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Hi, I'm Andy Wilman, Executive Producer of Top Gear.
Welcome to the third instalment of the Top Gear Top 40 countdown.
Tonight, we'll be counting down from 30 to 26.
This is unusually a sad film for Top Gear.
It's about British sports cars.
They're used to be loads of them running around
but they died out years ago.
And everyone thinks it was because of the hot hatchback,
which was supposed to be more practical, better built
and just the same amount of fun.
The presenters, however, they disagreed,
and so they filmed this heartfelt, deeply biased, 'cause it's them,
but still heartfelt love letter to the British sports car.
JEREMY CLARKSON: I was the first to arrive in a car from my era,
the superb Jensen Healey.
This is a beauty.
Built by Jensen,
designed by the father and son team that brought us the Healey 3-litre,
styled by the same man who did the Aston Martin Lagonda
and powered by a twin-cam Lotus engine.
You really can think of this, then,
as being like one of those old '70s supergroups,
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Will Young but...
Oh, hey up. Here we go. Speak of the devil.
James, that is magnificent!
A TVR S from your period.
It is. It's TVR S2, actually.
-S2? -Yeah, 170 horsepower,
Cologne Ford V6 from the Granada.
CLARKSON: As we admired our wonderful cars,
Richard arrived in a little gem from his youth,
a Lotus Elan.
CLARKSON: Oh, yes! MAY: Oh, ho-ho!
It's come back, it's come home!
Yep, it has. It's a poetic moment, actually.
The last Elan, here, back at Lotus.
-MAY: That's terrific. -It is.
I remember when this came out, that square stance it had.
Nobody had built a square car before.
No, nobody had done that. It was...
Yeah, there were reasons for that.
Apparently the plastic used to shrink
and they didn't know that the suppliers had come up
with a new plastic that didn't shrink.
So it was wider than expected.
-But... -This is ingenuity, making the best of it.
I mean, it was the same with the TVR, plastic.
-Now, clear plastic... There's something... -MAY: Plastic.
Plastic body. It just sounds right.
And the engine in this wasn't Lotus, was it?
No, it's Isuzu. But that's Japanese, reliable.
When they tested one of these, they ran it round a racetrack
-for 24 hours straight. -CLARKSON: Yeah.
-And for 22 of those hours, it didn't break down. -Seriously?
CLARKSON: As we chatted, a challenge arrived.
-Ahem! -You read it, Hammond.
(CLEARS THROAT) "You will now race around the Lotus test track
"to see which of your ridiculous cars is best!"
-Ridiculous? -Does it say, "ridiculous?"
-Steady on. -RICHARD HAMMOND: It actually says "ridiculous".
It goes on.
"And then you must put The Stig in a car
"that wiped your British sports cars off the map,
"a Peugeot 205 GTI, and set a time."
(SNIGGERS)
What, he seriously thinks a crummy little French hatchback
can beat these purpose-built cars?
Have we got to get the Peugeot?
It says we've got to put him in it, yes.
CLARKSON: First, though, we did some laps in our classic British sports cars.
(ENGINES REVVING)
Oh, that this is a stirring scene!
Three great British sports cars haring across the British landscape.
I love the sound of a twin-cam.
It's engine noise you're hearing, not tricksed-up...
(MECHANICAL GRINDING)
That's not... Oh, dearie me.
-(GRINDING CONTINUES) -There we go!
Yes! I knew there'd be one there if I looked hard enough.
JAMES MAY: This car is, of course, very light.
It weighs just 987 kilograms because it's made from canoe-building materials.
Sorry, scrap that. Because it's made from composites.
Critically, the Elan is front-wheel drive because it's just better.
At the same time this car was coming out,
Mazda were bringing out the MX-5.
Rear-wheel drive, old-fashioned.
As a result, the MX-5 never really caught on.
I mean, it sold in massive numbers for decades,
but it didn't have the same exclusivity that the Elan did,
which never sold in the same vulgar, brash numbers.
Sometimes with this engine, you do notice
that the oil pressure could drop alarmingly in a fast corner.
