The seventh episode of the third season of “The Grand Tour” was upon us today, entitled “Well Aged Scotch” and it was ostensibly a cheap car challenge although, for many reasons, some of them legal, the boys [James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond] could not refer to it as such, so it became a Classic Car Investment Opportunity Challenge.
Jeremy bought a $13,000 Alfa Romeo GTV6, while James bought a $17,500 Lancia Gamma and Richard bought a $3000 Fiat X 1/9 to compete in the North Coast 500 – a 500-mile trip around the top of northern Scotland.
Almost immediately, one of the wiper blades on James’ Lancia rebelled and was followed by a barrage of jokes from Clarkson and Hammond about the tendency for the engine on James’ Gamma to explode.
A drifting competition at a kart track was lost by all three, though James was able to fit drifting tire covers on his tires and successfully drift his Gamma while Hammond made makeshift drift covers for his X 1/9 and Jeremy’s GTV6 – only to fail spectacularly in both cases – and causing a part failure in Jeremy’s car.
After Jeremy removed the roof of Hammond’s X 1/9 in retaliation for the drifting cover incident, the trio altered the route of the trip to cross through the middle of northern Scotland and celebrated Jeremy’s birthday [April 11] with a birthday party featuring Hammond cooking up deep-fried versions of Jeremy’s favorite dish [spaghetti Bolognese] and James serenading Jeremy with his version of “Happy Birthday to You” played on the bagpipes.
Conversation Street topics consisted of James’ memories of taping the tires of his Scaletrix cars, seasickness and vomiting tales, a hoverbike tested by the Dubai police and yet another rant on electric cars from Jeremy.
Jeremy tested the BMW M5 and its more sedate version – the Alpina – both in mostly unspectacular fashion.
Overall, ASN awards this episode an 87 out of 100 as the pseudo-cheap car challenge was the highlight but a tame Conversation Street and the lack of proper realistic challenges for each car brought it down below 90.