The Top Gear team's highlights of 2015

Delivering the Huracan back home

All good things have to come to an end, and when our time with the Huracan was up in July, we begrudgingly started to discuss plans for its return. With it quickly established that EW 002EZ would be heading directly to St’Agata, Rowan and I offered to play delivery drivers (well, you would, wouldn’t you?).

At 6pm on a Sunday evening, we met at the Channel Tunnel. There were very few rules for this roadtrip, in fact, there was really only one – pack light. Rowan had clearly forgotten this as he arrived carrying every piece of photographic equipment he owned, and some he’d rented. After some sweary moments, we somehow managed to fit it all in and congratulated the Huracan on its new-found practicality.

After a quick stop for fuel and the ubiquitous overnight roadtrip fuel of energy drinks and beef jerky, we slipped through the tunnel and out into a beautiful warm evening with the sun setting over our shoulders and the Huracan digesting miles with greater ease then we were digesting the jerky.

A quick detour to Reims allowed Rowan the opportunity to unpack the whole car for a couple of shots at the ghostly deserted grandstand and allowed me to grumble about how it was never all going to fit in again. It did.

As we continued to head south, it quickly became clear we were covering distance as such a rate (all within the legal limits, Officer) that we would arrive at the factory at a very unsociable hour. Some quick research showed we were “fairly close” to the Viale Gran San Bernardo – the road made famous in the opening sequence of the Italian Job. 

Some hours later we were there, ‘Days Like These’ playing on a constant loop, the Huracan cruising up the fabled pass as the sun rose. Sounds like a cliche, probably is a massive cliche, but as perfect car moments go I’m struggling to think of a better one this year.

As Rowan jumped out to take the stunning images which he delivers on a monthly basis, I took time to breathe in the unbelievable privilege of driving that car on that road at that time of the day.

With the scenic route done, we headed south to Milan and got brought straight back to reality by the morning rush hour. We cleared Milan, gave the Huracan one last blast down the A1 and found ourselves at St’Agata.

As the bug-splattered Huracan sat ticking cool in the Italian sun, I was genuinely struggling to hand over the keys. I would have happily turned round and done it all again. But Rowan had passed out and we had to catch our flight.

'That' tracking shot at Speed Week 2015

An attack helicopter is hovering 25ft above several million pounds’ worth of this year’s greatest performance cars. The wash from its rotor is literally beating the wind out of the lungs of the crew in the Caterham with every beat, and the noise reverberating around the RedBull Ring's grandstand has drowned out everything else to the extent that it’s impossible to communicate via the radios. Bruno Senna is sat at the spearhead of the formation and is starring at me, waiting for the instruction to go.

I drop my hand and start this year’s most insane formation lap. As the hypercars bleed past and the helicopter gains altitude to ensure it clears the start line light gantry, for once, I’m lost for words.      

The next two laps are something of a blur as I watch Blacky Schwarz keep in impossibly tight, low-level formation with the rest of the TopGear crew as they lap the circuit. I remember repeatedly questioning quite how we’d described this on the risk assessment, but above all I remember thinking that there are times in this job you will remember for the rest of your life – and this one has gone straight onto that list.

Thank you, Projekt Speilberg, you were immense. Thank you Bruno. Thank you Blacky for not causing me to have to reacquaint myself with “that” risk assessment. And thank you to the TG crew, you are quite simply the best in the business.

Being on set with Bond

Spending eight hours on the edge of the Tiber on a cold, wet night in March isn’t most people’s idea of the best way of seeing Rome. But then, 5 March wasn’t any normal night. As most Romans were settling down to their dinner, the 400-man SPECTRE crew descended on the Eternal City’s streets to film the step jump sequence.

After a brief spell in The Edge tracking vehicle watching stuntmen Mark Higgins and Martin Ivanov thrash the DB10 and C-X75 down Via deli Scialoja, the team reset for the main event.

During the pause in proceedings, I took the opportunity of walking the route with Higgins and, still to this day, remain staggered at the bravery required to just “send it” down five flights of steps. It really is a journey into the unknown, as the first take proved.