It's okay, the engine would never blow up
because normally the water pump would go first.
A very useful feature, that.
MAY: When you press the throttle in the TVR,
there is a slight delay before anything happens.
A lot of people thought this was a fault,
but actually, it's a very innovative safety feature.
I'll demonstrate.
You're driving along, you press the throttle, the car says, "Are you sure?"
-(ENGINE REVS) -"Oh, all right, then."
(TYRES SCREECH)
Look at that TVR in my mirror.
And that Jensen, cornering so flat.
CLARKSON: We could have gone round all day.
But the producers said we must pull in and post our lap times.
The time has come. Hammond, would you reveal your fastest lap?
My fastest lap in my Lotus Elan was two minutes and nine seconds.
CLARKSON: Two minutes, nine seconds. HAMMOND: Blistering.
-That is. There's no other word. -It is?
-There's no other word. Blistering. James? -It felt right here.
TVR S2, my fastest lap time was 2.15.9.
2.15.9.
And here, the 1970's Jensen Healey, 2.17.9.
So what we can see here is progress.
As you'd expect from the British sports car industry.
That's very good. That's even better.
-The cars have come on decade by decade. -CLARKSON: Absolutely.
And now it's time to find out
how fast The Stig can go round in this Peugeot 205 GTI.
It doesn't look like a GTI.
No, no, I couldn't get a GTI, so I got a diesel.
Um, they're basically the same.
Yeah, same thing, pretty much.
Okay, Stig, start it up.
(ENGINE REVS)
(TYRES SCREECH)
CLARKSON: The Stig wound up the Peugeot and began his flying lap.
-Here we go, and... -Timing!
Go! Okay, we're off.
I think the reason I couldn't get a GTI, I suspect,
is because they've all rusted away or been crashed or fallen to pieces.
MAY: The handling was terrible on those.
-Oh! Oh! -MAY: They were crashed a lot.
-Any faults with your car? -No.
-Any faults with yours? -No.
And did you know, in the whole history of TVR,
there is no recorded incident of one ever breaking down?
I've heard that.
And here he comes...
Yes!
2:09, 2:15, 2:17 for us.
(LAUGHS)
-(LAUGHS) -2:22.0.
-Point, I think, proven. -CLARKSON: I don't think we need to go on.
MAY: To try and show us that hot hatchbacks are safer than our cars,
the producers asked The Stig to get into a Citroen AX GT,
which would then be dragged by a special cable
into the side of a lorry at 50 miles an hour.
(CAR RATTLING)
Didn't do well at all, did it?
Well, there it is. That's the benchmark, and that is...
-That's a fail, isn't it? -MAY: That's a fail, yeah.
MAY: We then decided that because we're a team,
only one of us needed to actually do this test.
Should I wear a crash helmet?
If anything goes wrong here, a crash helmet will make no difference, mate.
MAY: It'll make it easier to find his head.
It will keep the bits in one place.
This is the safest thing anyone has ever done.
Look at the inertia reel seat belt you get in a Jensen.
Could you just make that go a bit further in the back?
I don't want you ever to say that to me again!
(LAUGHS)
You see? How cheerful am I about what I am about to do?
HAMMOND: Yeah.
# Sunrise This is the last day #
I'm going to have Tony Christie on my 8-track.
The seatbelt is on, good, strong, dependable seatbelt...
Oh, I'm off!
Bye! Actually, I mean...
Oh, I'd better concentrate because I'm going into the lorry. Brace!
Brace!
How safe is this car?
-That's a pass. That's a pass. -That is a pass.
Thank God he wasn't in that little Citroen.
MAY: Having proved, as a team, that our cars are safer than hot hatches,
we continued onwards and soon, we were in a very special place.
This is where Richard Hammond was actually born.
This is a beautiful town, Richard.
(OVER RADIO) You are very lucky to have been born here, Hammond.
Am I ever. Fond memories.
"Usmania, Complete Home Furnishings."
That's where the Queen buys all her furniture.
Happy communities.
Man cleaning windows, or is he breaking in? No, he's cleaning them.
