freddie and Chris turn up to a go-kart track, where they have to complete the course, without touching the sides, in which if they do, they receive an electric shock ("from a guy called Martin"). Only problem is, is that the shock is delivered after pressing, a big red button, which is in easy reach of those not racing, resulting in very predictable and hilarious results, with Paddy being shocked well before he even starts (multiple times!), and Chris taking one shock that makes him unable to steer. Then, with Freddie, Paddy and Chris convince Martin to take a break, and take over the big red button, only to be utterly shocked (no pun intended) as Freddie just barely reacts to it. After he crosses the finish line, Chris speaks to Freddie on how the "BBC Technical Department" were convinced that it wasn't working, due to technical difficulties and that they want to do another run, only for Freddie to respond that it was definitely working.

Series 28

While doing the Best Convertibles for less than £600 challenge, Paddy, Chris and Freddie take part in a time trial. Which seems pretty basic stuff. Only catch is, their cars have been fitted with "lube cannons" that, at random times, spurt lube at them. And the results are, quite messy. Not to mention that Paddy actually crashed after 42 yards, the first time.

Series 30

Paddy gets to act out his James Bond fantasies by driving the Aston Martin DB5 Goldfinger Continuation, an official restoration and modification featuring revolving number plates, smoke screen, oil slick, and bulletproof screen, naturally. Then he demonstrates the retractable machine guns, which turn out to be a couple of fake barrels that poke out and light up while cheap toy sound effects play on speakers.
- Freddie and Chris get roped in to play Jaws and Oddjob, respectively, with Freddie unable to say a word because the plastic teeth he has to wear are much too big for his mouth.

Series 32

During Episode 2, after Paddy, Chris and Freddie are trying out "cop cars" from the past, the three of them head off for a disused power station with more up-to-date cars (an Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody for Paddy, an Audi RS 3 for Chris and a Ford F-150 Raptor for Freddie). There, they try out their own cop show ideas, with Paddy as "Dirty Cobra", Chris as "Dave Tall", and Freddie as "The Preston Ranger". Needless to say, when they turn up, things get hilarious when Paddy gets out of the car wearing shades and leather jacket, with a toothpick in his mouth to spit out and an accent, before Freddie reveals his get-up and choice of weapon (a cricket bat, obviously), much to Chris and Paddy's amusement.
- Later in that same episode, when testing out their cars in a "chase" sequence, when he spots the other two, Paddy throws his coffee out of his side window... except the window was closed.

Series 33

In Episode 5, Paddy, Chris and Freddie attempt to see which is the best delivery van on a budget. When they first turn up, with Chris in a Ford Transit and Freddie in a Vauxhall Astra, Paddy turns up in a Volkswagen Caddy that he has decorated in standard Royal Mail livery (but labelled "Royal Male" and using the initials of P and M, for obvious reasons) and is dressed up like a familiar Postman character, leading to inevitable monikers of "Postman Paddy". Paddy, as it turns out, not only has the glasses of that character, but a Jess of his own, which turned out to be a stuffed cat with an expression that absolutely is horrifying.

Overseas Specials

From the Arctic challenge:
- One of the trio's instructors, a former special forces soldier, has his face pixelated. Jeremy repeatedly remarks on the effect.
- Better yet is the soldier in question becoming completely exasperated by the trio's ineptitude at setting up tents. Then there is his solution to the guys refusing to jump into a hole in the ice, so that he can teach them how to recover from a fall into frigid waters.
  Pixel Man: Right. In your own time, I want all three of you to jump in. (beat) What's the problem?
  Hammond: Well, hang on. So at the Pole, we'd all three be standing in a line with safety harnesses on holding poles when we fall in the water? It's a silly test, I'm not doing that.
  May: Well, actually, to be honest, the whole point of this is that you have to be able to take your clothes off and put more clothes on again very quickly, and I've practiced that in my hotel room.
  Clarkson: What is it when you've got like a tingling down your arm and chest— (is interrupted by the soldier shoving him into the water)
- The soldier proceeds to relentlessly harangue Jeremy while he struggles to climb out of the water, bellowing at him to get his hands over his head and roll in the snow while a sodden and indignant Clarkson can only sputter "How dare you . . ."
- James May voicing the opinion of everyone who hates winter:
  May: Can I make it absolutely clear, here, now, that I'm only here because the producers said I had to be. I don't like snow, I hate being cold, I hate outdoor pursuits, I hate the idea that I've got to push my body to find the limit, I can't stand this stupid clothing that makes this rustling noise when you move all the time, and I hate the zips, and the toggles, and all the pockets, and that velcro thing and I hate the stupid truck.
- Soon afterwards, Clarkson commenting to May that this means he's the first person to go to the North Pole who didn't want to go.
- After Clarkson takes advantage of the lack of drink driving laws in international waters, Hammond starts referring to Clarkson and May as "Team G&T" as opposed to his own "Team Dog".
- Clarkson attempting to teach Hammond and May how to ski is full of pratfalls and humor, including Hammond accidentally finding himself stuck in the rope tow lane and repeatedly apologizing as he attempts (and fails) to dodge incoming skiers and hops away on one ski (the other was knocked off by a collision). And when he actually gets to the Arctic:
  Hammond: You taught me downhill skiing, this is cross country! You might as well have taught me to play the banjo!
