YMMV / The Grand Tour

• Awesome Music:
  • The Hothouse Flowers' cover of "I Can See Clearly Now", especially when it kicks in with Hammond and May joining Clarkson and building up to a giant cavalcade of cars and bikes from all across automotive history in the California Desert.
  • The trailer music for the series, KONGOS - Come with me Now is excellent as well.
  • "Do the Strand" by Roxy Music, the backing song for season three's introductory montage, is undeniably catchy.
• Broken Base:
  • Episode two split the fanbase in half; some liked the loose comedy between the guys, while others considered it over-scripted and not related enough to cars. It's basically a continuation of a split that goes all the way back to Top Gear between those who like the more comedic moments and those who want more serious car reviews.
  • There are those who believe that formula the three presenters had settled into while on Top Gear had been growing stale for years but that the enormous amount of freedom Amazon provides them allows them to truly cut loose and explore what can be done within their chosen format. On the other hand, there are those who believe that the trio have become too self-indulgent and have come around to thinking that the BBC's editorial control had been keeping them from going completely off the rails for all those years.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The rather callous attitude the presenters (well, mostly Clarkson and May) have towards Hammond's Rimac crash, constantly mocking him for it. Of course, if Hammond wasn't already alive and well right there in the tent after his recovery, then all these "Hammond crashing cars" wisecracks wouldn't have worked^note the three have a long-standing pact that should one of them be killed while shooting a segment, the other two will make a brief announcement, wait a beat, and carry on as if nothing happened. Even Rimac themselves got in on the act with their C_Two (now the Nevera), which has a fire extinguisher in the back held by a leather strap with a rather cheeky message that says, "In case of hill climb, extinguish fire".
• Growing the Beard:
  • Clarkson believes that the show "really hit the ground running" with the second season.
  • More literally, Hammond grew a beard between the end of his run on Top Gear and The Grand Tour. May also grew one in the interim between Lochdown and Carnage a Trois.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Episode 4 features a scene where May builds a car out of bricks, only for the roof to collapse on him the moment he tries to pull away. Hilarious, until you learn that the very day the episode came out, a church roof collapsed in Nigeria, killing 60 people. Ouch.
  • While shooting in Mozambique, Richard wound up in a motorcycle accident when he fell from his bike. Despite suffering minor injuries, they were minor enough that Hammond was able to joke about it, saying "...well put it this way, I don't think I can get a book out of it." Even Jeremy brushed it off, saying in an interview "We don't do hospitals." Richard's terrifying car crash in Switzerland happened a couple months later, and he wound up needing surgery for a broken knee. He's extremely lucky he wasn't hospitalized for anything worse. In a latter interview on their website Drive Tribe, Hammond notes that right before the crash, he and the others were complaining about being asked to do one more hill climb run for the segment they were filming, after completing what they thought what was originally their last run for the day. As Hammond drove back around to the starting line and passed Phil, the director for the segment, Hammond sarcastically told him "Ah come on Phil, you're making me do this. You know this is the one I'm going to crash on." A minute later, that line was a lot less funny. When Phil visited Hammond in the hospital, he was apparently quite shaken up. Hammond noted in hindsight, that was the most unintentionally meanest thing he'd ever said to another human being, and that Phil probably deserves to kick him in the shins once or twice for it.
  • In the same episode, before Hammond started his race, May and Clarkson took it upon themselves to give him a "pep talk" about how Hammond has a lot riding on his shoulders and might become whatever the modern-day Croatian of "Hero of the Soviet Union" is. It's all in the trio's trademark jibing style, but Hammond looks terrified throughout the talk, continues to look nervous (and admits to it) as he drives off, and eventually crashes.
  • May being in a bad mood, and a decent amount of pain, because of his busted arm in "Italian Lessons" is the source of a couple jokes and the odd bit of abuse from Clarkson and Hammond, which is pretty much what you'd expect, not to mention rather funny. However, according to an interview he gave shortly after the episode had aired, James stated that his bad mood was not only absolutely genuine, but he was so fed up with his co-hosts that their conduct in that episode brought him the closest he's ever come to quitting the show right then and there. It didn't help that in the rush to film, his arm was actually more seriously injured than anyone realized, and the sling he wore in the episode didn't support the injury correctly. After filming, he was given a more restrictive sling that helped his arm heal properly.
  • In one episode Clarkson makes a joke about something being "harder than Ron Jeremy". This has become significantly less funny in light of Ron Jeremy's arrest for multiple counts of rape.
  • Season 3 ends with a semi-humorous semi-tearful announcement that is presented initially as a goodbye to the show and the Trio altogether before revealing that the show will be focusing on long-form specials. This becomes a lot less funny in hindsight considering the significant production troubles and delays due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, both Clarkson and Willman coming down with the disease, May mentioning in an interview that he's not sure how much longer he can keep up with the strenuous requirements of the show and May and a producer very nearly drowning during the filming of Seamen. Production of the series is still going ahead, albeit at a different pace, but it's alarming to consider just how close it came to being gone forever.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the Grand Tour Special Carnage A Trois, Clarkson points out that the French had not made an off-road SUV. Come December 2022, Ineos Automotive would release the Grenadier, which is made in France.
  • In "Eurocrash", Jeremy mentions that a trip across the Sahara Desert would be impossible due to "too much terrorism". Guess where they ended up in the very next special.