The violence of the impact as the DB10 and C-X75 cleared the first set of steps, and bottomed out as they leapt over the second set, made me wince. As the Aston was flicked into the air, Higgins instinctively put on the slightest turn of left-hand lock in mid-air, landed with a crash and buried the throttle before heading to the next obstacle. As the DB launched off the next flight of steps, the C-X75 scrabbled to catch up, snapped sideways with the force of the impact and slumped to a stop with its back axle in Tiber.

As the dust settled, I struggled to process the macabre automotive violence of what I had just witnessed.

That night, the team ran the steps repeatedly, and the bravery of the drivers and the commitment of the team remains etched in my mind to this day. On screen, that night translated to about seven seconds in the limelight, which gives you some idea of what it takes to be Bond.

It's been a very good year (again). One peppered with highlights that are impossible to narrow down, so instead of selecting one, I've done a few; 

1. South Korea in a Hyundai Tuscon

Rowan Horncastle and I are in Korea and have managed to get access to the world’s largest shipyard at Ulsan. We spend most of the next few hours with our chins on the floor – the scale of the place is just astonishing.

It employees 63,000 people, has 78 restaurants, uses 3.2 million tons of sheet steel every year, has ten dry docks, just one of which is currently home to two LPG tankers which will have a gross weight of a quarter of a million tonnes when they’re completed, AND the world’s largest ever ship, a container ship that’ll carry 19,000 of those truck-sized boxes and is a quarter of a mile long.

This picture sums it up. Yep, that right there, over the top of the Hyundai Tucson is a straight six turbo diesel. That’s the turbo on the side. It’s about nine or 10 feet across. The engine itself is a 142,587-litre in-line motor that develops 48,491bhp at 80rpm.

Meanwhile, in the background you’re looking at an LPG tank. It’s the size of a stately home. A big one. Honestly, the last time I got this blown away by the scale of something I was standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

2. Top Gear's rally car on ice

We’re out in Sweden in March to shoot our Sub Zero feature – a whole bunch of silly cars sliding around on an ice lake. It’s even more fun than it sounds.

There are two stars of the show – the Nissan GT-R predictably, and my very own TG rally car that just a few months earlier we’d taken to Wales Rally GB. Both are wearing ‘proper’ tyres – the Nissan equipped with 3mm studs on its winter tyres, the Hyundai with 7mm spiked D-Mack WRC tyres.

Both were genuinely the best fun I’ve had driving any car, anywhere this year. Even better than the P1 GTR. I think. Anyway, the GT-R had the chance to show just how well balanced the 4wd system is, while the front-wheel drive rally car could just be pitched and thrown about with abandon, kept pinned with the fruity exhaust yowling, and for good measure had towering handbrake in the cockpit. Nothing could touch them.

Which was faster, then? The 542bhp Nissan or the i20 with just 154bhp? Well, the Nissan was 14secs a lap faster than the next fastest car, but the little Hyundai was 11 seconds faster than that. And that’s the difference that tyres make.

3. Attack helicopter vs McLaren P1 GTR

I suspect I’m not the only one to have the Bell Cobra helicopter down as one of my moments of the year. And unlike Stephen Dobie, I didn’t get to fly in it. But I did get to race it.

Pilot Blacky Schwarz talks a good game, “how many G can you pull in corners?”, he asks me.

“two, maybe two and a bit in the fast corners,” I answer.

“I can pull five,” comes the reply, “I will be slower down the straights, but in the corners I think I will catch you.”

I have to pinch myself. I’m about the drive a super-exclusive 1000bhp, £2 million track day car around the Red Bull Ring in a race against an attack helicopter. This is insane. Welcome to TopGear.

What follows is the best 20 minutes of my life. Blacky is one of the world’s most skillful stunt heli pilots and at times is so close over the top of the car that not only does the rotor clatter completely drown out the twin-turbo V8, but the air pressure from the downdraft sends shock waves through my ribcage. It’s intense. Mad.