The American Roadtrip episode:
- Jeremy jokes that his car is popular with murderers but then he finds a crumpled shirt in the trunk and assumes the worst.
- The boys are challenged to go camping and can only eat roadkill they find on the trip. After initial attempts only yeild a squirel, Jeremy goes scouting for more. As Richard and James debate on how to peel a squirel, both are stunned into silence by Jeremy's roadkill haul, an entire cow on the roof of his Camero.
- The "Don't Get Shot Or Arrested" challenge.
Clarkson: James, what I reckon you've done there is, you've killed your friend.
Clarkson: They've shot their own sign. What're they gonna do to us?
May: Here we are, Sweet Home Alabama. (Starts making ricochet noises).
The Botswana Roadtrip:
- During the part in which they went through the Okavango Delta to get to Namibia, the three entered the Moremi Game Reserve, in which Jeremy described as being a place where wildlife cameramen "make a name for themselves with David Attenborough", before adding that their own film crew isn't much good at filming wildlife, due to being more used to filming with cars, prompting scenes in which the film crew are trying to get their cameras to film giraffes, elephants and baboons.
Clarkson: If we ever do a programme called The Back End of an Animal, these are the boys to hire.
Hammond: This week on Too Late to Look!
- While trying to put a dead horse's head in James' tent, they end up trapped there because a hippo has come into the camp. And then...
  Hammond: Hang on- That's my bag in James' tent......This is MY tent!! [Clarkson bursts out laughing] Oh, man, get it out!
- "OLIVER!!!!!"^noteThis one wound up being their favorite sound of the year.
  - After Hammond sinks Oliver, he's told it's probably never going to run again. Next morning, Hammond shows up in Oliver, running better than ever. Clarkson and May are at a complete loss for words.
    Clarkson: Is that even technically possible?!
    Hammond: Probably not.
  - In the episode after that, it's revealed Richard bought "Oliver" and was having "him" shipped to England. The following exchange takes place:
    May: Are you sure it's not just a typical holiday romance? You'll get him home, and he'll be horrid!
    Clarkson: Richard. He only wants a British passport.
    May: Or an MoT.
    Hammond: Listen, it's real! He loves me, and he's coming home! That's a fact. [audience goes "awwwwww"] This is happening.
    Clarkson: I'm going to be sick.
- "There's a man over there with the best comb-over I have ever seen in my life."
The Vietnam episode:
- Starting off the producers gave them 15 million Vietnamese Dong to buy their vehicle. The trio thought the producers were being extremely generous, right up until they found out that it's roughly only $1000 US dollars or approximately £500.
- "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORN IN THE USAAAAAAAA..."
  Clarkson: Children, if you're watching this at home, and you don't know why this is inappropriate, ask your parents, but this is about as inappropriate a bike as it's humanly possible to conceive.
  - Becomes even more funny when one learns the song was an anti-war song that did not portray being born in the USA as a necessarily good thing.
  - However, the DVD edition uses "The Star-Spangled Banner" instead, so that makes it a little confusing.
- Also, every single second that Jeremy Clarkson was on a motorbike.^note
  Hammond: (To May) Do you think [Jeremy's] enjoying his first biking experience?
  Clarkson: I am the most MISERABLE human being ALIVE!!!
- The Running Gag of the presenters cheering each other up with "We've bought you a present!" - which inevitably turned out to be something huge, bulky and hard to get on the back of a motorbike.
  - After the sheer amount of bonding and hardship they go through, they all seem to get quite depressed when their presents are subsequently ruined, and if that's really a spoiler you haven't been watching this show very long (especially James May) and so there's a quite nice scene where they try and stitch everything back together while on a train. And no, it doesn't really make sense in context either.
  - There's a good Bait-and-Switch moment in the latter scene where Hammond is trying to fix his damaged painting and decides to paint a car into the scene. We don't see the painting while he's working on it and are primed to expect something awful, but then it turns out he actually did quite well^note.
  Hammond: It's difficult, really, to explore the allegorical significances and layers of the painting when I'm, well...sober.
- Clarkson's utter lack of experience with motorcycles leads him to buy a Vespa, a scooter with a one-cylinder engine.
- Clarkson discovering someone has written the word "Penis" on his helmet. Cue Gilligan Cut;
  Hammond [Cheerfully]: I did that!
- Clarkson presenting Hammond with a child-sized mannequin. "Your suit's ready - here it is!"
- James' remark while being measured for new clothes: "If she leaves that tape measure under my armpit any longer, it'll rot." Also Jeremy's and Richard's reaction to that line.
- After having quite a few shots of snake blood vodka, Jeremy and James then proceed to flatten Richard's helmet, and in the morning present him with a new helmet they had bought, which is bright pink.
  May: Now, don't take this the wrong way because colours assume different roles in different cultures.
  Hammond: Stop talking.
  May: In Britain we think of that as a typically feminine colour.
  Hammond: Stop moving your face about with noises coming out of it like that.
