Top Gear Portfolio

Sample a few of Top Gear’s greatest photos in our gallery, then go and buy a copy of the magazine for your coffee table.

Fiat 500 Concept
Putting beautiful girls and beautiful cars together went out of fashion in the UK at about the same time as coal mining. But there are certain times, and certain cars, that positively demand a reunion.

Where: Turin, Italy
When: May 2004
Who: Anton Watts

Alfa Romeo 8C
All snapped up before they were made, this is probably as good a glance of Alfa’s 8C Competizione as we’re ever likely to get. Sold in tiny numbers to be squirreled away by wealthy collectors, it’s triumph and tragedy in equal measure.

Where: Balocco, Italy
When: December 2007
Who: Lee Brimble

It’s hard to imagine a more British image of motoring aspiration than this, a shot made
all the more patriotic, and possible, by the super-smooth ride and sheer speed of the
Jaguar XJR it was taken from.

Where: Glencoe, Scotland
When: October 2005
Who: Lee Brimble

Top Gear has had some dubious ideas in its time, but arguably none to rival driving an Ariel Atom from Southwest England to the Artic Circle in the middle of winter. We made it though, and somehow so did our fingers and toes.

Where: Arctic Circle, Norway
When: May 2005
Who: Lee Brimble

The closed-canopy Caparo is the space-aged stuff of school boy fantasies. Getting out of the
wind is a £25,000 option on the T1, but if you’re going to be hitting 100mph in 5.8 seconds it’s
one worth considering.

Where: Park Royal Studios, England
When: July 2007
Who: Lee Brimble

If you’re going to dice with icy hairpins and thousand metre drops, a 500 Abarth or Renaultsport Twingo will reward you more than any gingerly driven supercar. And you may live to tell the tale.

Where: Aosta, Italy
When: January 2009
Who: Justin Leighton

Nothing says ‘Blissful Americana’ more than these three cars, bleached midday sunshine, a few cacti and an empty road in California.

Where: Palms to Pines Highway
When: June 2009
Who: Anton Watts

Never has the wizardry and magic trickery and brilliance of Lotus’ chassis engineers been more fully and glowingly demonstrated than in this car. Its fabulous balance between ride comfort and handling is almost other-worldly. It’s beautiful, too.

Where: Glen Coe, Scotland
When: June 2009
Who: Joe Windsor-Williams

Amidst the secrecy and politics of the paddock, the complexity of Ferrari’s F1 aero package is closely guarded. But Top Gear got a decent peek here as Felipe Massa tore around the Monaco
street circuit on full wets.

Where: Monaco
When: July 2008
Who: Justin Leighton

Here’s what you could have won, had you been born into money in a Northern European tax haven. On the up side, your Honda Cub has the 612 Scaglietti licked on fuel economy.

Where: Minfeng, China
When: April 2006
Who: Anton Watt

An extraordinary undertaking by anyone’s standards, and a genuine world first. You wouldn’t have put money on Top Gear being the first people on the planet to drive to the North Pole. Or would you...?

Where: The Arctic
When: September 2007
Who: Camera Man

The bio-fuel Koenigsegg was a handful. So much so that the factory’s test driver put it in a ditch at over 100mph with Top Gear onboard. The car you see here was hastily cobbled together for a shaky last minute shoot.

Where: Angelholm, Sweden
When: June 2007
Who: Joe Windsor-Williams

There are quite a few things you could rightly expect to find up a grubby back alley in downtown Los Angeles, but a Lamborghini Gallardo isn’t one of them. Not the Superleggera at any rate.

Where: Los Angeles, USA
When: May 2007
Who: Lee Brimble

Across town from the GTX1, Top Gear was also being let loose in the first Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, a car so beautiful that Clarkson immediately ordered one, hairdressers or not.

Where: Miami, USA
When: March 2006
Who: Lee Brimble

In the high summer deserts of California, with the mercury nudging 120 degrees,
things like a panoramic glass roof, or no roof at all, start to sound like a very bad idea. Is that some shade up ahead?

Where: Death Valley, USA
When: December 2008
Who: Justin Leighton

There aren’t many places where a Rolls Royce Phantom blends seamlessly into its surroundings, but you could choose better than the wrong side of Vegas at midnight. The hotel Top Gear was booked into had just been shut after a shooting.

Where: Las Vegas, USA
When: August 2005
Who: Anton Watt

The two faces of Ford. Blue collar heroes from both sides of the pond go head to head and there’s not much between them. Except that you could have a Focus RS for each day of the week for the price of one GT.

Where: Grand Corniche, Monaco
When: March 2009
Who: Joe Windsor-William

The Pagani Roadster F is everything that James May isn’t. Fast, flash and Italian. He could only feel more out of place if he were up against a Bugatti Veyron and The Stig. Oh...

Where: Dunsfold, England
When: January 2009
Who: Justin Leighton

It’s not easy to get a bona fide Top Gun fighter pilot excited, but dumping the clutch in a 600bhp 8.0-litre V10 Viper seemed to just about do it. Top Gear, Top Gun – we’ve always felt fairly interchangeable.

Where: Rosamund, USA
When: April 2005
Who: Lee Brimble

Clarkson drives the antidote to his Porsche allergy, the Carrera GT. A still-born Le Mans racing project, the GT was for many years the fastest car round the Nordschleife and remains the ultimate driver’s car for those it doesn’t kill.

Where: Berlin, Germany
When: November 2003
Who: Anton Watts