Sometimes I catch glimpses of him out of the side windows, banked right over behind me, rotors seeming to scrape the tarmac. It’s properly intimidating, still got its machine gun, is skeletal and deathy. But that’s the thing, he’s behind. I can rip away from him down the straights and he’s not catching me enough in the corners to keep up.

I back off because having that clatter and drama overhead is just so unique. Makes photographers happy, too. 

Every day is a good day when you work for Top Gear Magazine, but 2015 has turned out to be a bit of a classic. The truth is, I’m car-obsessed enough to enjoy driving everything from the smallest hatch to the most outrageous supercar, but certain things stand out pin-sharp and memory bright. And the best bit is there’s a stack of magazines that remind you, equipped with some of the best photography in the business. It’s the ultimate diary. In no particular order, here’s some of the moments that made 2015 very special for me…

Driving the Ferrari Speciale Aperta on a crisp Maranello day turned into something wistful. Hearing that normally-aspirated V8 sing out and knowing that it was the last of a line of legends made handing the thing back very hard indeed. And having one of ‘those’ drives down through the sunlit hills made for a brain full of awe. The 488 may be fast, but I guarantee a turbo car will not be the same. Not worse necessarily - but not the same. 

Being handed the keys to a Lamborghini Aventador SV is also pretty memorable. Especially before anyone else. It was only for 24 hours, so I did what any of us would have done, and drove it… for a solid day and night. It’s a testament to the car that I never wavered. The pictures by Mark Fagelson justified the effort. 

Then there was a trip to Norway with Justin Leighton in a tiny, three-cylinder Dacia Sandero. An attempt to prove that fun happens whatever you drive. That road trips are about the adventure, not the price. Handbrake-turning every hairpin down a deserted Trollstigen made me laugh more than I can tell you here. Sheer joy of cars. 

I also ran the Hennessey Velociraptor as a daily for a few months, and again, it’s an experience that few get, and one I wouldn’t change. Expensive, wide, and desperately full of overkill, it’s been the best longtermer I’ve ever had. If not the most practical. We tested it against the Mercedes 4x4-2, and did jumps, and drifted into lakes. It was like a dream. 

There was the Bentley Mulsanne in Florida, for which I thought it would be a good idea to fill the car with live alligators. The £1-million Eagle Speedster that I drove around a humid and atmospheric Miami, the annual Performance Car of the Year bash at the RedBull Ring - including an Apache attack helicopter - Top Gear on ice, the big hot hatch test…. it’s all been brilliant. 

But one highlight remains brighter than the rest for me. I recently took an Mazda MX-5 up the Dalton Highway in Alaska. Roof down all the way, 1500 miles of dirt. It’s was a life-affirming trip. A proper adventure. I don’t know if I’ll ever top it. But I’m going to try. 

Here’s to many more in 2016. Take care, hope you can come along one day… 

Yes, there is a very blue Lamborghini in this picture and I am quite close to it with the fob in my pocket, but that in itself is not my highlight of 2015. The key here is location; behind those barriers is cargo village at Dubai airport, where the first Aventador SV Roadster to arrive in the Middle East had been held captive by for the previous 48 hours. Meanwhile, I was sweating and stressing profusely given a looming deadline and eight blank pages to fill. This, then, was my moment of 2015 – a feeling of pure relief.

I had been minutes away from making that dreaded call to the editor and suggesting we deployed plan B… and then there was movement. Final forms were signed and countersigned, rubber stamps brandished and the car was free. The delay meant we had 24 hours (roughly half of what was originally planned) to find the UAE’s most incredible road and pummel it into submission in this hulking, roofless Lambo.

The road in question was hidden in the middle of the aptly named empty quarter – a bucking, weaving, baby-bottom-smooth squiggle of tarmac slicing its way through a lunar-esque sandscape. There are probably only a few public roads on earth where you can really exercise an Aventador, let alone one with SV decals, but this was one of them. I left with a newfound respect for the depth of engineering in Sant’Agata’s offspring, and a forehead the colour of its brake calipers.