  May: Here it's the colour of warriors!
- Hammond is understandably angry when he finds out that Jeremy and James spray-painted his bike pink, while he was trying to mend his galleon. Cue a sarcastic "Oh, dear!" when, while riding along, the galleon hits a tree he passes.
- The entire part where they have to go to driving school to enter North Vietnam.
  - "Always give way to the car from the right!" "You had a one in a hundred chance of being right, but it was in the wrong language." Becomes even funnier when you consider that Hammond's answer was likely wrong anyway as they drive on the right hand side of the road in Vietnam meaning you always give way from the left not the right.
  - Followed shortly afterward by the revelation that Clarkson actually learned enough Vietnamese to understand the oral driver's exam, and answer the question directed at him; the legal age required to get a full motorcycle license (the answer being 18).
    Clarkson: Did you not bother learning Vietnamese before you came here?
    Hammond: Well, no!
    Clarkson: ...you're screwed, then!
  - "Jeremy Clarkson: Fail."
- Hammond falling over his motorbike and headbutting May in the "gentleman's region," almost immediately followed by Jeremy Clarkson crowing that he was going "where no American had gone before" and then promptly taking a tumble.
- After learning the last part of the challenge where they have to make their bikes amphibious to reach the finish line.
  Clarkson: How hard can it be?
  Hammond: Don't say that!
- By the middle as three middle-aged English men ride motorcycles through Vietnam in brightly colored suits being comical at every end you'll start to wonder when this episode of Top Gear became a very good Wes Anderson movie.
- Jeremy's closing monologue, which ends with most surprising things ever to come out Jeremy's mouth: "Vietnam: You don't know, man! You weren't there!"
- When James and Jeremy got all of the natives to paint Hammond's motorbike, one native took some paint and started painting someone else's bike.
The South American Trip:
- Right at the start, the helicopter shots, with Clarkson's narration.
- Jeremy Clarkson sinking into the river.
  Clarkson [narrating]: As I sank into the ooze, my colleagues became increasingly concerned.
  Hammond [choking with laughter]: His plums are in the Amazon, look!
- The opening moments of their first drive through the jungle, complete with dramatic music and exciting action shots, only for it to stop abruptly because Clarkson forgot his phone at the river bank. Which was still within literal shouting distance. Who knew the Top Gear guys could make the act of drinking water epic?
- When they first try to cross the gully, Jeremy's Range Rover gets stuck at the bottom, and James tries to winch the car out with his Suzuki. Inevitably, the Range Rover stays put while the Suzuki gets pulled down into the gully after it.
- From the deleted scenes, Clarkson attacks May's truck with a chainsaw, causing them to nearly get in a chainsaw vs. machete fight.
  Clarkson [looking at chainsaw]: I like this!
  Hammond: Yeah, I know. If you do anything more manly, you're in danger of making yourself pregnant.
- And from the episode proper, Clarkson's unveiling of the chainsaw.
  Clarkson: I am the God of Hellfire!
  Richard: Does he have a chainsaw?
  Jeremy: ''Oh, yes!''
  Richard: Oh god...
- Jeremy has to pull James out of a tight spot:
  James: Please be gentle about this, Jeremy. Please be gentle about this and not a yob.
  Jeremy: POWERRR!!
- While they're travelling across the deadliest road in the world, James, who is terrified of heights, threatens the other two with his machete if they rear-end him. Jeremy truly accidentally does- not that this stops James from sticking a machete through his window. Hammond is in the back and you can't tell if he's scared or just amused.
  Richard: Did your co-presenter on your television programme just attack you with a machete?
  Jeremy: Yes, he did. He came to the window and he was quite cross because I ran into him.
  Richard: That doesn't happen on, like, clothes programmes or gardening shows.
- Hammond repeatedly freaking out at all the bugs in the Amazon.
- Hammond getting a buzz off coca leaves in Bolivia and chatting at double speed.
- At the end of special, they're about to go down the big dune that's the last obstacle of their challenge. Hammond gets out of his car to say something. As he's talking his car starts rolling down the hill (complete with a few curses) and crashes. Hammond then runs after it, yelling out the name of his car. "Donkey!"
  - "Donkey was dead."
- Jeremy meeting with Bolivian border guards who pat him down for drugs while respecting his privacy and preserving his dignity.
  MY ARSE!
The Middle East Special:
- The start where the doors to the cargo plane open and reveal that they're still hundreds of feet in the air, with all of their cars lined up to drop out the back. All of them begin screaming in terror immediately, with Hammond (at the front) getting a closeup as James tells him to put the handbrake on.
- When Hammond asks why they can't simply drive west through Iraq, Jeremy looks at him like he's a bit simple and says in the most condescending way possible, "Have you ever seen a television program called the news??". Hammond replies, "Well, I'm aware of it".
  - Later, when they arrive into Syria and discuss the political issues of entering Israel from Syria, Hammond suggests going through Lebanon. Jeremy, once again, can't help but look down on him.
  Hammond: Why can't we just go through the Lebanon?
  Clarkson: The Lebanon into Israel?
  May (sarcastically): That's a great idea!