• More Popular Replacement: Abbie Eaton was much better received than The American.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • As Clarkson's meat car decays it not only looks more disturbing, but it develops maggots in the engine. By the end, even Clarkson can't drive it around without wearing "nose tampons."
  • The Season 4 Boating Special has a moment where Clarkson and May are doing their usual gag of treating Hammond to Foreign Queasine but the real nausea comes when Hammond opens a supposedly-benign boiled egg to find a half-formed chicken fetus inside.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Clarkson's ecologically-sustainable car, made entirely from dead animal parts. Framed in bones and filled in with skins, it is beyond disturbing the first time you see it, and only gets worse as it starts rotting. It causes a sound guy to lose his lunch offscreen and Clarkson to eventually do the same.
  • Hammond's now infamous crash of the Rimac Concept One. Although the cameras cut out after he went through the rail, Richard's cry of "I've crashed!" and the subsequent bone-crunching noises as his car flips down the hill are gut-churning all on their own. The video afterward (which, according to Clarkson, was retrieved from YouTube) is terrifyingly realistic: no narration, no upbeat music, just onlookers and paramedics running, helping Hammond, putting him on a stretcher and airlifting him away, ending on a shot of the futuristic sleek white car now a smoking, utterly blackened wreck with its wheels in the air.
  • In "International Buffoons' Vacation", the American returns as a scary, silent villain who acts as an Implacable Man and stalks Jeremy and the others throughout the episode. At the end, he shows up to light a ring of fire around the trio's RVs while they sleep later that night. And then the episode just ends.
  • In a similar vein to Hammond's Rimac crash, James May wrecking his Mitsubishi Evo during the Scandinavia Special. Twice. The first was during a speed test in a tunnel, in which he crashed the car against the wall at 40 mph and got a broken rib and whiplash. Not only was the car totaled, but he was hospitalized for his injuries. The second time, the car fell through the ice with him still inside. Thankfully, the trio managed to save the car and him.
    • The tunnel speed test in general is pretty terrifying, with even the presenters expressing apprehension about it. It involves flooring it down a dark tunnel, with only the section right in front of you illuminated, fully aware that there's a solid wall in front of you but unable to see it until the very moment you need to start braking - at which point the lighting turns an eerie red to boot. Hammond has to go last, after having witnessed May's accident, and is so terrified that he opts to crawl down the tunnel rather than take the challenge seriously.
  • "Sand Job" is perhaps the most nightmare-filled special of the lot:
    • The trio find a tunnel that will let them avoid having to drive up a steep cliff, only to realise that it's full of bats that may very well be carrying ebola. Clarkson goes first, and while his panic every time he sees a bat is Played for Laughs, what he finds on the other side of the tunnel is not: the Western Sahara border, marked by an honest-to-goodness minefield. He frantically tries to warn Hammond, but he's already in the tunnel, can't hear Clarkson's warnings, and unlike Clarkson, he can't quite stop in time and ends up careening into the minefield. His expression as he slowly backs up out of it is terrifying to behold.
    • After driving up the cliff, they then have to be winched down the equally-tall cliff on the other side. Watching Clarkson get winched down is frightening enough. Watching the nine-tonne fuel truck get winched down while the cable audibly strains against its weight? Terrifying.
    • In Nouakchott, the trio find a seemingly disused runway that's been swallowed up by the city's growth, and decide it's the perfect place to hold the drag race they hadn't been able to earlier. Only once the race is well underway do they realise that the runway isn't disused at all - it's being used as a road. Cue the terrified trio having to repeatedly swerve as cars come at them from all directions.
    • The Sudden Downer Ending in which, just miles from the finish line in Dakar, Mr. Wilman messages Clarkson to inform him that violent riots have erupted in the city and it's no longer safe to film in. Again, the trio were mere miles from Dakar when the message came through: had they been a little bit faster, or Wilman been a little bit slower to inform them, they would have found themselves right in the middle of it.
• The Scrappy: "The American", at least to some people. Obviously a replacement for The Stig (who is still stuck with Top Gear) with none of the charm and a paltry amount of skill. His segments basically revolve around him driving the car of the moment around the track, all the while complaining about how awful it is and how every car that isn't an American car with a huge, high-power V8 motor is a communist. A lot of Top Gear fans just wish they could have found someone better. Even Mike Skinner was not thrilled with the American; he left the show after complaining about how the character was not developed as promised. Acknowledged in Series 2 Episode 2, where Hammond notes that one of the reasons for the American's replacement is "because you all hated him". This would later end up being turned on its head in "International Buffoons' Vacation", in which the American returns as a silent villain stalking Clarkson.
• Tear Jerker: The final studio episode. Although the three will go on with Grand Tour long-form specials for Amazon, the last of their old format of the show brought on more than a few tears, including and especially from Clarkson himself, who never got to have a proper send-off from Top Gear. Capping it all was a poignant montage of the best and most memorable moments the three of them had from both The Grand Tour and Top Gear.
• Unexpected Character:
  • The "Celebrity Face-Off" segment of "Oh Canada" aimed to find the world's fastest golfing enthusiast. Naturally, this meant pitting Rory McIlroy, a world champion golfer, against... Paris Hilton. Turns out it's hard to not be a golfing enthusiast when your family owns fifty golf courses (and also in keeping with the show, several unusual and expensive supercars).
  • While not a character, the fact that the series has used music from the Sly Cooper video game franchise of all things has surprised quite a few fans of the games.

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