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Awesome / The Grand Tour

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Below, you will find the awesome moments from the whole series. So far.


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    The Holy Trinity 
  • The showdown of the titular "Holy Trinity" of hybrid hypercars: The McLaren P1, the Porsche 918 Spyder and the Ferrari LaFerrari, something the presenters previously tried (and failed) to do on Top Gear (UK).
  • The opening sequence runs the gamut from Tearjerking to Heartwarming to Awesome. The Awesome part is that Clarkson - having left BBC headquarters and flown to Los Angeles alone - is joined by May and Hammond on the road leading out of Los Angeles (cue Jeremy beaming in joy at his friends' loyalty) to the desert, where "hundreds of cars and thousands of fans" (to quote the episode description) are waiting for them at an automotive-themed "Burning Van" festival, including live music, fire spitting art pieces, and every kind of Cool Car there is. Then just to double down on the Awesome, the eight-jet flyover arrives...

    Morrocan Roll 
  • Jeremy drives off from Hammond and May, taking the camera crew with him to demonstrate why the Alfa Romeo 4C is better than the other two cars (the Mazda MX-5 Miata and Zenos E10S). What results is a stunning black and white (with spots of red and orange) video of the 4C driving through the Moroccan hills set to Dusty Springfield's cover of "The Windmills of Your Mind" that will make anyone fall hopelessly in love with the car.
    • Further compounding the awesome is the revelation that, following the episode premiering, sales for the 4C have quadrupled, with many new buyers specifically mentioning The Grand Tour segment.
  • The three set timed laps of their cars through the Atlas Corporation Studios backlot. For those not familiar with it, the back lot features sets and props used in The Jewel of the Nile, The Living Daylights, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, and Game of Thrones.

    Happy Finnish Christmas 
  • James's film on the Ford vs. Ferrari duel at Le Mans (the same duel covered and dramatized in the later 2019 film Ford v Ferrari). Interesting in its own right, but also very cool as he gets to drive some of the original cars involved. Even he can't resist driving fast.

    The Beach (Buggy) Boys Parts 1 & 2 
  • Namibia itself, with its absolutely stunning scenery, especially the southern deserts and the bank of waterfalls at the Angolan border. Although it treats the presenters and their buggies harshly, Clarkson is still moved enough to call it "a beautiful bastard of a country."

    Breaking, badly 
  • The Celebrity Face-off section has British magician Dynamo face off against American magicians Penn & Teller. Prior to seeing the laps, Jeremy asks the trio to perform a little bit of magic, with Dynamo doing some pretty impressive tricks, and Penn and Teller performing a brilliant card trick.
  • Jeremy sets a water speed record, in a vehicle madenote  by Richard and James. Granted, it's the British record rather than the world record, and was only for amphibious cars rather than watercraft in general, but still.
    • This one is probably extra impressive given that being one of their usual designs (Ambitious, but Rubbish), with dodgy steering, no speedometer because it couldn't get a GPS signal and losing power on the second run due to the choppy action causing some sort of problem. And it still worked, beating the record quite handily. Given the chance to refine the design, it's not unreasonable to think that it might be able to make a serious attempt at the world record.

    Chinese Food for Thought 

    International Buffoons' Vacation 
  • The situation: Clarkson's RV has hit a bump, causing the levers on the flying bridge that control the gears, throttle and braking to disconnect. He can't get inside to take control at the wheel because the hatch leading inside has jammed - he is, essentially, out of control. The only solution is for May and Hammond to co-ordinate a pincer manouvre with their own vehicles to bring it to a stop, despite the fact that it is considerably heavier. As Hammond puts it: "If this works, it'll be a miracle." It works.

    Survival of the Fattest (The Mongolia Special) 
  • "John", the off-road kit car, was parachuted into an isolated location in Mongolia, flat-packed in three crates without instructions. Assembled hastily by Hammond and May in less than two days, its only flaw in construction was a pair of crossed hydraulic lines inverting the steering (easily fixed). The car then took Clarkson, Hammond, and May through the deserts and wilderness of Mongolia to the town of Mörön, crossing dunes, bogs, rivers, and boulder fields along the way, and the only mechanical mishap it suffered was a single blown fuse. It was quite possibly the most amazing performance by any vehicle the trio had ever used on one of their overland adventures.

    Seamen 
  • As they enter Vietnam, "Fortunate Son" starts playing. Of course.

    Lochdown 
  • The boys have to once more build a bridge over troubled water, this time using pontoon blocks to get from one of the Outer Hebrides to another. When James' low-rider car inevitably gets stuck on the completed bridge, Jeremy and Richard are able to work together to generate enough of a wake to lodge him free.

    Carnage A Trois 

    A Scandi Flick 
  • The sheer tenacity of the three 2000s rally saloons the boys drove, especially James May's Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII. It crashed into a wall at 40 mph (with May suffering a broken rib and whiplash that lead to a bloodied head), forcing him to spend a couple days at a Norwegian workshop fixing the badly damaged car. Then near the end, the car goes through the surface of a frozen lake, forcing Hammond to make an admittedly brilliant tree winch setup he had seen before on the internet. Yet despite the extensive damage, the Evo managed to come back from the dead twice, and May did not have to drive the backup Volvo that trailed the trio for the journey.
    • Related to one of those incidents, Richard Hammond puts over a decade of survival training to good use by rigging up a hand-operated winch from a single log, which he and Clarkson, and later May and well, use to pull the Evo out of the ice.

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