  Clarkson: That- You'll find that really tricky.
- Their message from the producers when they cross the border into Turkey: "You idiots." While the boys have been worrying about being in Iraq and are happily ditching their flack jackets. The message continues: "You have just left a region where there is no war [Iraqi Kurdistan] and are entering a region where there IS war [Turkish Kurdistan]."
- Jeremy's Sand Door. He tries to bulletproof his car by filling the doors with sand because sandbags are bulletproof, so why shouldn't a sand door be? When a special forces soldier fires a round into Jeremy's door, the bullet goes straight through it. Jeremy later claims that sandbags are useless too.
- Their conversation in the desert about their roles in nativity plays.
  Hammond: I was a mouse once in a school Nativity play. Explain that.
  Clarkson: A mouse? Well, because they wanted something unbelievably small.
  Hammond: I remember, I had a cardboard mouse-head costume.
  Clarkson: I was the front of the donkey. I took the costume off halfway through, so people could see it was me.
  May: Nobody could tell the difference!
- This leads to a Brick Joke when they reach their destination and find a mouse in a cage running a wheel.
  Hammond: See, I told you there was a mouse.
- Clarkson being unable to find myrrh, so he decides to get a Nintendo DS.
- The reveal of who the baby in the manger is. It's a baby Stig.
- May getting knocked on his arse by the tow rope is funny, until you realise that he's genuinely hurt and suffered a concussion from the fall.
- After May was taken to hospital,Clarkson and Hammond continue to press on driving in the rocky desert. Then the camera pans out to show huge ancient ruins. When the camera returns to Clarkson and Hammond, you'd think they're gonna comment on it until....
  Clarkson: Hammond?
  Hammond:Yep?
  Clarkson:You know what that is, don't you? [Beat] IT'S A ROAD!
- The exchange when May joins them again, which also serves as Heartwarming in the usual Top Gear way:
  Clarkson: You really are better?
  May: Completely.
  Clarkson: Who am I?
  May: You're a big cock.
  Hammond: And who am I?
  May: Irritating little sod.
  Clarkson and Hammond [happily]: He's better.
- Jeremy's delusions that he's Jesus Christ by the Sea of Galilee:
  - He says, "Well, it's me, because I'm, you know, JC.". Hammond quickly says, "No, you're Jeremy Clarkson."
  - He takes off May's bandage and claims that he healed him. He then seems to think it's a miracle that there's no trace of the thorn that pricked his arm days ago. Hammond says that his arm got better of its own.
  - He says that he turned one sweet onto an entire bag. Hammond disagrees.
    Hammond: No, it was a bag full of sweets.
  - He says that it's a miracle that two fish was enough fish to go round. How was it possible? Hammond doesn't like fish.
  - He tries to walk on water and fails.
    Clarkson: I've invented swimming!
The India Special:
- The boy's Oh, Crap! expressions when given a direct order from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to stay away from India.
- The idea of the special is that they're to advertise Britain in India. At the start of the trip, after Clarkson and May have picked at each others' cars, Hammond arrives in a Mini with a British flag on the roof...
Clarkson: (sotto voce) That is a thing of beauty.
May: (sotto voce) That's quite a good idea, actually, but don't tell him. (louder) Hammond, you idiot!
Clarkson: (louder) You idiot!
- This one hasn't been as well-received as the others, but it does have one of the best Deadpan Snarker moments ever delivered by James May:
May: Why don't you go and wash the cars? That would be really useful...
Clarkson: I've washed them...
May: You haven't. I can see from here that it's still dirty and it still says "penis" on the bonnet. Go and do it properly.
- And then, after Jeremy "accidentally" squirts James, the two proceed to fight over the garden hose like two kids.
- When the Mini's entire front rips off as a result of trying to winch up the Rolls-Royce. Even funnier because Hammond doesn't realize what's happened and is still trying to direct the other two in the winching job while they try to get him to shut up and look at his car. Then his expression when he does see the Mini is hilariously pathetic.
- Hammond's horrified look when he realised he'd accidentally painted the Mexican flag on the bonnet of his mini, not the Indian flag.
- The credits replacing everyone's last name with an Indian dish as the out of control lawnmower from the garden party slowly rolls through the Himalayas in the background to "Hey Jude".^note
- As part of the "promote British industry in India" Excuse Plot, the lads decide to put banners on the sides of the trains, reading "THE UNITED KINGDOM PROMOTES BRITISH I.T. FOR YOUR COMPANY" and "EAT ENGLISH MUFFINS". Then the train decouples, tearing the banners in the worst possible place.
- James gets left behind at a train station before the banners tear, and at Jaipur when Jeremy unloads the Rolls Royce Shadow from the train, he discovers that James lied about not having air conditioning. Naturally, Richard and Jeremy sabotage it because Gandhi would've wanted them to.
Clarkson: (throwing a wrench over his shoulder onto the pavement in plain sight) "No tools, no murder weapon."
- Speaking of which, when James got left behind, he urges Jeremy and Richard to pull the cord to stop the train and allow him on. They're considering to do so, but there's a warning stating that to do so "without reasonable and sufficient cause" would result in a fine of a thousand rupees, which they think is around "13 quid", to which Hammond remarks he hasn't got that sort of money, leading to Clarkson pulling a face and saying "I'm not paying 13 quid".
