The Grand Tour stars nearly damaged $2.75 million car filming new series
It's no surprise that Prime Video's flagship motoring series features some eye-wateringly pricey cars – which means things sometimes get pretty nervy for the presenters.
For the first episode of the rebooted The Grand Tour, new hosts Francis Bourgeois (real name Luke Nicolson), Thomas Holland and James Engelsman travelled to California in order to prove that petrol-powered supercars still have a place in the modern world.
The motors driven by the team during their desert adventure included a Ford Mustang GTD, a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evolution.
Now, these are muscle cars designed for the uber-wealthy, which means they are hardly affordable for the average Joe, but the Hennessey certainly takes the cake in terms of outrageously priced cars – costing a mere $2.75 million (£2 million) to purchase.
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When it comes to driving a seven-figure car, one would imagine that it comes with a lot of trepidation about damaging the thing, although apparently not as much as you'd think.
During an exclusive sit-down chat with LADbible ahead of the series airing, Bourgeois, Holland and Engelsman discussed what it was like to drive the supercar, and whether the $2.75 million price tag or top speed of 300mph (we only see Francis reach a mere 200mph) was more daunting.
"The only time we thought about the price is we were trying to get it out of a motel parking lot," Holland said, explaining that the supercar had been stymied by a 'gentle slope' in the road.
"We were like, 'If we scrape this front splitter [a horizontal carbon fibre panel attached to the bottom of a front bumper], so it's like a team effort and a trip to a gardening store to attempt to extract this thing from the most gentle slope imaginable.
"This isn't even in the film," he added.
While the presenters were careful not to damage the front of the car, the same couldn't be said for the rear end, with Engelsman revealing that half of the Hennessey's 'rear diffuser' (another fancy piece of kit in supercars which reduces aerodynamic drag) was scraped during filming.
"It was like a chalk drawing on a driveway but with carbon fibre," he added.
However, the trio's main focus wasn't on the price of the cars, as previous episodes of The Grand Tour and the BBC's Top Gear have shown, that things can go downhill pretty quickly when handling a super-powered car goes wrong.
"At 200mph it's not damaging the car that you're worried about," Engelsman added.
"That didn't make the cut, but that was a little bit hairy."
Outside of testing supercars in the Californian desert, the first season also sees the trio travel everywhere from Malaysia to Angola and Wales for their motoring adventures – and they've come back with some pretty wild stories to tell.
During the group's Angolan adventure, they were confronted by a curious and confused local... who just so happened to be holding a machete.
"That was a moment where Thomas ploughed into a pothole," Bourgeois said. "[And] what ensued involved a machete... That didn't make the cut, but that was a little bit hairy."
The Grand Tour is available exclusively on Prime Video.
Topics: The Grand Tour, TV, Entertainment
Brenna Cooper