What else? Driving a 2002 Turbo on greasy Buckinghamshire roads highlighted just how much invisible assistance we lean on these days, but it dazzled me with it’s natural balance and raw pace. As did the Renault R.S. 01 – a GT3-shaming race car that walks the line perfectly, offering top racing drivers a challenge along with usability for normal humans like myself. Unless it rains and you’re stuck out there on slicks…

More recently, taking on and conquering stupidly steep and narrow hairpins on the Hardknott pass in the McLaren 675LT, 911 GT3 RS and Aventador SV will live long in the memory, and the scrapes long on their chins. But what’s truly remarkable about my 2015 is that I only assumed my new post in mid-August and already the highlights are overflowing. 2016, it’s over to you. 

Being pooed on by an Argentinian pigeon while covering the Dakar rally, that’s how my year started. Chasing Yakuza-types in neon-lit Lambos around Tokyo is how it ended. Somewhere in the middle, I found myself at the pointy end of a helicopter gunship buzzing down a McLaren P1 GTR. I know, I'm a lucky so-and-so.

But one trip from 2015 has become my go-to pub story: the Gumball 3000 Rally. 

The Gumball is technically classed as a point-to-point road rally, but it's no Mille Miglia. Rather a hedonistic party on wheels for the world’s one-per-centers. I am definitely not one of them, but somehow managed to grab a drive with Guess jeans who entered three Dodge Vipers, complete with stunning models as co-pilots.

Given the start in Stockholm coincided with my birthday, I quickly learned that Gumball’s legendary uber-party claims didn’t need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Unless you’re drinking tequila, that is.

But given a teammate managed to disintegrate a clutch within a few hundred of miles of the start line, it was a sobering reality check that it'd be a week of surfing a tumultuous wave of highs and lows.

Having piggybacked our way to Oslo on a low-loader, from there we travelled to Copenhagen and Amsterdam before the Vipers were flown via Antonov to Reno, Nevada. The humans were chartered by ‘Gumball Air’.

What happened on that private 737 has been successfully etched into my cerebral cortex for the rest of my life. But to hear the full story, you’d have to meet me down the pub.

Once stateside, our nomadic pack of cars and party goers continued on to San Francisco, onto Los Angeles via a track day – I’m sure the insurers are still wincing – before rolling into the neon-lit geographical embodiment of the Gumball: Sin City itself, Las Vegas.

Having watched the rally go through its crazy days in the early-noughties, names like Lonman, Torquenstein, and Alex Roy – who all reached celebrity status through outrageous rally antics – the people and purpose of the rally had always fascinated me.

When doing it for real, I found it to be a completely different experience to the well-edited world of Gumball movies. Due to unbelievable disorganisation, massive fatigue and a few hangovers, there were times I thought it was genuinely horrible. At some points I even compared it to being tortured.

But the bad times were punctuated with good times. Great times, in fact. I hate the phrase ‘emotional rollercoaster’, but this really was one: a white-knuckle Big Dipper of WTF.

I wasn’t a winner when crossing the finish line in Las Vegas but glad to be a survivor. And arriving back to the office with my feet firmly set in reality, I quickly realised that it was one of the most intense and interesting things I'd ever done.

Would I do it again? Hell yeah. 

Literally my highest point of 2015 was standing in the observation bubble of one of Shanghai's forest of skyscrapers. I could hardly see the ground through the veil of pollution. A few hours later I was down amid that smog, in low-rise back-streets where most people still get around on rusty bikes. Less than 20 years ago this country of over a billion people had almost zero private car ownership.

Since that standing start, total annual car sales have overtaken the whole of Europe combined, and the country has built more motorway than the entire US interstate system. My local guide was Huan Chen, from TopGear China. He tried gamely to explain some of the consequences of that rate of change, but he just made my head spin.

Ghastly traffic jams are one result, of course. But a few weeks earlier I'd been watching the ultimate way to get a move-on through city streets.

I was in Rome to watch filming of some of the chase scenes in SPECTRE. They'd closed down much of the historic centre, so that Hinx's C-X75 could chase Bond's DB10 at speeds well into three figures. None of this stuff is faked or speeded up in post-production. The stunt teams did it all for real, and they are overproof heroes. Not to mention the camera-car drivers and helicopter pilots who follow the action at ridiculously close quarters. And the Aston and Jaguar-Williams engineers who built the cars that can stand up to this sort of treatment.