- "Hammond, we're not camping." Cue Gilligan Cut.
- Clarkson and Hammond wiring James's brakes to the horn, so that his horn honks every time he brakes.
- Although Clarkson and May aren't happy that Hammond forces them to camp high up in the mountains, they eventually find something to joke about.
Clarkson: Why can't we ever do a Christmas special where we go from Monaco to Portofino? (Hammond laughing) 'How luxurious can this be?'
May: (playing along) I was the first to check in to a five-star hotel, and as you can see, I've done it properly. A man's carrying all my bags. But then Jeremy arrived.
Clarkson: Yes. (mimics a novelty car horn playing "La Cucaracha") 'Oh my word, Jeremy, look what you've got as your car! It's the new Ferrari FF.'
May: 'I wonder where Hammond is.' Hammond had indeed checked into a Formula 1 in a Renault 4.
Hammond: (laughs)
- Also, when the three of them were camping, the conversation also turns into Jeremy remarking that Hammond likes to camp because he's secretly an American, as well as Jeremy and James making impersonations of each other sleeping.
The second Africa special:
- Jeremy's genuine amazement over how a woman, who barely reaches his chest in height, can casually carry a bowl of bananas on her head, which turns out to be so heavy that he needs her help to carry all them into his car.
  - There's also the fact that Jeremy just wanted to buy one banana, but due to not knowing the money exchange rate, accidentally buys the entire bowlful, which was easily big enough to take up two of his car's seats.
- Clarkson trying to fix a throttle problem with his car by simply tapping the top of his engine with a large sledgehammer as James and Richard try not to laugh, as if they're waiting for him to notice....
Clarkson: What else is electrical in here?
May and Hammond [simultaneously]: Not the exhaust manifold.
Clarkson: Well, I've done the fuse box if that's what that is.
May and Hammond [simultaneously]: That's an air filter.
- Richard's fear of insects causing him to litter his car with bug zapper lamps.
- The presenters find a town named Jezza. Cue a series of bad puns.
- Richard's Insane Troll Logic that tea plantation fields have hotels in them, due to people who sample tea for companies, needing somewhere to stay. Cue the title card revealing them still driving "Many, many, miles later...".
  - At the hotel Richard found, Jeremy discovering that the mattress in his room is covered in excrement.
    Clarkson: HAMMOND!
- The trio meet at Christ the King Corner Supplies, which is shut, leading James to quip that Christ the King hasn't risen yet.
- As previously, the Top Gear film crew fail to capture any animals in a good shot. Hammond points out an elephant and wanders into a trap Jeremy sets up with that.
Hammond: Big elephant on the right-hand side of the road.
Jeremy: Ohh, this feels familiar Hammond, you telling me about animals you've just seen that I haven't.
Hammond: (Starts cackling like a madman) Oh, you evil sod.
Jeremy: James, do you know what that show was called again?
Hammond: ''(While they're talking) Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!
James: Was it "Richard Hammond Coming To You From A Tent In The Dark"?
Jeremy: No, it was a little man who was saying "I had a wonderful day, I've seen loads of animals, unfortunately, this is live and it's dark now."
Hammond: Shut up!
- Jeremy's crackpot theory on why the British explorers had so much problem following the Nile to its source. The idea being that they just wanted to have fun for a few years away from their wives and made the whole trip up.
  - Followed by the presenters constantly thinking up false letters to their wives in this fashion.
- During the interminable wait at the border crossing between Rwanda and Tanzania, Jeremy and James amuse themselves by re-arranging the letters in "SUBARU" on the back of Richard's car to read "U ARSE".
  - Later followed by changing the letters on James's car to "OLD".
- Just like in the previous Africa special, their belief that watching American tourists is more interesting than any local wildlife.
- The presenters' Escalating War of constant theft of pieces from each other's cars to mend their own.
  - When the skid plate of James' Volvo is torn off after a collision with a speed bump, he fashions a crude replacement by cutting a square piece out of the passenger side door of Jeremy's BMW and bolting it onto the underside of his car. Jeremy doesn't even notice until much later in the day, after they've gone down nearly a hundred miles of mud-choked road towards Rwanda...
  - Later, Jeremy gets revenge for the door theft by cutting a hole in James' bonnet to put over the hole in his door. James, inevitably, is less angry about the theft than he is at Jeremy's shoddy workmanship in cutting the hole ("It looks like it was done with a knife and fork by the Council!"). He in turn cuts a portion of Richard's bonnet to cover the hole in his car. Richard completes the circle by putting a piece of plywood with the toilet seat from Jeremy's "outside toilet" over the hole in his bonnet (which he dubbed the "poop scoop"). That toilet was originally hanging off of Jeremy's driver door, and the entire crew is seen lining up to use it. They still do when it's right over Hammond's engine.
  - Speaking of the Escalating War, James' discovery of Jeremy stealing part of his bonnet also counts:
    Clarkson [narrating]: As dawn broke, the peace and serenity of this beautiful Ugandan morning was shattered by the bellow of a wild animal.
