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Finally it’s here. 

The new series of TG actually on television. Thank Christ for that. Yes, I have become religious recently. So would you, believe me.

You have no idea what it’s been like since we took over the whole TG shooting match last June. So here you go, just to give you a flavour, some words and phrases that immediately spring to mind, a literary retrospective mood board, if you will...

Bun fight, whirlwind, chaos, nightmare, desperate, foreign, cold, wet, dark, too dark, exciting, thrilling, petrifying, nauseous, controversial, offensive, educational, enlightening, frustrating, confusing, humbling, new, old, contemplative, pioneering, classic, fast, slow, very fast, glacial, fulfilling, satisfying, revelatory, bloody great fun.

I have never experienced anything in my career that comes close to what it’s like to make a single film for TopGear, let alone a whole hour show... let alone a whole series. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world of TV. Every scene could be from a movie, every moment teetering on the brink somewhere between disaster and triumph.

It is a knife-edged, highly skilled production which I can’t believe I’ve had the almost incomprehensible pleasure and honour of being part of.

The vast majority of television I have been involved with in the past has been much more “of the moment”, more disposable if you like, as well as being usually live or “as live”. All of which is so NOT TopGear. TG is more akin to a Bond movie. By the time each episode is broadcast, 95 per cent of its content will have been edited to within an inch of its life to be tighter, brighter and jump off the screen and down your throat.

The most frequent question any of us have been asked in pre-season interviews is, “Are you nervous?” Answer: “No.”

There’s nothing left for us to be nervous about, we’ve each aged a thousand years in the past 10 months. We’re done. There’s nothing we can do now except sit back and enjoy our favourite show.

Like we always have. We hope you will too.

Amen. Praise the Lord.

This feature was originally published in Issue 283 of Top Gear magazine.

It’s a question that has long consumed sensible consumer publications: what’s the perfect car in which to make swift progress in a congested, hectic city like London? Sensible consumer publications tend to suggest something compact and nippy for the urban jungle: a VW Up, perhaps, or even a cheeky Renault Twizy.

Matt LeBlanc, however, is not a sensible consumer publication. In fact, he’s not a publication at all. He’s a person. Therefore Matt LeBlanc advocates something a little more… potent for your capital-based transportation requirements. Specifically a 1965 Ford Mustang notchback, sympathetically restored to concours condition with the addition of four-wheel drive, a supercharger and quite a lot of extra power. A car known simply as… the Hoonicorn. What it gives away to the Twizy and Up in terms of compact dimensions, it makes up for in the “going really quite fast” department. Eight hundred and forty-five horsepower of ’charged V8 tend to do that.

So when Matt wanted a whistle-stop tour of London’s most famous sights, there was only one vehicle for the job. But of course, a city car is only as good as its driver. Enter Kenneth “The Knowledge” Block on steering duties, a man with a very active handbrake arm, access to a mysterious network of underground tunnels, and an uncanny ability to find deserted streets during midweek rush hour. And, apparently, the Royal Air Force on speed dial.

The result? Maybe the fastest London tour in history. And to the wedding party outside St Paul’s, sorry for all the noise. And tyre dust. Hope you enjoyed your big day.

Judging by a) his YouTube showreel and b) the fact he scurries everywhere slightly sideways, head angled over one shoulder, Chris Harris is a man well versed in the art of oversteer. So what better way to test his dedication to the art of silly skids than to stuff him in perhaps the most extreme front-engined, rear-drive Ferrari of all time, the 770bhp F12tdf, the car even Maranello admits is a bit “challenging” to drive?

Of course, that also meant taking a quick spin in the Fifties original that lent its name to the modern tdf: the Ferrari 250 Berlinetta Tour De France. A bona fide classic worth… about five million quid. Welcome to the show, Chris.

A one-way ticket on the Venice Simplon-Orient Express – the two-day, ultra-luxury train journey from London to Italy’s premier canal-based tourist destination – costs a cool £3,300. Which is a lot of money. And there are alternatives... like buying a secondhand luxury car and driving to Venice instead. Much better. Much more TopGear.