HAMMOND: Sadly, my trip down memory lane was interrupted by the producers,
who said we must go to a petrol station,
where they would test our cars' waterproofness.
-Shakespeare country, this. -I know.
-I noticed Shakespeare's Estate Agents. -Yeah, yeah, very much.
CLARKSON: I presume we're having to do the test
of the waterproofing of the cars at a car wash
because it so rarely rains in Britain.
When would it happen? So we need to do that, yes.
-HAMMOND: Okay! -What is that?
Nothing, nothing. It's, um... I've parked over an oil spill.
-Can I just check that? Is it? -Yeah.
You've parked over a bit of hanging-off bodywork as well.
CLARKSON: To try and stop the producers endlessly filming the boring oil spill,
James started the test.
Do your worst.
A lot of people do like to turn up
and watch cars being washed around Solihull and Shirley.
Edit that out.
HAMMOND: The TVR passed with flying colours.
Death Valley.
And so did the Jensen.
Nuclear submarines have more leaks than this does.
HAMMOND: So, then, I lined up the Lotus.
There is a bit coming in, I'll be honest, yeah, some.
-Let's have a look. -I'll be staggered if he's dry.
No, It's fine. I spilt my drink.
-Just as it started... -Not again? Was it just water?
Yes, just water and a bit of soap.
CLARKSON: To then prove, again, to the producers
why hot hatchbacks were so poor,
we asked The Stig to take a Ford Escort XR3i through the same car wash.
Has The Stig ever been to a car wash before?
No, it'll be a whole new experience for him.
He's coming now, gentlemen.
Here he comes now.
HAMMOND: Oh, it's not gone well!
CLARKSON: Oh, my God!
Actually, now I come to think of it,
this is the main reason I didn't buy an XR3.
MAY: I lost a couple of friends like this, actually.
CLARKSON: And it's one of the reasons the insurance premiums
-were so high... -Yeah.
Um...
CLARKSON: ...is because of this leaking issue.
CLARKSON: Buoyed by yet another victory,
we rolled on up our equivalent of Highway 1 towards Blackpool.
CLARKSON: Good God!
Now, this is something, if you're watching this abroad,
it's something I've never seen before,
roadworks on a British motorway.
That's... That is unusual.
But then, we were made to turn off Highway 1.
HAMMOND: I don't know why the producers have made us
come through Stoke rather than round it.
But I'm mighty glad they did.
We three can count ourselves
amongst the four million tourists visiting Stoke every year.
Okay.
The car is beginning to smell like I need a picnic again.
MAY: What do you fancy? Oil, er, sorry, biscuits?
No, I'm fine. No, I'm fine.
One of the more popular places in England, this, for a picnic.
The reason is, that house there,
you see the lilac one, four along, can you see that?
Robbie Williams lives there.
-Have you admired it for long enough? -Yeah, yeah.
It's a good idea when you stop to check your engine is still there.
-You may as well. -Just having a look, that's nice.
Lovely. Better for seeing that.
Have you had your picnic?
I have had a lovely picnic. And I'm absolutely full again.
Would you be needing a picnic again?
Another hour or so and I'll want perhaps a quick picnic before Blackpool.
-(CHUCKLES) -Just another little one.
MAY: Blackpool was now just 15 miles away,
but the producers, infuriated by our good progress,
ordered us to pull over at a garden centre or yet another challenge.
(CLEARS THROAT)
"One of the main reasons people switched from British sports cars
"to European hot hatchbacks,
"apart from reliability, price, comfort, speed and handling..."
I don't think so, as we've proved. "...is practicality.
"To prove this point,
"you will load up a Golf GTI with items from the garden centre
"and then you will see how much you can get in your cars."
MAY: This is a Mark I GTI, the first of the breed,
the breed that killed the British sports car.
So, let's see what we can get into that boot.
Whoa, careful.
HAMMOND: I shall open the boot.
We'll just... You need to take...
HAMMOND: The parcel shelf down.
-There it is. -There you go...
Okay. There we are.
-No. -Ah.
HAMMOND: No. MAY: No, you see.