    May: CLARKSOOOOOOOOOON!!!
  - Because neither the handbrake nor the throttle of his car are fully functional, Jeremy ties a log to the back of the car so that, if he needs to make a hill start, he can place the log parallel to the back of his car, roll back into it, and make a hill start without worrying about the car rolling backwards. He is delighted with his new invention... until, as the trio are driving down a hill, the log bounces up and completely shatters his rear window. When Richard is selecting what to cook for dinner that night (beans), Clarkson's Aside Glance at the camera as he notices and begins measuring the rear window of Hammond's car reveals his intent to steal it during the night to replace his broken one. And so he does. Richard puts another piece of plywood over the boot lid, making it impossible to see out of the back of the car. Further, Jeremy claims he just happened to find a rear window of the appropriate size sitting there in the middle of Africa.
    Jeremy: Sometimes my genius is... it's almost frightening!
- The forfeit car for the challenge (ie, the car the presenters will be obliged to drive if their cars break beyond repair) is a Ford Scorpio. After they have towed their own cars across a river using a "homemade" car ferry, they are celebrating their first ever "Ambitious, but Rubbish" success as, in the background, the labcoat-clad producers are loading the Scorpio onto the ferry... only for the car to plunge into the river and sink to the bottom.
- Hammond's armchair falling into the river because Clarkson stole the rope securing it for use in constructing the ferry. Becomes even more amusing when after floating a short way down the river, they notice a local man fishing it out and carrying it away, apparently having declared "Dibs!"
  Hammond: Enjoy it!
- Jeremy praying to God as James loads his Volvo onto the ferry to "make it go upside-down."
- Making the car ferry to the tune of an African remix of The A-Team theme.
- Jeremy trying to distract Richard during the race to the finish by blaring Genesis from his rooftop bullhorn.
  Hammond: ....oh God! Not that!
  - Hammond is undeterred by this, forcing Jeremy to change tactics.
  Clarkson: Sadly, though, Genesis didn't work...so I rammed him
- The photo at the end with the text reading James May. Discoverer of the true source of the river Nile. And two other blokes.
- The credits adding "Dr." and "I presume?" to every name.
From the Burma special:
- The trio runs out of diesel and need to go to the next village... on horses. Jeremy calls his "Tesco".
- When Jeremy looks for diesel in the local village, Hammond tells him to use hand gestures in case the locals don't speak English. He mimes turning a steering wheel, then mimes a filler nozzle. Jeremy interprets the gestures differently.
So I'm a butler with Parkinson's [moving steering wheel] and I have a gun [filler nozzle]. Got it.
- May thinks he is clever when he attaches a mountaineering tent to the end of his lorry's crane to sleep in. Unfortunately, his snoring also keeps Clarkson awake. Three guesses how Clarkson moves the tent.
  James: I don't like heights, i don't like camping.
  Jeremy: I don't like snoring.
  - The second time James does this, Clarkson hangs the tent over the river... and tips James out.
- After admiring the Burmese for preparing for the future by building a twenty-lane motorway around their capital city, they point out that the current size of the capital means there is absolutely zero traffic on it most of the time, demonstrating by stopping to play football in the middle of it.
- When the weight off all the bricks in the back of his lorry prevents him from getting enough traction to climb the hill, Clarkson, being... well, Clarkson, decides to dump the entire lot of them into the middle of the road. He then decides to happily drive off, forcing Hammond and May to shift the bricks, blocking the road for their own lorries.
  Hammond: I've got a new name for you on the tag handle, it's called Selfish Bastard!
- HAMMOND, YOU IDIOT! YOU'VE REVERSED INTO THE SPORTS LORRY!!!
- To get back at Hammond for driving off after the aforementioned Sports-Lorry-Reversing-Into, James and Jeremy come across the reservoir on the roof of his truck that powers his Shower, and urinate in it. What really sells it is when the two hear Hammond taking a shower later on with it, blissfully unaware of what's been going on-
  Hammond: It's actually warm! So warm, fresh rainwater...
  Clarkson: (Quietly, to James) Golden Rain!
  Hammond: ...you can taste the goodness! (Jeremy and James burst out laughing) It tastes of the outdoors!
- Later on, James and Richard play a prank on Jeremy when he's asleep in the back of his Sports Lorry — which James masterminds out of revenge for raising him high off the ground in his tent;
  Clarkson: What the-?! (The back of his Sports Lorry tips up, causing him and his bed to fall out of it) JEEEESUS CHRIIIIIIIIIIST! Ow!
  May: (Voiceover) The next morning, despite the tranquility of our surroundings, Jeremy hit the road in a... fractious mood.
  Clarkson: (Angrily) Why did you tip me out of my Lorry?!
  May: Because you swung me around in my tent!
  Clarkson: Well you deserved that, because you're irritating! I'm never irritating!
  May: That's a good point Jeremy raises! I-I feel quite bad about it now, because when's he ever been irritating?
  Hammond: (Cracks up laughing)
- The trio commenting in the Shan State that they're possibly the first Westerners these people have ever seen... standing right in front of a banner advertising Chelsea football club.
