The third episode of the second season of “The Grand Tour” was entitled “Bah-Humbugatti” in a reference to the Bugatti Chiron road-tested by Jeremy Clarkson in the episode but began with James May road-testing a Kia Stinger in the Spanish island of Majorca [some people have it tough].
May drove the $53,500 Stinger on some roads around Majorca but that was all window dressing leading up to the real reason for testing the Stinger in that location – a “race” against two professional skateboarders with the skateboarders going downhill on a curvy mountainous course against the notoriously slow May going uphill on the same course at the same time in the Stinger. Although this attempt to make the race close did succeed – May only won by six seconds – the outcome was never in doubt as long as May kept the Stinger on the road.
This episode’s version of Conversation Street was mostly a Hammond-bashing spree as James and Jeremy ganged up on Hammond to make fun of his crash in the Rimac in the first episode but there was a brief lull for some holiday gifting with a Bentley-themed set of espresso cups and saucers featured and May wishing Scalextric racing tracks came with “little sisters” so they could retrieve cars that inevitably go flying off the track.
That was followed by a segment titled “Lunchtime Office Park Car Racing” which pitted employees from two companies in an office park [Storage King and Cura Technical, in this case] racing their own cars on a course in the office park laid out by TGT. A BMW M3 defeated a Seat Leon Cupra in the title race.
The Celebrity Face-Off segment put UK’s Hugh Bonneville [actor on the “Paddington the Bear” films] against USA’s Casey Anderson, host of “Expedition Wild” on the National Geographic channel. Anderson drove his Jaguar F-Sport around the TGT track at 1:18.6 to Bonneville’s 1:22.2 [second-slowest behind David Hasselhoff in the first episode].
Finally, the episode finished with Clarkson in St. Tropez road-testing the second fastest production car in the world – the $3.34 million Bugatti Chiron – which he claimed was the fastest car in the world in the segment but has since been bested by the Koenigsegg Agera RS which recently hit 284 mph in Nevada.
The episode was mostly by the numbers, May’s “race” was predictable, the Celebrity Face-Off segment was unexciting and the Bugatti Chiron test was dated – the only good segment was, again, Conversation Street, with the boys reacting to each other. Overall, ASN awards this episode a lackluster 79 out of 100. TGT can do better.