If you can't get a rose arch in a Golf GTI...
-HAMMOND: What can you get in it? -Exactly.
CLARKSON: After a quick shop, we hit the road and made our point.
Here's the thing.
If you had gone to the garden centre with a hot hatchback,
the biggest thing you could have brought home is a pansy.
I'm going home with a bamboo and a conifer.
TVR, the car that came out of the shed, now underneath one.
This is awkward.
Her bottom is quite close to my face.
CLARKSON: There was, however, a serious point to be made here.
MAY: We were all rather dazzled by the XR3i and the Golf GTI and so on,
but really, it was a bit of a fad.
Nobody these days is saying, "Oh, I'd love an old XR3."
But a Jensen Healey, a Lotus, a TVR, yes.
HAMMOND: The whole experience is tinged at all times
with the knowledge that we're doing something that's ended.
CLARKSON: There are, of course, good reasons
why almost all these great names are gone.
But after our journey across the width of Britain,
we really couldn't remember what they were.
Now, unsurprisingly, we get quite a lot of viewers complaining
that we never do sensible road tests of cars.
No viewer though complains more strongly than Mr Needham.
You've never heard of him or met him and none of us want to,
but, boy, does he go on.
So, to shut him up,
we decided to do a sensible test of the Ford Fiesta.
Unfortunately, we sent Jeremy.
CLARKSON: Well, behind the extremely pretty body,
I'm sorry to report, there are one or two small problems.
The back seats, for instance, do not fold flat.
And other cars in this price range do have bigger boots.
However, despite this,
there is still room in the boot for a zebra's head.
Pop the neck in first.
There we are. So if you're a sort of Mafia game-ranger,
that goes very nicely.
And then, in the back seat,
there's room for the traditional 2.2 children.
'Course it's easy to park.
It's got windows.
It's got a steering wheel.
There we are.
Next.
This can happen.
Oh, and it just has.
Here we go!
(TYRES SCREECHING)
Good grip.
Power!
I am now breaking the speed limit indoors!
He's right on my tail.
This is where front-wheel drive comes in.
Round the palm tree. There we go.
He's taken out Costa Coffee!
The baddie has made the classic baddie-error.
He's got too much power.
I've got 120 horsepower in this.
You don't want any more than that on marble.
Okay, I'm getting away!
Yeah, this is the roof.
6,000 rpm. Come on!
Instruments are superb. I mean really sharp.
Handbrake!
The headlamps are brilliant.
Excellent range on full beam.
Look at him. Look at him.
He'll never find me if I go through here.
Oh, he is doing.
The upshot is that after half an hour,
I got out of the shopping centre.
And the Vette didn't.
Yes.
Very.
Although it is quite large for a supermini, very large, in fact,
it still fits on the Marines' LCVP Mk5
landing craft with room to spare.
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
(GUNSHOTS)
That gunfire can be quite loud, can't it?
If you get that door shut...
Barely hear it now.
-You cold? -Yeah, I am.
-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER) -(MEN SCREAMING)
-MAN: And shoot! -(SCREAMING)
-Let's go! -Fire!
CLARKSON: Go on!
Come on, Fiesta!
Oh, that was quite a lot deeper than I thought.
Look at this for a beach-assault craft!
Oh, yeah, you've got a bit of water coming in there.
-Come on! -Are we nearly there yet?
(CLARKSON CHUCKLES)
The kids are being annoying. Shoot them.
(SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY)
We're going, boys.
(ALL SCREAMING)
These carpets are excellent.
No evidence at all of the Marines' muddy boots.
Release!
So, there you are, Mr Needham.
The most thorough test of a car
ever undertaken on British television.
The Fiesta's come through with flying colours.
Drive safely.
Many, many viewers contact us asking for consumer advice,
but so far none have written in asking,
"What's the best way of driving up the side of an active volcano?"
However, when the big volcano with the unpronounceable name erupted in Iceland,
we decided this was something that we had to do.
And clearly, it was a job for a tough and outdoorsy person.
But Richard was busy, so we sent James instead.