- As the trio arrives by the River Kwai, they are instantly complaining about the arduous journey they have made here and how much this whole trip has traumatised them badly, only for a golden envelope from the producers to arrive. And it reads thusly:
Jeremy: (reading from the envelope) "The prisoners of war walked to the bridge site. You have driven here, so shut up."
- Jeremy Clarkson driving up in a massive crane next to the one driven by James May, as dramatic music blares in the background...only for Clarkson's crane to tip over and land on its side.
- As the group is nearly finishing building a Bridge Over the River Kwai, Clarkson looks at some maps comes to a horrible realization;
  Clarkson: Well, you know we thought we were building a bridge over the River Kwai, which is noble.
  Hammond: We are.
  Clarkson: We're not. (points to river) The name of that river...
  (Clarkson shows Hammond and May the map)
  Hammond: The Kok...?
  Clarkson: Top Gear is building a bridge over the River Kok.
- Clarkson then proceeds to imitate a posh BBC presenter in an attempt to display just how bad "building a bridge over the River Kok" would sound like on TV.
Scary as the Patagonia special was, it still had moments of amusement.
- Clarkson's favorite movie of all time, it turns out, is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Visiting Cassidy's homestead therefore triggers all manner of references, much to the annoyance of his co-presenters. It culminates in him re-enacting the famous bicycle scene with his Porsche in neutral, distracting his co-presenters by going back and forth with his fancy riding tricks. Instead of playfully throwing straw in Clarkson's face to end it, May opts for a log.
  Clarkson: Ow!
- Clarkson and May poking fun at Hammond refueling his Mustang.
- Jeremy is...not happy about the modifications his colleagues have made to his car
Every bone in their crotches. That's what I'm gonna break.
- After all the misery the trio dealt with on the route Hammond picked out, James wasn't all that pleased that they are going to camp for the night
  May: HOLD ON, YOU'RE NOT SAYING IT'S A BLOODY CAMP SITE?! [cuts to Hammond wincing in fear] SO YOU PULLED ME OVER TO A CRAP ROAD, WORSE THAN THE ONE WE WERE ON, WE'VE GOT A CAR DOWN, YOU RUINED THE LOTUS, AND AT THE END OF THIS YOU WANT ME TO STAY IN A TENT?! YOU MIGHT FIND ONE OF YOUR TENT POLES IS MISSING, BUT DON'T WORRY! I KNOW WHERE IT IS, I'LL HAVE SHOVED IT UP YOUR A-
  Hammond: The signal's is a bit dodgy at the moment James but I-I guess you got the message back there...

Other Specials & Related Shows

It's not technically on Top Gear, but Harry and Paul's Clarkson Island Sketch is probably one of the funniest sketches...
- ...
- ...
- Wait for iiit...
- ...in the world.
This, too, is not technically Top Gear, and not really a moment, but, everything James May does on that Top Gear Meets Gordon Ramsay's The F Word special.
May [to Gordon after beating him at the recipe challenge]: Are you any good at driving?
The entire Top Ground Gear Force special. However, the best moments have to be the repeated destruction of James' shed, Hammond getting stuck in the concrete, Hammond's jet-powered barbecue (which set the shed on fire) and Jeremy's turbocharged water feature. Which exploded, firing off the top bit which predictably took out the greenhouse which happened to be the one thing that actually worked.
[May discovers the wreckage of his shed courtesy of Clarkson blowing up Sir Redgrave's flowerbed, which had one of the rocks crash into the side of the shed.]
Clarkson: [voiceover] James didn't take the news well.
May: LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO MY BLOODY SHED, MAN?!
[Cut to May confronting Clarkson on the site of his shed.]
Clarkson: I had this bomb... and it- That'll buff out!
[beat]
May: What time is this programme on? Is it ten o'clock?
Clarkson: Yeah?
May: Is it ten o'clock on BBC Two? Are we beyond the watershed?
Clarkson: Yes.
May: You're a fuc-
The Winter Olympics episode. Any given challenge (which can be said for the show as a whole), but the biathlon just starts things off. Jeremy Clarkson. Enough said.
May: The thing about Jeremy's shooting is that you are perfectly safe as long as you are standing right in front of the target.
- When he has to do the shooting a second time, he claims to know how to fold the seats away, as he has one at home. He winds up having to call his wife for help.
- And then, once he gets around to the shooting, he claims to have learned his lesson from last time. After his attempt to apply More Dakka with a MP5 submachine gun on full auto, it's revealed that he cut down a tree instead of hitting the targets.
- Later, while setting up a "speed-dance-skating" course, Clarkson asks a local Norwegian about the dangers of falling through.
Clarkson: "Do people fall into frozen lakes in Norway?"
Local: "Yes."
Clarkson: "Often?"
Local: "Two last week."
Clarkson: "Two last week? And are they dead?"
Local: "Quite dead."