Back to production cars. Usually they get unveiled at private press-only affairs, or in fairly routine events at motor shows. But twice this year I've seen the cloth pulled off in a stadium full of both established brand fans and the factory workers whose livelihoods depend on their success. In both cases it amped up the excitement to fever pitch.

In February a load of historic-fast-Ford owners came to the Cologne factory to watch Ken Block come pirouetting through in a Focus RS. And in June things got hot and hysterical in Milan as Alfa wheeled out the Giulia Quadrifoglio. Now, at year's end, I'm getting pretty darned impatient to see whether all that excitement was justiified.

The best new-car drive? No question, a 12-hour blat across Europe, ending in laps of the TopGear track. I was in what turned out to be one of the absolute it cars of 2015, the Cayman GT4. The hype, the short supply, the ridiculous overpricing of used examples – believe me it's all justified.

It turns out the same applies to its predecessor, the 911 2.7 Carrera RS. Oh crikey did I enjoy a go in one of those. But it wasn't the only old charmer this year. There was the workmanlike simplicity of the first Ford Transit. And the extraordinary precision, elegance and refinement of an E36 BMW 3-series.

New year's resolution: get myself into some old Land Rovers, to mark the Defender's passing.

The best part of this job is the randomness. And there was a lot of it in 2015.

The big hero cars we knew about, of course. The McLaren 675 LT was at the Geneva show in March, finished in an oddly captivating slate grey colour. By the time we drove it in July, it had turned bright green but still somehow came on like the McLaren we’d really been waiting for. (Yes, more even than the P1.) Fast enough to tilt the world on its axis, the 675 is also the best fast road car I think I’ve ever driven for reasons that we often overlook: the driving position is absolutely bang on, and you can see out of it properly. The basics, in other words, but they allow you to revel in the sublime steering, handling and brakes. For me, car of the year. Or indeed any year.

The Ferrari F12tdf is a different sort of impressive, mainly because it demonstrates Ferrari’s willingness to go right to the edge, and even beyond. Like the McLaren, the F12tdf has truly massive performance, and its active rear steer set-up takes some getting used to. The result is a high performance car like no other, which is surely the point. When you’re forking out the thick end of £350k (once you’ve optioned it up), what you really want is the most elevated possible experience. And Ferrari is very good at delivering those.

Then there was the Pagani Zonda LM, a £3.5m client’s one-off only TG got to drive. We took it to an Italian national park called Gran Sasso, which has a Bond villain-style outpost at the top where Mussolini was effectively imprisoned in 1943. Pagani’s superbly named PR Luca Venturi also let me have a lengthy drive in the Huayra, adding up to a day to end all days, and confirming that Horacio Pagani can stand toe-to-toe with the big boys. Mind you, I really enjoyed the blat back to Rome airport in the rental Fiat Panda. Not as elevating, perhaps, but still a great experience.

There were other odd highlights in 2016. Getting to drive a 1980 Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9 to meet a 1970 Mercedes C111 – a gullwing concept car, rarely let loose in the wild – was a massive privilege. There was a drive in a Lancia Stratos and a passenger session in the utterly berserk mid-’80s Delta S4 (cheers John!). The Aston Martin Vulcan was fun (thanks Darren). And just a few weeks ago TG landed a world exclusive drive in the Aston Martin Lagonda Taraf, £696,000’s worth of utter irrationality that I immediately fell in love with, though not quite as much as the 1984 Lagonda we brought along for the ride (credit to Kevin for that one).

In August, I raced the latest F56 Mini in the Mini Challenge at Oulton Park, and despite an almost vertical learning curve finished 12th and 10th in the two rounds. The car was basically a Mini touring car, and there were a couple of ex-BTCC guys on the grid, so the abject terror I was feeling beforehand morphed into elation simply by not crashing. Never mind a top 10 finish.

There was elation of a different kind when I met two heroes at the designer’s do after the Geneva show press day: Giorgetto Giugiaro and Chris Bangle. Some kids idolised footballers or pop stars – when I was a kid, I wanted to be Giugiaro. Yeah, I know it’s a bit weird, but he was, and remains, the dude of dudes.

