49 Fun Facts About Top Gear

The original Top Gear began in 1977 as a regional BBC show made in which city?

Birmingham: BBC Midlands made the first nine episodes at its Pebble Mill studios with Angela Rippon presenting, 25 years before Clarkson's relaunch.

Who devised the relaunched Top Gear alongside Jeremy Clarkson?

Andy Wilman had presented segments on the old Top Gear himself before going behind the camera as the new show's executive producer.

Which rival motoring show launched in 2002 with several presenters from the old Top Gear?

Fifth Gear got its title because the BBC refused to let Channel 5 keep the Top Gear name; Tiff Needell and Vicki Butler-Henderson crossed over with it.

Where were the Top Gear test track and studio located?

Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey gave the show its runways and taxiways for the track and one of its large aircraft hangars for the studio.

Which sports car maker helped design the Top Gear test circuit?

Lotus laid out the lap to expose a car's flaws, with corners built to provoke understeer and test brake balance; the firm tested its own Formula One cars at the site.

Who was the original "Black Stig"?

Perry McCarthy, who had raced for the Andrea Moda team in Formula One without ever starting a race, was outed by the Sunday Mirror in January 2003.

What name did producers first want for the silent test driver before settling on "the Stig"?

The Gimp was dropped when the driver himself objected, saying he did not want to be forever remembered by that name.

The name "Stig" comes from what new boys were called at which school?

Repton was Clarkson's old school, where new boys had always been called 'Stig', a put-down taken from the children's book Stig of the Dump.

The Black Stig was 'killed off' in series three by driving a Jaguar off the deck of what?

An aircraft carrier: the stunt was to hit 100 mph and stop on the 200-metre flight deck of HMS Invincible, but the old Top Gear Jaguar went off the end into the sea.

Which racing driver was revealed as the White Stig in a 2010 court case over his memoir?

Ben Collins won: the High Court refused the BBC an injunction on 1 September 2010, and his book The Man in the White Suit went ahead.

Which F1 champion was jokingly unmasked as the Stig in series 13?

Michael Schumacher took off the helmet in the studio; a spokesman said he really had done that lap, because Ferrari would let only him loose in its FXX.

The Top Gear theme is a version of 'Jessica', a 1973 instrumental by which American rock group?

The Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts wrote 'Jessica' as a tribute to Django Reinhardt and named it after his infant daughter, who bounced along as he played.

How do the "Some say..." introductions of the test driver always end?

"...all we know is, he's called the Stig." became the fixed sign-off in series 6; before that the presenters used one-liners such as 'His Holiness, the Stig!'

Which car was the Reasonably Priced Car when Nigel Mansell set his 1:44.6 lap?

Suzuki Liana: its two slowest celebrity laps, by Terry Wogan and Richard Whiteley, were both beaten by Billy Baxter, a blind war veteran.

Who was the first Formula One guest to beat the Stig's lap time in Top Gear's celebrity car?

Rubens Barrichello's 1:44.3 beat the Stig by a tenth of a second, and the show spun a mock rivalry between the two out of it.

In the Botswana Special, Richard Hammond grew so fond of which car that he named it Oliver?

Opel Kadett: Hammond feared the others would mock him for naming the 1963 car, but he had Oliver shipped home to Britain after filming and kept it.

Which car did Formula One drivers use for their celebrity laps on Top Gear?

The segment's original car stayed in service for Formula One guests alone, so every driver from Damon Hill to Lewis Hamilton could be ranked on one board.

A car must be able to drive over what to qualify for Top Gear's Power Lap board?

A speed bump: the Caparo T1 lapped in 1:10.6, but Clarkson struck the time from the board at once because, he said, the car could not get over one.

Which category sat above 'Cool' at the top of Top Gear's Cool Wall?

Sub Zero topped a board that ran down through Cool and Uncool to Seriously Uncool, where any car owned by one of the presenters was automatically filed.

Clarkson judged Cool Wall cars partly on how they would impress which actress?

Kristin Scott Thomas was Clarkson's yardstick for whether a car would impress; he later handed the role to BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce.

Which pickup truck did Clarkson and May try and fail to destroy in series 3?

Toyota Hilux: the 1988 diesel was left for the incoming tide, set on fire and parked on a tower block as it was demolished, and it still ran after toolbox repairs.

What did Clarkson and May race to in the 2007 Polar Special?

The North Magnetic Pole, or rather the spot it occupied in 1996: the pole itself had drifted on by 2007, but the pair still beat Hammond's dog sled to the first arrival there by car.

Top Gear's Winter Olympics special was filmed in which former host of the Games?

Lillehammer, Norway's 1994 host, lent its venues: cars stood in for athletes in events such as the biathlon, and one was fired down the Olympic ski jump on rockets.

Which tagline introduced many of the presenters' build-it-yourself challenges?

"How hard can it be?" became the usual line before a build or challenge; many of the resulting machines went on show at World of Top Gear in the Beaulieu motor museum.

What did Top Gear's presenters regularly destroy in the relaunched show's early series?

