“The Grand Tour” boys – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – return for the latest episode of their intermittent Amazon Prime series with the double entendre-titled “Sand Job” – a two hour and 16 minute foray into West Africa [mostly Mauritania and Senegal] under the tutelage of executive producer Andy Wilman.
The episode follows most of the usual tropes – usually consisting of contrived situations and pranks played upon each other along with faux or real outrage – that we have come to expect of the boys from dozens of previous road trip expeditions. This episode is no different in that regard. The only difference-maker in all the episodes is the premise – and in this one, the premise is similar to Cheap Car Challenge from the old “Top Gear” days, when the boys would purchase a cheap car of some sort and run it through a battery of tests to see which one of them selected the best car based on the purchase criteria.
For Sand Job”, the Cheap Car Challenge was to purchase and outfit a luxury car capable of completing the iconic Paris-Dakar Rally. Two parameters at the outset seem to be a given – that they will skip the “boring” Paris-to-Africa bit and just begin in Africa straightaway and that all cars will be of British origin, meaning, no appearance of Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Toyota or Audi or any other past winner of the actual event. In other words, only luxury British wholly inappropriate vehicles for Paris-Dakar.
That meant a Maserati for James, an Aston Martin DB9 Volante for Richard and a Jaguar F-type for Jeremy – all heavily and personally modified for the Sahara Desert, naturally. Normally, an episode might include the boys discussing, selecting or installing their modifications, but for the purpose of brevity, Wilman cuts to the chase and merely delivers the cars [via train] to the boys in the middle of the Mauritania desert.
From there, they embark on the typical road trip with the accompanying adventures so familiar from past episodes including getting stuck in the ubiquitous sand, navigating village traffic and the old favorite – crossing a river with no bridge.
While much of the episode harkens back to previous episodes, it is mostly delivered with somewhat fresh energy – the boys are all old now, of course – and ends in the usual cliffhanger manner [but the reality of time means viewers will have known the outcome for some time before watching the episode].
Overall, it was not an objectionable episode but with the ongoing ravages of time affecting the boys, viewers can see the finish line for the trio with this episode and these types of adventures. With the predictability of nearly every element of the episode and the age of the boys affecting some things, the only genuine joy remaining was watching and enjoying the usual verbal interplay between the boys, and for that reason, AutoSportsNation awards “Sand Job” a 77 on the scale of 100.