MAY: My job is to turn this into the world's first volcano-proof car,
which means a visit to Emile,
the 4x4 genius who built it in the first place.
I mean, what are the unique risks to volcano driving,
apart from obviously being consumed by molten lava and burnt to a crisp?
It depends on how close you want to get.
Very close.
As far as I can work out, no one's ever actually driven
right up to the mouth of an active volcano in a car,
so it's another Top Gear first if we can do it.
(LAUGHS) Yeah.
Some people claim you can walk on hot coals
-if you wet the bottom of your feet. -Mmm-hmm.
I was just wondering, if there was some system
of continuously wetting the tyres,
would it be possible to drive across the hot lava?
(INHALING DEEPLY) If you don't fall through,
possibly, yeah, if you drive fast.
MAY: Emile didn't look very confident
but we set to work anyway.
(ENGINE STARTING)
And by the next morning, the volcano-buster was ready.
I know I look a bit like a petty thief
on my way home from some corrugated roof robbery at the allotment,
but there's a very good reason for all this.
The lava occasionally goes over an area of water
and that causes an explosion,
throwing bits of lava and rock up into the air.
So that's there to stop those lumps coming down and breaking the windscreen,
or my head.
We have also fitted our new and pioneering tyre-cooling system.
There's an oil drum on the back full of water
and pipes feed the water to the tyres.
Now, obviously, there's a risk of it freezing
and we can't put antifreeze in the water
because that pollutes the glacier,
so we've added a dash of ***.
As I drove onto the glacier,
I stopped to hook up with a volcanologist
who couldn't get to the volcano because of the weather.
Because of this storm that has been raging for the last few days,
we haven't really been able to visit the area to see what's going on there.
So at the moment, with this weather, in this white-out,
-really nobody knows what's happening. -Exactly.
-You can't get close to find out. -Nobody can see.
MAY: As night fell, the storm became worse.
It was so bad that by morning, it had taken the lives of two locals.
This is what we're seeing, or what we're not seeing, I should say.
Visibility is probably less than 10 metres.
MAY: We reckoned that as long as we could follow the car carrying Emile
and the camera crew, we'd be okay.
-There it is. -Yeah. There he is.
But we weren't.
Oh, I've lost the tail lights.
VOLCANOLOGIST: Wow, that is dark.
MAY: Soon, we were completely lost.
-Can you see any red lights? -I don't see anything.
(BLEEP)
MAY: Eventually, the storm cleared and we arrived at our overnight stop,
where we were greeted by a spectacular sight.
Wow, look at that! Beautiful.
MAY: How far away is that?
VOLCANOLOGIST: About one and a half kilometres.
-(VOLCANO EXPLODING) -MAY: I can hear it, as well.
VOLCANOLOGIST: It's like cannon fire.
MAY: That's fantastic!
Whoa!
MAY: The next morning,
still with no idea how big this eruption would become,
I dropped off the professor...
Thanks for the ride.
MAY: ...and headed on alone,
until at last I got my first close-up look at the volcano.
It was now my job to test our volcano car
by driving up to the crater
and scooping up a fresh piece of landscape as a souvenir.
And to help me with that, they've given me a garden trowel,
on an extending pole, held on with sticky tape and...
...a bucket.
And of course, I have my corrugated roof
and I am in the best off-road vehicle I've ever driven.
So, piece of cake, really. Here we go.
Does look quite angry.
Oh, God, look at that.
Even though I was driving on lava that had fallen days ago,
it was still red hot,
and the Top Gear *** tyre-cooling system was working overtime.
Bravely, I decided that was far enough.
Oh, my word.
I don't know if you can see this as well as I can,
but it's raining red-hot lumps. It's quite...
God, that's hot.
It was time to break out the lava scoop.
Whoa! Bloody hellfire. Look at the size of that!
A piece of that would do nicely.
Whoa!
Yes! Yes!
It's still glowing slightly.
Yay!
God, that's hot.
Whoa!
Oh, that's getting a bit frisky.
In the excitement of bagging a souvenir, I'd stayed still for too long.
(BLEEP) We're on fire.
Right, I'm off.
