Top Gear
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49 free Top Gear trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Three men cocking about in second-hand cars became the most widely broadcast factual programme in the world. Top Gear's 2002 relaunch gave us the Stig, the Cool Wall, the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, caravan destruction, a race to the magnetic North Pole and a run of specials that ended in riots, lawsuits and a punch over a steak. These 49 questions cover the show's creation by Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman, the Dunsfold test track, the Black and White Stigs and their unmaskings, Richard Hammond's 288 mph Vampire crash, James May's nickname and his 259 mph Veyron run, the Liana lap times, the Burma and Argentina controversies, the 2015 sacking, The Grand Tour, the Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc era, and the Harris, McGuinness and Flintoff reboot that ended with the 2022 accident. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo or print it for a petrolhead pub quiz.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The original Top Gear began in 1977 as a regional BBC show made in which city?
Birmingham
Birmingham: BBC Midlands made the first nine episodes at its Pebble Mill studios with Angela Rippon presenting, 25 years before Clarkson's relaunch.
Q 02Who devised the relaunched Top Gear alongside Jeremy Clarkson?
Andy Wilman
Andy Wilman had presented segments on the old Top Gear himself before going behind the camera as the new show's executive producer.
Q 03Which rival motoring show launched in 2002 with several presenters from the old Top Gear?
Fifth 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.
Q 04Where were the Top Gear test track and studio located?
Dunsfold Aerodrome
Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey gave the show its runways and taxiways for the track and one of its large aircraft hangars for the studio.
Q 05Which sports car maker helped design the Top Gear test circuit?
Lotus
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.
Q 06Who was the original "Black Stig"?
Perry McCarthy
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.
Q 07What name did producers first want for the silent test driver before settling on "the Stig"?
The Gimp
The Gimp was dropped when the driver himself objected, saying he did not want to be forever remembered by that name.
Q 08The name "Stig" comes from what new boys were called at which school?
Repton
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.
Q 09The Black Stig was 'killed off' in series three by driving a Jaguar off the deck of what?
An aircraft carrier
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.
Q 10Which racing driver was revealed as the White Stig in a 2010 court case over his memoir?
Ben Collins
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.
Q 11Which F1 champion was jokingly unmasked as the Stig in series 13?
Michael Schumacher
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.
Q 12The Top Gear theme is a version of 'Jessica', a 1973 instrumental by which American rock group?
The Allman Brothers Band
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.
Q 13How do the "Some say..." introductions of the test driver always end?
"...all we know is, he's called the Stig."
Q 21Which pickup truck did Clarkson and May try and fail to destroy in series 3?
Toyota Hilux
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.
Q 22What did Clarkson and May race to in the 2007 Polar Special?
The North Magnetic Pole
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.
Q 23Top Gear's Winter Olympics special was filmed in which former host of the Games?
Lillehammer
"...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!'
Q 14Which car was the Reasonably Priced Car when Nigel Mansell set his 1:44.6 lap?
Suzuki Liana
Suzuki Liana: its two slowest celebrity laps, by Terry Wogan and Richard Whiteley, were both beaten by Billy Baxter, a blind war veteran.
Q 15Who was the first Formula One guest to beat the Stig's lap time in Top Gear's celebrity car?
Rubens Barrichello
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.
Q 16In the Botswana Special, Richard Hammond grew so fond of which car that he named it Oliver?
Opel Kadett
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.
Q 17Which car did Formula One drivers use for their celebrity laps on Top Gear?
The segment's original car
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.
Q 18A car must be able to drive over what to qualify for Top Gear's Power Lap board?
A speed bump
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.
Q 19Which category sat above 'Cool' at the top of Top Gear's Cool Wall?
Sub Zero
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.
Q 20Clarkson judged Cool Wall cars partly on how they would impress which actress?
Kristin Scott Thomas
Kristin Scott Thomas was Clarkson's yardstick for whether a car would impress; he later handed the role to BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce.
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.
Q 24Which tagline introduced many of the presenters' build-it-yourself challenges?
"How hard can it be?"
"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.
Q 25What did Top Gear's presenters regularly destroy in the relaunched show's early series?
A caravan
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.
Q 26Which car was named Top Gear's Car of the Decade at the end of the 2000s?
Bugatti Veyron
Bugatti Veyron: the one-off award closed series 14, and the presenters reasoned that no other car of the 2000s was worthy of it.
Q 27What was the jet-powered dragster Richard Hammond crashed in 2006 called?
Vampire
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.
Q 28What failed on Richard Hammond's jet car at 288 mph, causing his 2006 crash?
A front tyre
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.
Q 29What did Richard Hammond later admit about his first TV interview after his 2006 crash?
He had no memory of it
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.
Q 30What is Richard Hammond's long-standing nickname?
The Hamster
The Hamster stuck because of Hammond's name and his small stature beside Clarkson and May.