As is Jacky Ickx, five-time Le Mans winner, ex-Ferrari F1 driver and subject of a brilliant story Lord March told me that I can’t repeat here. I met Jacky during another of the year’s absolute, and perhaps unexpected, highlights: the Schloss Bensberg Classic in Germany. Marrying an historic rally – I drove that in a prototype 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera Clubsport alongside Bugatti’s wonderfully raconteurish consultant Georges Keller – with a full-blown concours event, this one joins an increasingly congested events calendar. The treasures that were assembled there suggest that SBC is closing in on Villa d’Este, Goodwood and Pebble Beach for automotive star power. 

Finally, a shout out to classic car expert and dealer Simon Kidston, who gallantly agreed to co-drive the Mille Miglia with me in his Jaguar D-type. This is another one of those cars you read a lot about, and wonder how any mere machine could possibly be as good as they say. Believe me, it is, though not for its ease-of-use as we discovered on Friday night in Rome’s rush hour (racing clutch). Elsewhere, though, the D was as intimate and elevating as any car could possibly be, and more than a little scary. Grazie mille, I owe you one, Simon.

2015 was another reminder of why this is the best job in the world. The performance car world is at its strongest for years, and superstars like the Porsche Cayman GT4 prove that paddleshift gearboxes and complex hybrid systems aren’t necessary for speed and fun.

Driving the diddly little Honda S660 around Tokyo - a city to which its design feels laser guided - was a personal highlight. As a long-standing fan of Japan’s titchy kei cars, it was a genuine privilege to finally have a go in one. And to see Tokyo’s superb oddness from the wee Honda’s open cockpit, too.

Another ‘car’ perfectly crafted for its surroundings was the 8x8 Avtoros Shaman (above), a simply loopy 5-ton off-roader that will cover just about any surface you dare throw at it. Lakes and rivers included. It turned out to be as brilliantly Russian as the people who make it, and I had as much fun in this as I’ve had in supercars worth three times its £88,000 price tag.

The moment of 2015 that stays most vividly with me, though, involves driving a Renault Megane at around 25mph.

There are, naturally, a few flourishes I must add.

The Megane was a 271bhp Trophy R. The location was Austria’s rather senior Red Bull Ring. And 25mph was the speed of the Ferrari 458 Speciale slap bang in front of me, which in turn was following the lead of a Mazda MX-5, Cayman GT4 and a McLaren P1 GTR driven by, um, Bruno Senna.

It was the making of the group shot of Top Gear Speed Week 2015’s wild and wonderful contenders, including the Cobra helicopter which Red Bull - and its prize pilot Blacky Schwarz - use for face-melting stunt and speed displays.

As Ayrton’s nephew led our slowly shuffling pack, the Cobra hovered close enough to the Megane to require some mild counter-steering to avoid its rotor wash pirouetting me into the circuit’s kitty litter.

It’s hard to make accurate steering adjustments while you’re uncontrollably giggling, though, unable to comprehend quite how you’ve ended up beneath a converted helicopter gunship, in a French hatchback, on an Austrian racetrack.

As an experience to sum up the mad brilliance of working at Top Gear, nothing topped it.

I’ve been a lucky sod in 2015: feeling a Ferrari 458 Speciale’s aero-honed body squirm in the downdraft of an Apache helicopter gunship at Speed Week on the Red Bull Ring was one of the most bizarre moments I’ve ever had it a car, but driving it fast, and feeling its side-slip angle Hero Mode at work was one of the most exciting. Right up until I had a go in a McLaren 675LT at the end of 2015, the Speciale was my personal car of the year.

Spending a summer weekend in TG’s long-term Lamborghini Huracan narrowly beat out rinsing the Porsche Cayman GT4 from London to Stuttgart in one Saturday for ‘weekend of the year’ too. Away from actually driving cars, getting to chat to world’s fastest man Andy Green and sit in the driver’s seat of current land speed record holder Thrust SSC, while we chatted about the crackers maths behind the Bloodhound project, was a major bucket list box ticked.