The plan was simple: Evans, Schmitz and LeBlanc would each buy a luxury vehicle of their choosing to tackle the journey. All very straightforward, save for the minor issue that Matt turned out not to be especially au fait with the British secondhand car market.

And then it was pointed out that included in the train ticket price was a Michelin-grade dinner on the move, and it’d frankly be a dereliction of duty if our trio of drivers didn’t attempt to replicate that part of the Orient Express experience. Also on the move.

Cue the entrance of a trio of Michelin-starred chefs, and a great leap into the culinary unknown.

So, if you’ve ever found yourself idly wondering whether it’s possible to roast a chicken on the catalytic converter of a middle-aged Jaguar XJ, or peel asparagus while riding on the back of a Honda Goldwing in sub-zero temperatures, TopGear has all the answers. Basically it’s Long Way Down meets Masterchef meets Really Quite Dangerous Things to Attempt While Driving at 80mph on a French Autoroute.

Fear not: the new series of TopGear contains plenty of track-based supercar hoonery... with a little help from our friends. At Dunsfold, Chris Evans enlists the assistance of some guy called Jenson Button to get to grips with the 675LT, the car billed as the finest McLaren since the original F1. On the other side of the pond, Sabine generously volunteers to give Chris a few laps of the bilious Laguna Seca racetrack in the new R8 V10 Plus, the fastest, most powerful Audi ever. In retrospect, those strawberries may have been a bad idea.

If there’s one manufacturer that sums up the blue-skying, ideas-showering, thinking-so-far-outside-the-box-you-can’t-even-see-the-box-anymore ingenuity of the British motor industry – even more than McLaren, even more than Jaguar – it’s surely Ariel, the tiny Somerset outfit behind the fizzog-reshaping Atom. And the even-more-fizzog-reshaping Atom V8.

In a bid to indoctrinate our tame American in the curious, imaginative ways of Britain, we sent Matt LeBlanc to the West Country to test out Ariel’s latest product, the all-terrain, scaffold-framed Nomad. Unfortunately Matt took a slightly wrong turn at Blandford Forum, and ended up in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains instead. Which turned out not to be too much of a problem, as Morocco is rather a fine place to test out a go-anywhere, doorless, chunky-tyred lightweight. So long as you’re prepared to get a bit of dust in your hair. And eyes. And nose. And, well, let’s just say that, even now, Matt is still discovering pockets of Saharan sand about his person.

Anyhow, once he’d got over the whole “wrong turn” bit, Matt’s test was all going jolly well… until the all-terrain baddies turned up in the middle of the desert. With a dirt bike. And a drone. And a paramotor. Just our luck...

Good thing, then, that Mr LeBlanc is well versed in the art of all-terrain baddy evasion.

Few would argue that the Rolls-Royce Dawn – the car billed as the quietest convertible ever built – is a truly desirable automobile: seventeen foot and a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of open-topped, V12-engined opulence. Certainly not Matt LeBlanc, who seemed rather taken with the grandest of grand tourers, if not the challenge of parking it on village streets.

One of those who would argue, however,is professional contrarian Christopher Evans, who loudly opined that any and every right-thinking human would – rather than a glorious new Dawn – in fact prefer a slightly leaky, petrol-scented, part-functioning Seventies Rolls Corniche.

Refusing to concede to Matt – and indeed the entirety of the TopGear office – that Onesies Dawn beats Seventies Corniche in Rolls-Royce rock-paper-scissors, Chris insisted on heading to Dingle, on the west coast of Ireland, to “canvass the locals” in a referendum pitting old against new.

Cue an election campaign to make Bush versus Gore look like a gentle game of lawn bowls, with our candidates pulling out all the possible stops to secure every last vote from Dingle’s (admittedly more than a little bemused) population.

Never again may the worlds of Gaelic football and automotive electioneering collide with quite such confusing results.