- For the Finale the trio were handling ski-jumping. Using an old Leyland Mini. Now being a pretty big task they took it pretty seriously, dividing the tasks up with James handling steering, Jeremy handling POOWWERRR... and Richard handling stopping. James and Jeremy handled their tasks seriously and professionally (for a change) with James finding out that there were lanes cut into the ice for jumpers so he got the measurements to cut lanes big enough for the Mini and Jeremy teaming up with the United Kingdom Rocketry Association to fit the car with skis and a three rocket solid booster system (done to The A-Team theme no less). For stopping, Richard however proceeded to grab a metal scoop shovel and over the course of several hours (and several unintended trips up and down the hill) managed to make... a waist high snow fort with a bunch of stuff from the chalet as filler. Jeremy presented the issue with it with his usual grace and candor:
Clarkson: "I can guarantee that won't stop the Mini. Partly because it's not substantial enough...
(cue James nearly doubled over and Jeremy Corpsing)
Clarkson: But mostly because you built it in front of that slope, (points to the right hand slope) and the Mini is coming down that one. (points to the left hand slope)
Hammond: "Alright, a few adjustments"
(Jeremy and James burst out laughing)
Clarkson: "Did nobody tell you?"
Hammond: (yelling) No! Obviously or I'd have built it OVER THERE!
Jeremy, Richard, and James attempt to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy together for The Big Read... which went well...
Hammond: "Alright!"
May: said Loonquawl.
Hammond: "Can you just please tell us the question."
Clarkson: The mighty USS Nimitz blazed out of control in the middle of the North Atlantic...
Hammond: Uh, no. You're on the wrong page, mate. [points to Clarkson's copy] Look, there you go.
Clarkson: Oh, sorry. No. Wrong book...
From the Australian version: Ewen Page did a review of the Volvo S60^notepower:304 hp, a car with marketing that claims it's "naughty enough to whip the Germans". Naturally, when the time came to test this the first German car used was a Porsche 911 Turbo S^notepower:500 hp. When this proved significantly superior, they reached for a vehicle that the Volvo had a reasonable chance of beating - a post-WWII Messerschmitt pedal car^notepower: 1 spp (Steve-Pizzati-power) which trundled down the track accompanied by jangly piano music. Having given it quite a significant head start, the Volvo cruised past in reverse, with Ewen Page waving cheerfully out of the window.
From the "Worst Car in the History of the World" special, as James drives a Mercedes SLS around the track to demonstrate how bad it is, Jeremy mocks his choice of personal car - a Fiat Panda. Cue a Morris Marina dropping on it.
- James makes it so that Jeremy is tied up, so he can slam into the Ford Escort Cosworth... and by "tied up", we literally mean "tied up". And then he rips into the Ford GT, making sure that Jeremy is shut up.
- Jeremy driving James' Rolls Royce Corniche, and how you can tell it's James':
Jeremy: First, it's the slowest thing I've ever driven. Second, everything inside is... absolutely... spotless-ACHOO!... Sorry, James. And third... he's in the boot.
James: (pounding inside the boot) Oi! Jeremy!
- While comparing 1970s American cars, this exchange happens:
Clarkson: How big is your engine?
May: Five point seven liters.
Clarkson: Seven liter V8 motor." (V8 motor is said in a stereotypical redneck accent)
May: Hundred and sixty horsepower in the Buick.
Clarkson: It's two hundred horsepower, okay. How did they get so few horsepower from a V8 motor (again said in the accent)
May: I don't know.
- The ending, in which they give a certain someone the titled Worst Car. A certain someone who decorated his front porch with lions that have his face carved into them. It turns out to be Richard Hammond, whose Ford Mustang they take as compensation.
In the 50 Years of Bond Cars special, Hammond attempts to replicate the car cloaking device from Die Another Day with his Particularly Enigmatic New Invisibility System.
From the "Perfect Road Trip" DVD, Hammond figures out the perfect car for parking in front of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo that won't be moved by the valet parking team in favour of something flashier and more expensive... a Model T Ford. 'Cause neither he or Clarkson can work out how to drive the thing, the valets certainly won't.
- Then there is Hammond in his forfeit t-shirt that says "I <3 James May", complete with a picture of him on the back. He's clearly not happy about it, but then again at least the person in question wasn't with them.
James May's "Cars of the People" series:
- James takes the opportunity to talk about transportation in Japan. Cue the occasional cut to a Japanese man driving in his car, interspersed with clips of Zuiikin' English, a strange language learning program featuring women performing dance workouts while reciting English phrases like "I have a bad case of diarrhea" and "Spare me my life!".
- In the episode on cars of the future, James is driving in his own BMW electric car and discusses how he can talk to it by making a call:
Car: Please say a name.
James: "World's Biggest."
Car: Did you mean, "World's Biggest (horn censor)?"
James: Yes, I did, but I don't really want to talk to Jeremy, do I? No...
Clarkson, Hammond & May Live is the show that replaced Top Gear Live after the events of March 2015, where Clarkson punched a producer over food and was released from the BBC. The intro brings back everyone's favorite Jensen-driving, 70s mustache-wearing detectives, the Interceptors! Roger St. Hammond karate chops everything in sight, including a small boy. James Steed shoots everything in sight, including a bad guy, a sexy woman, and a cute dog who urinates on his car. Jason Clarkson punches a bad guy in the face... and is immediately fired.

Funny / Top Gear (UK)

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