Heartwarming / The Grand Tour

• The whole narrative of the premiere episode's opening sequence runs the gamut from Tearjerking to Heartwarming to Awesome. Clarkson, having left The BBC headquarters on one of the gloomiest English days imaginable, flies alone to sunny Los Angeles. Waiting for him there is a Ford Mustang, but one can sense Clarkson's continued melancholy as he cruises the highway. As he drives out of the city into the surrounding desert, he looks in his mirror and breaks into a genuine grin as two more Mustangs, driven by James May and Richard Hammond, form up on him, symbolizing their leaving the BBC to host the new show with Jeremy when his contract wasn't renewed. The music (The Hothouse Flowers' live performance of "I Can See Clearly Now") hits a crescendo right as the trio is reunited.
  • As they continue, now offroading in the California desert, they drive into and through a massive gathering of Cool Cars in every sense of the word: some modern sports cars, some lovingly-maintained classics, and more than one that might have come from Mad Max: Fury Road, just a celebration of everything that's ever been done with four wheels and an engine, and end up arriving to "Burning Van": the Hothouse Flowers on stage, fire-breathing metal sculptury, and thousands of people in the middle of the desert cheering and welcoming Clarkson, Hammond and May (back). Then the eight-jet flyover arrives...
  • The pure joy on Jeremy's face when the trio is reunited is truly a sight to behold.
  • Not seen in the sequence is a third individual who also left Top Gear in solidarity with Clarkson - Jeremy's long-time friend from their school days Andy Wilman.
• The little hedgehog found in Richard's car in Episode 4, as well as Richard embracing the little "community" he created in his naturalistic vehicle.
• Hammond's crash in June 2017 saw old fears reawoken and Clarkson and May were not shy about admitting their worries for their friend. Once it was established Hammond was not in life danger, they were around to give Hammond a little alcoholic contraband and inject some humor.
• Equal parts tearjerker, the eponymous Funeral for a Friend of the finale - a service at Lincoln Cathedral in honour of the Ford Mondeo that drew a hundreds-strong crowd of classic Ford enthusiasts. The entire episode was an unashamed paean to Ford's family saloon lineage, and the montage of father-and-son (and occasional grandson) past-and-present owners, to the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, raised a lump in many a throat. This is a car, remember, but, as Clarkson put it, "When somebody famous dies, you're sad, but when your mate dies... you're heartbroken."
• The fact that, both on Top Gear and The Grand Tour, the trio usually (though not always) fall in love with the locations they visit and the cars they use. Whatever the problems they have with one another and each other's cars, they fall in love in the end...
• May's segment on Neil Armstrong's Corvette in S3 E9.
• In "A Scandi Flick", when racing on a frozen lake, James' Evo breaks through the ice and, by a minor miracle, manages to hang on for dear life due to its front catching on a section of still-solid ice. Instead of taking advantage of the situation to mock James' bad luck at getting his car damaged a second time, Hammond and Clarkson immediately come to a stop, and make sure James is relatively safe before going to hatch a rescue plan. Hammond quickly cuts down a pair of trees, and, with Clarkson's help, rigs up a hand-pushed winch system he saw on the Internet, putting use to all of his survival training. Once rescuing James from being on top of the Evo, the three slowly pull the Evo out of the pool and onto dry land before towing it to the nearest town for repairs while making sure James is treated at the hospital for exposure and hypothermia. Even with the various pranks and ribbing the three have given each other, in this special and others, when the chips are down and one of them is in real peril, the other two will do whatever they can to help the third.

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