Old cars are beautiful, but break down a lot. New cars are reliable, but are mostly a bit boring to look at. But can you have your cake, eat it and continue to have your cake? Perhaps so, if you’re prepared to embrace the shadowy science of resto-modding – taking old cars and reviving them with updated underpinnings. Up-to-date performance with classic looks: what’s not to love?

The cost, for one. Problem is, rather a lot of these resto-mods do reside at the pardon-how-much-did-you-say end of the price scale. If you’d like a better-than-new DB5, you’ll need to hand over at least half a million quid to Aston Martin Works.

But what if you fancy a modern classic for more modest money? Can you resto-mod for less? To find out, Chris Evans – a gentleman who rather likes his classic unmodded, as nature intended – tests out the “Abingdon Special” MGB roadster, a classic British convertible made rather more invigorating courtesy of some thoroughly modern Mazda oily bits under the skin. Heresy? Maybe a little bit. Entertaining? Very much so.

Jamming a 300bhp engine in a roadster that weighs the same as a medium-sized biscuit does result in some fairly lively performance. And a small amount of shouting.

Faster it may be, but is a Japanese-engined old Brit sacrilege or genius? Mr Evans, it’s safe to say, emerges with some fairly strong opinions on the matter…

In 1961, Jaguar launched the E-type at the Geneva motor show. The night before the big reveal, needing a second car to sate the baying crowds, Jaguar summoned their test-driver Norman Dewis from the Coventry factory. Dewis stormed through the night, 750 miles in just 13 hours, to make it to the launch with minutes to spare. Fifty-five years later to the day, can Rory Reid deliver the world’s only F-Type SVR convertible – Jag’s 567bhp monster – to its unveiling at the Geneva motor show? And if not, is it even logically possible to unveil a car that… isn’t there?

If you’re in the market for a huge-horsepower hypercar that costs at least a million pounds, yet can’t be driven on the road without the likelihood of an extended jail term, now is a fine time to be alive. You can have the very-much-not-road-legal, hybrid-powered Ferrari FXXK, or the equally-very-much-not-road-legal, equally-hybrid-powered McLaren P1 GTR.

But if you’re the curiously specific sort of oligarch/footballer in the market for a huge-horsepower, million-pound hypercar, but who suffers a crippling fear of electrically assisted powertrains, you really only have one choice: the Vulcan, the fastest, most powerful Aston Martin ever.

To find out whether the Vulcan is worth your hard-won, likely untaxed, cash, Chris Harris heads to Abu Dhabi’s glittering Yas Marina circuit wearing his best brave face. And rapidly discovers it’s really quite difficult to talk at the same time as not crashing an 800bhp, rear-drive track monster. Aston advises you drive the Vulcan with power limited to a mere 550bhp while you get to grips with it. Clearly Harris didn’t follow this advice. WARNING: this segment features gratuitous gurning.

As cars that span the genres of performance and practicality, there are many ways to compare the respective merits of fast SUVs. Nought to 62mph, towing capability, wading depth: the list is all but endless.

But to TopGear’s knowledge, no one has yet attempted to rank fast SUVs by their ability to deliver an A-list musician to the highest pub in Africa, to play the headline slot at an open-mike night. Not even What Car?, and they basically test everything.

In a bid to address this glaring hole in humanity’s knowledge, Messrs Evans, LeBlanc and Jordan each selected a new, sporting off-roader – in the shape of the Jaguar F-Pace, Porsche Macan and Mercedes-Benz GLC respectively – and headed to Durban to collect their A-list musicians, in the shape of Seasick Steve, Tinie Tempah and Sharleen Spiteri respectively. TopGear only deals with alliterative A-list musicians.

Turns out Tinie, Sharleen and Seasick are quite the sticklers for a thorough road test, so our presenter/artist combos embarked on a South African road trip to explore every facet of the SUVs’ performance and practicality, through the traditional avenues of cocktail mixing and wildlife photography.

And just to make sure there was no danger of our A-listers mistaking TopGear for a friendly travel show, it all ended with a no-holds-barred race to the top of Africa’s hairiest mountain road: the Sani Pass. Because, frankly, nothing prepares an internationally famous singer for a gig in front of a couple of dozen punters in a tiny pub better than the very real possibility of skidding off a dirt track and plunging a thousand feet to the valley floor below.

