Best of Top Gear TV 2012

Good news! We've got an entirely new series of Top Gear ready to powerslide out of the BBC vaults in 2013, and we promise we'll finally give you your belated Christmas special (in February, unfortunately, but we promise it will be worth the wait). 

But before we give up the goods, here's a look-back at some of our finest moments in 2012. And it was a good year - as well as celebrating our tenth anniversary, the boys managed to all clock 200+mph, we were serenaded by Slash from Guns and Roses, James got to drive his dream car, Kimi Räikkönen got to drive our Kia Cee'd and we were only attacked by Stig's Chinese cousin.

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The boys embarked on a road trip so dense with awesomeness your telly may have imploded. There was a Lamborghini Aventodaor, a McLaren MP4-12C, a Noble M600, a grand prix track, and 200+mph driving. Tough job...

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So, no one told us life was gonna be this way - we invite Friends and Episodes star, Matt LeBlanc, onto the TG sofa, and he only goes and makes it round our track in a record 1:42.1. Not bad considering he's used to cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side and automatic transmissions. It probably ruined Rowan Atkinson's day, his week, his month or even his year.

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If our colleagues in the media are to be believed, the recession's hit us so hard we've given up on cars altogether and are knife-fighting each other for cans of dog food. Luckily, things aren't that bad, but times are tight, so we got all consumery and showed you that you can have just as much fun with cars as you can on a golf course, and for the same money...

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If you've got the gentleman vegetables, there are several hellishly fast track-focused cars ready for racing. But which one's best? Jeremy, James and Richard put three of the best through their paces with a drag race, donut session, and try and out-manpart each other to see who can get the fastest entry through a hairpin corner.

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A pre-war 46-litre V12 car-thing called Brutus, and a Spitfire plane-powered Bentley. Who better to stage a race than JC...

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These are the salient facts - Richard Hammond races a Škoda Fabia against a flying, jet-powered man. Precisely as bonkers as it sounds.

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James May is easily distracted. Case in point - his Fisker Karma review. After driving around a bit and goading an alligator, he ended up racing Brian Johnson in a 1928 4.5-litre Bentley.

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As well as chancing upon Stig's slightly fighty cousin, we went to investigate China's automotive market, where someone buys a car every 2.3 seconds. Though things are not as they seem...

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If you want a job doing properly... don't get Richard and Jeremy to do it. Having been asked to put together a chase scene for The Sweeney remake movie, they ended up, erm, blowing up lots of caravans.

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Off-road mobility scooters? Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? The boys answer this very question with clarity and econoimy by racing three wounded soldiers...

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