Clarkson and co take on Eastern Europe with the wackiest cars yet

We last saw petrolheads Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in the autumn, tearing around Scandinavia. Now the trio are roaring back onto our screens with a journey titled Eurocrash.

As ever there’ll be jaw-dropping stunts, raucous rivalry and incredible – if not to say bizarre – vehicles: James’s car appears to move by itself, Richard’s keeps telling him he’s terrible in bed and Jeremy’s sprouts chandeliers!

The gang banter their way through a 1,400-mile jaunt across Eastern Europe, starting in Gdansk, Poland, before journeying to Slovakia and Hungary, en route to their final destination, stunning Lake Bled in Slovenia.

But it wasn’t a burning desire to sample Eastern Europe’s scenery that prompted the itinerary. More that every country they might want to visit is now a trouble hotspot or won’t let them in!

‘I don’t think people realise just how small the world has become in the last 25 years, or the available world, we should say,’ explains Jeremy Clarkson. 

‘There are lots of places – almost all of the Middle East, all of North Africa, lots of places we’ve been to before – that we can’t go to now. Not just because we got banned for saying something or doing something, but because they’ve become bloody dangerous. 

‘So, the concept is a road trip that nobody has ever thought of, in cars nobody would ever use for a road trip. We thought we’d try to go from the Baltic to the Adriatic, sticking to countries that used to be behind the Iron Curtain.’

His vehicle is the ostentatious Japanese-made Mitsuoka Le-Seyde, which he describes as a ‘hideous homage to Liberace’s bathroom’. Meanwhile Richard has a large American convertible pick-up truck. 

But it’s James who ultimately paid the price for following the brief. He picked a little-known Crosley – an obscure US saloon built in the 1940s – which became the running joke of the whole show. And he admits that alcohol was consumed while he was bidding for it online…

‘It’s a car nobody has ever heard of, and nobody would ever buy,’ he admits.

‘People love seeing great cars like Ferraris but it’s a better story for telly when you’ve got a crap car, which goes all the way back to our original Cheap Car Challenge on Top Gear where you had £100 or whatever to buy a car. 

‘I think I ended up paying £12,000. Never drink wine and bid!’ Unfortunately, the Crosley was so slow that James missed some fascinating stops, notably Stalag Luft III, the prison camp immortalised in The Great Escape. ‘I was sad James wasn’t there because I know he’d have loved it,’ says Jeremy.

But don’t be fooled by that compassion. When they aren’t causing havoc at a motor race featuring Soviet-made Formula 1 vehicles or checking out flying cars, the trio are pranking each other with stunts like moving James’s car into the hotel restaurant. Not that James was an innocent party…

Jeremy tests out a Soviet-made Formula 1 vehicle at a motor race. The flying cars that also feature on the show are another highlight

‘He added sound effects on my car which were embarrassing and deeply irritating,’ reveals Richard. ‘When I hit the brakes, it sounded a bell and when I used the indicators there were a variety of sirens. 

‘Throttling past a certain point of acceleration, it played bagpipes. The worst was when I put the roof down or up, it loudly broadcast a message in the local language which suggested I was impotent.’

Yet as Richard admits, they commended each other’s ingenuity. ‘If it’s something really clever – like when James put candelabras on Jeremy’s car – that’s superb. You’ve got to say, “Credit where credit’s due, that’s actually very funny.”’

That’s the magic of The Grand Tour. The cars and locations are great, but it’s the presenters’ 20-year friendship that means it’s a joy for them to make – and for us to watch. 

‘It’s lovely when three people who have known each other that long can still reduce each other to tears of laughter,’ says Richard.

• The Grand Tour, from Friday, Amazon Prime Video.