The Ford Focus RS was recently named Car of the Year by scurrilous rag TopGear magazine, partly for its excellent bootspace and standard Isofix mountings, but also slightly for its ability to do massive silly drifts at the slightest provocation.

But is the Focus RS so oversteerable (yep, it’s a word) that even a child can drift it? Rory “Best Supply Teacher Ever” Reid assembled a) one Focus RS, b) one child, c) a very large, empty runway and d) his best yoof lingo, and set out in search of answers. Sick, innit?

With its 640bhp V10 engine, rear wing bigger than Alan Sugar’s boardroom table, and more latent testosterone than the average UFC audience, the Dodge Viper ACR is probably the most extreme muscle car you can buy right now. But is it extreme enough to beat the Corvette Z06 in a dogfight at the home of the US Navy’s Top Gun programme?

Enter Sabine, a Corvette Z06, some serious weaponry and a couple of crack fighter pilots. Can the Viper outmanoeuvre the Corvette? Can our German ace get missile lock on Chris “Sitting Duck” Evans? And can America’s toughest airmen handle Sabine’s driving? Only the Nevadan desert has the answer...

Owning a classic muscle car makes a whole lot of sense if you live in, say, southern California, where the roads are open, the sunshine is plentiful and the fuel is cheap.

But if you happen to live, say, on the A385 just east of Ullapool in the northernmost reaches of Scotland, owning a classic muscle car makes rather less sense, on account of classic muscle cars’ frequently wayward handling, aversion to cold weather and the fact that, for some reason, their steering wheels always seem to be on the wrong side. Which is slightly annoying if you have to head to a drive-through, and slightly lethal if you have to overtake a lorry on a two-lane road.

So, does the new Ford Mustang – with its newfangled “right-hand-drive” technology – finally represent a muscle car fit for Britain? And can a right-hand-drive muscle car – especially one with a penguin-hugging, lily-livered four-cylinder turbo engine – be called a muscle car at all? We sent Rory Reid to the A385 just east of Ullapool.

The new M2 has been heralded not only as a return to form for BMW’s M-Division, but one of the most entertaining driver’s cars of 2016. Punchy, pugnacious, rear-wheel drive: the sort of car that sets petrolhead synapses firing in happy unison.

But exactly how happy does the M2 make you? Enter Chris Harris and the patented TopGear Funometer 3000, a revolutionary brain-scanning device harnessing the once-derided science of phrenology to calculate, in mathematical terms, precisely how much you’re enjoying yourself in the corners. Can the M2 outscore Audi’s ballistic RS3?

The UK and the USA. Two nations separated by a large body of water, and differing opinions on whether gravy offers an appropriate accompaniment for biscuits. (Spoiler: No. It doesn’t. Ever.)

But which of these great car-building nations boasts the greatest history of, um, car building? In a bid for answers, we recruited professional Americanist Matt LeBlanc and full-time Brit Chris Evans to do battle over a series of gruelling challenges in a pair of vehicles embodying their respective nations’ motoring heritage: the Series One Land Rover and the Willys Jeep. The original back-to-basics off-roaders, cars that put function over form, and resilience over anything resembling acceleration.

The battlefield? That most storied theatre of warfare: Blackpool. A town even the Blackpool tourist board hesitates to describe as “the Las Vegas of Britain”. From ice cream vans to drag queens to giant balloons, these brutal challenges would test the very mettle of our intrepid presenters.

But first, of course, they would have to journey to Blackpool. In a brace of roofless Reliant Rialtos, which, if you’re not familiar with three-wheeler history, are very much like Reliant Robins, only no better in any way. From London. Which is not close to Blackpool at all. Two hundred and fifty miles across England. In Friday rush-hour traffic. In the depths of winter. In a pair of very draughty, very unreliable three-wheelers. Safe to say the small print of LeBlanc’s contract underwent thorough scrutiny that day.