'I was being an arse and trying to win'
- Five things to expect from The Grand Tour’s A Scandi Flick
- 1. Road-going rally cars
- 3. James May crashing
- 4. James May crashing again
- 5. Ice-based hi-jinks
- When is The Grand Tour’s Scandinavia trip released on Amazon Prime Video?
Jeremy Clarkson and James May have opened up about the latter’s horror crash into a rock face while recording a new film, dubbed “A Scandi Flick”, for Amazon show The Grand Tour,
Writing in The Sunday Times Magazine today, May and his co-star, reveal all about the circumstances of the crash.
During filming in Norway, the 59-year-old journalist and broadcaster drove his Mitsubishi into the wall at 75mph.
May was rushed to hospital for treatment, where he was found to have suffered abrasions and one cracked rib — two fewer than when he was kicked by a horse while filming in Argentina, in fact.
Clarkson told the paper that he could scarcely believe that for once it was May, who he described as “the slowest driver in the history of motoring”, rather than the series’ other co-star.
“This one was different because the person who was gingerly lifted from the wreckage by paramedics and carefully driven to hospital in the back of an ambulance was not Richard Hammond.”
Hammond has become renowned for high-speed accidents while making The Grand Tour and the trio’s previous show, Top Gear. In 2006, the Solihull-born TV presenter spent two weeks in a coma after a tyre blew on the Vampire dragster he was driving at 288mph. He almost died again when he drove a Rimac electric hypercar off a Swiss hillside and it caught fire. Subsequent surgery involved receiving a prosthetic knee.
May’s crash occurred during the filming of a segment of A Scandi Flick that involved the three amigos attempting to reach the highest speed in a tunnel at a disused submarine base, before braking in time for a wall of sheer rock at the end.
“Sixty-six per cent of us got this right,” wrote May.
He recalled the words of pioneering racer and motorcyclist Noel Pope, who once wrote that “when faced with the stark choice of either running into a pedestrian or into a wall, one should ‘be a man, and take the wall’”.
“I wasn’t being a man,” said May. “I was being an arse and trying to win. I took the wall (actually a cliff face) because, as another pioneer would have said, it was there.”
Valiantly, the film crew captured the whole thing on camera and continued filming amid the steaming wreckage of the Lancer Evo VIII even as May was loaded into an ambulance by paramedics.
Though clearly injured, he said he was more concerned with the fate of his packet of beef Hula Hoops that he had thought were lost in the crash, until someone chucked them into the back of the ambulance with him.
Another one of May’s fears was the fact that with the Evo so severely damaged, he would be the first of The Grand Tour’s presenters to ever have to take the option of the forfeit car, normally a painfully undesirable back-up in case one of their feature cars breaks down or is destroyed. In this case, the forfeit car was a 1980s Volvo 340 described by May as “dismal”.
The day after the crash, May visited the body shop to see his crashed Mitsubishi.
“The engine had moved several inches to the left, the body was twisted, there was oil and coolant everywhere, the intercooler plumbing looked like a trombone that had been through a mangle. The offside (to us) front brake calliper had cracked, and the wishbone was bent back on itself.”
He said he was particularly annoyed, not only as he hates breaking things, but because he had really fallen for the charms of the Evo all over again.
Amazingly, just a day later the Lancer was back in drivable condition after some bodywork straightening and repairs using secondhand parts.
“It worked. It drove, braked and steered as it had before. The only casualty of the crash was the interior heater. This is why I’ve always got my big yellow coat on.”
May went on to fully justify crashing the Mitsubishi into a big wall, admittedly on rather dubious grounds.
“Here’s what I’d really like to say about all this. We were driving roadgoing rally cars and rally cars are crashed all the time. They are beaten back into shape in the field and then they carry on.
“The crash and revival of my car cemented its rallying credentials. I was simply conducting a far more thorough test than the other two.”
Clarkson revealed that colliding with a cliff face wasn’t the only accident May had during filming of A Scandi Flick. After rejoining his co-presenters, he crashed through ice and into a frozen lake.
“It’s strange,” Clarkson wrote. “How, when we are travelling individually or with our families, do we get from A to B without incident — but as soon as we are all together, all hell breaks loose and there are fires and smashed ribs and headlines in the Daily Mail?”
Five things to expect from The Grand Tour’s A Scandi Flick
1. Road-going rally cars
What better way to tackle the frozen north of Norway than in an all-wheel-drive road-going version of an old rally car? There’s James’s ill-fated Evo, Richard behind the wheel of an Impreza and Jeremy in an Audi RS 4, which was never a rally car, although Jezza claims it’s a descendant of the Audi Quattro.
2. Norway
A Scandi Flick was filmed in Norway, which looks very nice. “This show is porn,” said Clarkson. “Location porn. Because, holy mother of Mary, northern Norway doesn’t half get its peaks out for the lads.”
3. James May crashing
Thanks to the brave efforts of the film crew, May’s big crash was entirely caught on camera and is included in the show.
4. James May crashing again
Not content with crashing once, May subsequently crashed though some ice into a frozen lake.
5. Ice-based hi-jinks
Once the boys got the hang of ice and studded tyres, they started to have so much fun that pretty soon they were “racing round a frozen lake while towing people on skis, one of whom had only one leg” and “careering down a red run while towing a burning shed”. You know, the usual.
When is The Grand Tour’s Scandinavia trip released on Amazon Prime Video?
The Grand Tour’s A Scandi Flick is available to view on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, September 17.
Read Clarkson and May’s account of filming A Scandi Flick in full at thetimes.co.uk.
- After reading about the new Grand Tour adventure, you might also enjoy Clarkson’s video showing a ‘crashed’ tractor at his Diddly Squat farm
- Jeremy Clarkson found driving in Cornwall so slow he had time to count the hand stitches in his Bentley Continental GT Mulliner
- And don’t miss what Clarkson had to say about the Land Rover Defender Hard Top
Keyword: Jeremy Clarkson and James May reveal all about horror crash on The Grand Tour's 'Scandi Flick'