With the tyres steaming, I beat a retreat from the volcano,
clutching my brand-new piece of planet Earth.
I claim you for Queen Elizabeth and Top Gear.
And best of all, the unsung hero finally got the recognition it deserves.
Now, if your one of our younger viewers, you might not know this,
but during something called the Cold War,
the Russians were actually our enemies,
and they kept their big, filthy, communist nuclear missiles
pointed straight at our cities.
During this time, we were pretty scared of them,
but we weren't scared of their cars
because they seemed to be completely ***.
The thing is though, were they?
So today, with the Cold War well and truly over,
we sent Jeremy and James, to find out if the commies had ever made a good car.
CLARKSON: We thought it would be ironic to film our hunt here,
at the Greenham Common airbase.
Home in the 1980s to 96 US Air Force nuclear missiles.
Today, they're all gone, and in their place we find this...
It's a Lada Riva, which started out in life as a Fiat 124.
One of the most advanced sports saloons of the period.
But the Russians made a few changes to the original design.
They replaced the excellent disc-brakes
with drums, which were worse.
They fitted a starting handle, a manual fuel pump,
and they made the body from much, much thicker steel.
As I shall now demonstrate.
With my hammer. Ready?
It's nuclear.
MAY: The Lada was not the only car to come from the Soviet Union.
There were hundreds of the damn things.
GAZs, VAZs,
ZILs and ZISs...
ZAZs
and this, the Moskvich 408.
Now, this car was originally launched
at the 1964 British Earls Court Motor Show.
And it was communism's response
to our very own people's car, the Mark 1 Cortina.
(HORN HONKS)
The gearbox is sloppy, the suspension is bouncy,
the steering is very heavy and yet very vague.
So whose car was the most wretched?
That is simply the worst car in the world.
-It's even worse than this. -Disagree.
Have you seen the pedals in this?
Look where the accelerator pedal is,
in relation to the other two pedals.
-Thought so. -What?
-A rev counter. -Yes.
You decadent capitalist pig.
Ownership of a rev counter is theft.
This is the colour of a prosthetic limb.
-MAY: You've got wipers on your headlights. -They don't work.
That's not the point. It's aspirational.
CLARKSON: We decided to settle our argument
by finding out which was the slowest in a quarter-mile drag race.
And, to spice it up, we would be racing
against a Western car from the time...
A Ford Cortina 1600E, and a dog.
Fast as you can. Don't cheat.
Why would I need to cheat?
Uh... Launch control. No, not that.
Uh...
Clearly, the *** cars would be a while.
Finally, from Britain, there was the Morris Marina.
The unpleasant log laid by British Leyland
after communism crept like an itchy red blanket over the shop floor.
Having it here enables us to answer an important question.
You see, the Cold War ended before we ever got the chance to find out
who would have won if we'd actually started fighting.
Yep, but now we can find out with a race.
We have all the ingredients here.
It's cold.
The track's much too narrow.
It's too pock-marked, it's bumpy.
Uh, I shall be driving the Morris Marxist
and you shall be in the, um... What is it?
-The Lenin 1.6 SLX. -Lovely.
And the winner gets Berlin.
-And the loser has to sacrifice his bath plug. -(LAUGHS)
(MIMICS RUSSIAN ACCENT) So now we see, Mr Clarkson.
-Oi! -(CHUCKLES)
(EXCLAIMS)
Welcome to the inaugural round of the BTCC,
the British Touring Communism Championships.
-(THUD) -He'*** me! He'*** me!
Oh, God!
There's nothing I can do!
(LAUGHS) That'll annoy him.
CLARKSON: There's some catching-up to be done now.
Come on, Marina!
He's in my sights.
The Marina caught the Lada quite quickly,
which means we would have won the Cold War
if we'd started fighting.
Oh, yes! What do you think of this?
No!
Goodbye, Mr May.
Ooh, dear.
I seem to have accidentally killed James May there.
MAY: This is the Lada Niva.
Russia's workmen's workhorse.
CLARKSON: It does seem to have been built
on relatively sensible principles, this...
Add weight and simplify.