But if I’m to pick one memory from 2015 as the highlight of the year, it was driving the TG garage BMW i8 from the TopGear office in West London to Kall in mid-Sweden over three days in February. I’d heard so much about the i8, read its reviews, seen its videos, but my first chance to actually drive BMW’s super-hybrid was 1500 miles of motorways, twisting rural roads, snowy tracks and, eventually, an ice lake.

The temperature dipped as low as minus 15 degrees on the way, we maxed the car on the German autobahn, and it monstered the massive winter grand tour in great comfort, with total reliability, and while averaging high-thirties mpg. It made me grow to respect the i8 hugely, eviscerating my initial skepticism about BMW’s eco-911 rival. And, in the lucky occasions I’ve got to drive an i8 since, nothing has changed my mind that it’s probably the best car in the world right now. 

Unquestionably fun as it was sliding a Huracan around a frozen lake, my highlight of 2015 didn’t come in a snortling supercar or slice of Italian exotica.

No, it came in a small, modestly powered British hatchback, doing nothing so uncouth as threatening the speed limit or squealing the tyres. Just bumbling happily along an empty road on a sunny day, sharing the car with ace photographer and thoroughly nice chap Mark Fagelson.

The empty road in question was somewhere south of San Pedro de Atacama, 2400 metres above sea level in the empty, arid Chilean desert. The car was a five-door Mini Cooper S, a hatchback not generally bought by people who wish to tackle the driest, wildest terrain on the planet.

But that’s what made that big, silly road trip so very special. Yes, we all love supercars for their organ-pummelling speed, but what cars are really about – have always been about – is freedom, taking us to whichever corner we desire of this incredible, endlessly diverse planet.

Our silly Chilean adventure proved even a small, sensible city car can reach Earth’s most desolate outposts, surviving rock and sand and llamas without complaint. You don’t need a Hilux or Defender for a proper wild road trip, just a map, plenty of water and a healthy supply of spare tyres*.

*TopGear.com takes no responsibility for any injury/death/embarrassment sustained as a result of following this advice

Highlights of 2015? There have been many. Even without reading any of my colleagues’ highlights, I know pretty much all of them will have mentioned Speed Week, either at length or in passing. Most of the guys flew out one evening in May, ahead of what would become a four-day epic radiating out from a little town in Austria which, as it happens, has a whopping great race track on its periphery. But not me.

No, the two Ollies, Rowan and I elected to drive the boss’s i8, a Mini JCW, a Renaultsport Megane and a Rangie SVR the 1000-odd miles to deepest Austria, via France, Belgium, Holland and mile-upon-mile of derestricted Autobahn. Somehow I ended up in the i8, second in a completely legal 160mph convoy, wipers on to bat away the globs of fuel shooting out of the SVR’s exhaust. That’s a sight you don’t forget in a hurry.

And then there was that epic, 19-car tracking shot for the front cover – Cobra attack helicopter hovering overhead. I bagged the SVR, which we stuck at the back so its hulking mass didn’t block any of the other cars out. As you can see, the resulting view – if you can pardon the hurried portrait photo – was, erm, profound.

Not forgetting the few laps I – by some distance the slowest member of the TG team – spent with a Formula Renault, so kindly provided by the Red Bull Ring to showcase the kind of experiences it offers paying customers. Which brings me onto my undoubted highlight of the year – not stalling the damn thing. 

A quick chat with Daniel Ricciardo at the start of the year – who, as it turns out, really is as effervescent and downright charming as he appears on telly – was a great start.

Then came a hot ride in Ken Block’s one-off ‘Hoonicorn’ Mustang at Goodwood, and a terrifying flat-out experience in Nismo’s GT500 car on a crisp, sunny day with Mount Fuji in the background. Of course, I appreciated both once the initial terror and pain had subsided.

There was also a wonderful night drive in Porsche’s sublime Boxster Spyder. And the jewel in the crown, naturally, was managing to get a really big, fluffy dog into the boot of a Nissan Juke Nismo RS. Roll on 2016.