‘The Grand Tour: One For The Road’ Review: End Of An Era

The time has finally come! The final Grand Tour episode, The Grand Tour: One For The Road; and the final run of Clarkson, Hammond, and May; is nothing short of a good time. 

This review was made possible by screeners courtesy of Prime Video.

When The Grand Tour was first announced in 2015 following Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond, and producer Andy Wilman leaving BBC’s Top Gear; fans went nuts. While the show would keep the news format Top Gear had, The Grand Tour promised to tour more. 

Taking cool cars and putting them in exotic and outlandish places is truly something that, in my experience, everyone can get behind, with these situations making for great humour, whilst maintaining some sort of educational perspective. And now with the 46th episode of The Grand Tour, the show’s journey has come to an end. And what better way to end it than ending it back where it started!

The Grand Tour: One For The Road follows Clarkson, Hammond, and May as they travel Zimbabwe, with newfound freedom from Mr. Wilman (Andy Wilman), in their dream cars. Their choices? A 1982 Lancia Montecarlo, a 1974 Ford Capri 3-litre and a 1974 Triumph Stag. As they traverse the rugged terrain, the team decides to end their journey in Botswana, where they did their first-ever Top Gear special back in 2007.

While there aren’t restrictions on our hosts, the special is still a great time and you can tell this is simply one of the more fun times Clarkson, May and Hammond have had in their tenure as the premiere motorsport experts. The terrain trumps their vehicles in more ways than one and they’re forced to improvise in ways familiar to diehard fans. The said terrain is very beautiful and as time passes, the landscape twists and turns into other cinematic forms of beauty. Plot-wise it does lack a little flavour, with the option of having decent cars limiting breakdowns and other such inconveniences, but the producers make up for it by incorporating more setting-based issues.

The banter is still here too, although perhaps not as mean-spirited given their at-the-time upcoming farewell. It even has Clarkson being nice to his co-hosts! This shows how much the series, and the time between the co-hosts, really meant to each other. And although it isn’t visible, these guys definitely cried it out behind the scenes in a very emotional ending, that mimics the ending of Furious 7, which showed a farewell between Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto and Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner. A move that makes sense given that two are two peas in a pod, with Fast & Furious dominating the fiction and film sides of motorsports, and these three men dominating the nonfiction and television area.

The overall result makes for a highly emotional special that celebrates careers spanning over 22 years and basically, the end of the genre. Top Gear viewership dropped off massively following the departure of Clarkson, Hammond and May, and now that Prime Video is no longer moving forward with The Grand Tour, motorsports television in this format is at its end. 

Series Review and Career Retrospective

The Grand Tour as a whole, like any show, has had its ups and downs. That is to be expected, and the talented team behind TGT overcame these issues and made a genuinely entertaining series. When it was created, they had big shoes to fill, with Top Gear being not only one of my favourites of all time but one of the favourites of many other people I know personally. A great outcome for millions of motorsports fans around the world, that I truly cannot applaud enough.

From the first time Clarkson, Hammond, and May graced the screens of audiences in 2002, to the last time, September 13, 2024, it has been a monumental journey. Lasting 22 long years, and defining many people’s childhoods. Including mine. As Clarkson suggests in the special, even the vehicle industry itself has drastically shifted, with electric vehicles now being commonplace. Clarkson even goes as far as blaming the creation of these vehicles as one of the reasons why The Grand Tour has come to an end and why our hosts are retiring from this type of presentation.

I hope I get to see our hosts again collaborating, even though they have called it quits for now. And I would love to thank Jeremy, Richard and James for their impact on me and my life. Truly One For The Road. 

The Grand Tour stars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. The series concludes on September 13, 2024, with its 46th episode. The series is produced by Prime Video with all episodes now streaming on the platform. 

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