We ploughed on through the field and things looked promising.
-MAY: Come on, ***. -Come on, communist!
But then...
(ENGINE SPUTTERING)
Oh, now you've done it.
Oh, give up.
We're in Berkshire and it's been completely defeated.
I was wondering. If this comes out,
I can stand up like Rommel and guide you.
(SCREAMS)
We don't need that.
Right. Forwards, slowly.
-CLARKSON: Ah! No! No, no, no. -Oh, my God!
CLARKSON: In the end, we had to be pulled free
by a decadent capitalist Land Rover.
But we were reluctant to give up on our little Niva.
And it is quite a rugged, personable little thing.
Yes, it is, actually.
It is. I mean...
It's the sort of car you could give it a name.
It's got one. Niva.
Do you think we've actually found a communist car that we like?
(ENGINE SPUTTERING)
(LAUGHS) No.
When Top Gear raced a Bugatti Veyron,
against a Cessna from Italy to London,
and the car won,
it made some aeroplane enthusiasts very angry.
They wrote us a huge letter and everything.
And since the aeroplane enthusiasts in question were The Royal Air Force,
and they were demanding a rematch,
using one of their fighter planes,
we were powerless to resist.
So, we said, "Yes," and we sent Richard along to defend the cars honour.
Yes, the 1,000 horse power legend is back.
And, if I'm honest, I'm a bit nervous,
because never before has it gone up against something like this.
The most modern, the most hi-tech strike fighter on the planet.
The Eurofighter Typhoon.
And for once, when it comes to figures,
the Bugatti really is well and truly top-trumped.
Its twin engines develop 20,000 pounds of thrust each,
punching the Eurofighter up to 65,000 feet,
and a top speed of over 1,500 miles an hour.
The shoot-out will take place here,
on the main runway at RAF Coningsby, in Lincolnshire.
And here's the challenge.
It's a horizontal vs vertical drag race, over two miles.
Here's the start-finish line and the car and the plane.
Yeah, it's difficult to get hold of models of a Veyron and a Eurofighter.
They both start from here. The car will race down the runway for a mile,
when it reaches the mile marker, turn as quickly as possible,
and then race back down over the same mile, to cross the start-finish line here.
Meanwhile, the plane will set off and take off as quickly as possible,
and cover a mile.
Vertically, obviously.
When it's done the mile, it turns and swoops back down the same mile,
to cross the start-finish line.
Or to crash into a £1 million supercar that it didn't expect to see,
and YouTube has a field day.
Otherwise, the last one to finish is a vegetarian.
Simple as that.
Now, you might think the plane is going to walk it.
But don't be so sure.
The car should have the edge off the line.
It'll do nought to 100 in 5.7 seconds, for God's sake.
And when it gets to these yellow dots,
which mark the mile point where it has to turn around,
the Veyron has another advantage.
Down here, its awesome brakes should come into play.
And then there's the air brake as well,
which on its own, generates the same stopping power
as you'd get in a normal hatchback.
A straight line is a straight line.
So the car does what it does there.
But up here, I've got to brake as late as possible,
and lose as little time as possible making the turn,
before the return mile.
So I reckon, it'll be won or lost here at this end.
MAN: (OVER RADIO) Stand by one, give me 20 seconds.
As drag races go, you will agree,
this is quite a good one.
(ENGINES ROARING)
(ENGINE REVS)
We are away!
We're neck and neck!
I'm getting away!
I can't believe I'm looking in... Whoa!
I can feel the whoosh from the jet!
And there it goes!
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
So I'm fighting for the Germans in a battle against the RAF!
If you're watching thinking, "This is cool,"
it is.
After just 18 seconds, I was doing 188 miles an hour,
and getting ready to brake for the mile turn.
That's as late as I dare!
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
This is where it's won or lost!
(TYRES SCREECHING)
I'm on the return mile now!
This is the best race in history!
If I mess this one up, I may as well get a paper route.
I was doing 196 miles an hour, but was it enough?
I must still be ahead, I can't see the plane.
No!
No!
I suspect I may get some abuse for this.