A caravan: wrecking one was among the new comic touches that set the 2002 relaunch apart from the old format of interviews and viewers' letters.

Which car was named Top Gear's Car of the Decade at the end of the 2000s?

Bugatti Veyron: the one-off award closed series 14, and the presenters reasoned that no other car of the 2000s was worthy of it.

What was the jet-powered dragster Richard Hammond crashed in 2006 called?

Vampire had set the British land speed record of 300.3 mph in 2000 with Colin Fallows driving; Hammond went faster on one run, but it did not count without a return run and an observer.

What failed on Richard Hammond's jet car at 288 mph, causing his 2006 crash?

A front tyre failed on his seventh and final run at the former RAF Elvington airbase; the car left the track and rolled over and over on the grass.

What did Richard Hammond later admit about his first TV interview after his 2006 crash?

He had no memory of it: Hammond told Jonathan Ross he was 'absolutely fixed', but said in 2011 that the brain injury had cost him a year, including that interview.

What is Richard Hammond's long-standing nickname?

The Hamster stuck because of Hammond's name and his small stature beside Clarkson and May.

Which Sky1 show did Hammond present before signing exclusively with the BBC?

Brainiac: Science Abuse lost Hammond after its fourth series, and Vic Reeves fronted the last two before Sky cancelled the show in 2008.

What nickname did James May earn for his careful driving style?

Captain Slow went very fast at least once: for a BBC documentary, May rode a U-2 spy plane to 70,000 feet, the edge of space.

Which car did Hammond and May turn into a rocket-powered space shuttle in series nine?

Reliant Robin: the car lifted off and its boosters fell away cleanly, but the fuel tank failed to detach and the whole thing crashed.

James May was sacked from Autocar in 1992 for slipping what into a supplement?

A hidden message: bored with assembling the Road Test Yearbook, May made the big initial letters of its reviews spell out a grumble, and was found out when readers rang in.

Which Channel 4 motoring show had May presented before joining Top Gear?

Driven launched on Channel 4 with May as one of its three hosts; he left during its run to join the old Top Gear, well before the relaunch took him on.

Jeremy Clarkson was born in 1960 in Sprotbrough, a village beside which Yorkshire city?

Doncaster: Clarkson's parents sent him away to a private school, and by his own account he was expelled for 'drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance of himself'.

Jeremy Clarkson's first job was selling which toy for his parents' business?

Paddington Bear: his parents made two stuffed bears for their own children, the toys proved so popular that the business began selling them, and Clarkson went on the road.

The 2015 "fracas" that ended Clarkson's BBC contract was a dispute over what?

A hotel's catering: after a day's filming in North Yorkshire the chef had gone home, and Clarkson was offered soup and cold meat when he wanted a steak.

Which producer did Clarkson punch, leading to his suspension in March 2015?

Oisin Tymon was treated in hospital but told police he did not wish to press charges, and Clarkson urged fans to stop trolling him, saying it was not Tymon's fault.

What Amazon series did Clarkson, Hammond and May launch in 2016?

The Grand Tour lived up to its name at first: in series one its studio tent travelled the world, from Johannesburg to Dubai, before settling in the Cotswolds.

Top Gear's Patagonia Special provoked fury in Argentina over the number plate on which car?

A Porsche 928 GT carried the plate H982 FKL, read as a taunt about the 1982 Falklands War; protesters stoned the crew's convoy and the cars were abandoned.

Ofcom ruled the BBC breached rules over a "slope" remark made in which road-trip episode?

Burma Special: the remark came as a local man crossed the bridge the trio had built over the Kok River; the show's producer said they had not realised the word was offensive.

Which electric carmaker sued Top Gear over a 2008 review, and lost?

Tesla sued for libel in 2011, but the judge ruled that no viewer would compare a lap of the show's airfield track with driving on a public road, and the case was dismissed.

Which two lead hosts fronted Top Gear's 23rd series after Clarkson, Hammond and May left?

Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc led the 2016 relaunch with four co-presenters; Evans resigned after that single series and LeBlanc stayed on.

Which ex-cricketer joined Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness as host from series 27?

Andrew Flintoff came to cars from cricket, where he was England's Man of the Series in the 2005 Ashes, by way of one professional boxing fight in 2012.

To which channel did Top Gear move from BBC Two in 2020?

BBC One took the show from its 29th series in late 2020, filmed outdoors on the runway as a drive-in so the audience could keep apart during the pandemic.

What halted production of Top Gear's 34th series in 2023?

A presenter's crash during filming left him seriously injured, and in November 2023 the BBC said it would rest the show 'for the foreseeable future'.

Which major award did Top Gear win in November 2005?

An International Emmy for non-scripted entertainment: Clarkson joked that he could not go to New York to collect it because he was too busy writing the script.

In Top Gear's 2007 US Special, slogans painted on the presenters' cars provoked an angry confrontation in which state?

Alabama: with 'NASCAR sucks' and 'Hillary for president' daubed on the cars, the crew were ordered to stop filming at a petrol station and rocks were thrown as they drove off.