The fourth episode of the second season of “The Grand Tour” came to us from Croatia this week and was entitled “Unscripted” as a response to the common complaint that many of the current TGT episodes [and former Top Gear episodes] were too scripted and therefore predictable and unexciting. The boys – Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – attempted to address that “problem” by filming an entire segment unscripted.
Before that, however, Hammond road-tested the $280,000 McLaren 720 S – and while he failed to crash the car as he did with the Croatian-made Rimac in the first episode, he did thrash it around on the test track but failed to achieve a track test time faster than the predecessor McLaren 650.
On the Conversation Street segment, end-of-year awards were given out and the most notable was the Nissan Juke being awarded as the worst car of the year and the Land Rover Discovery being christened as the car with the worst “rear end”.
In the main “unscripted” segment, Jeremy brings an Audi TT RS [which Jeremy briefly describes as a “GT-R with a well-shaved scrotum”], Richard has the “action-lifestyle” Ariel Nomad and James shows up in a Lada Riva, which he intends to turn into a fire engine [complete with flames on the hood]. The Audi wins the obligatory drag race as well as the pseudo-rally course designed to help the Audi with many more straights than turns.
The Celebrity Face-Off segment was an all-British affair between musical theatre singers Alfie Boe and Michael Ball which produced unremarkable results except for the tidbit of information that TVR used to use cyanide-based paints on their cars.
Overall, the concept was promising but the episode did not live up to its ambitious title and ASN awards it a paltry 77 on a scale of 100 – the worst outing yet for TGT so far this season.