Joe Harker
Jeremy Clarkson recently declared 'victory' over Elon Musk as the Tesla boss once tried to sue Top Gear over a less than glowing review of the Tesla Roadster.
In a recent column for The Times, Clarkson wrote that he was enjoying the backlash against Musk after the Tesla Roadster featured in an episode of Top Gear back in 2008.
Episode seven of series 11, to be precise.
Musk didn't like the review and launched a lawsuit for libel in 2011, which didn't succeed, and if you want to know what he got his knickers in such a twist over, you can watch the review itself.
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In the show's review itself, Clarkson starts with his usual spiel, comparing electric cars to cod liver oil, 'very good for you, but you'd rather have a plate of steak and chips'.
He slates the Toyota Prius and G-Wiz as having nothing that would make an 'ordinary human being' say 'I want one of those', then introduced the Tesla Roadster as 'an eco-electric car which does'.
So far, Clarkson seemed not to be the biggest fan of electric cars but introduced the Roadster as a more appealing version that the Top Gear presenter's idea of a normal person would actually want.
In his review once he got behind the wheel he praised the car for looking good and stuck it in a drag race against a Lotus Elise, which the Tesla handily won as Clarkson called it 'biblically quick'.
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He also pointed out that it was much cheaper to recharge a car than pay for a tank of petrol.
So far things were looking pretty good for the Roadster, but then the negatives came.
Apparently the weight of the batteries hampered the handling somewhat, with the Elise outfoxing the Roadster around the corners of the Top Gear track before the electric car regained the lead on the straight.
The Roadster was then shown coming to a halt on the test track before being pushed into a warehouse and put on charge as Clarkson claimed that while Tesla said the car had a range of 200 miles, if it performed as it did during the review it'd have a range of 55 miles.
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In Musk's lawsuit against the BBC he accused Top Gear of staging this moment, and a Tesla spokesperson claimed back in 2008 that the cars they gave to the show for review never dropped below 20 percent battery life.
Clarkson later responded in a Telegraph column that they never said the car ran out of charge, only that you can't drive it into a building and they'd calculated the vehicle's range wouldn't last 200 miles.
The review pointed out it also takes a lot longer to fully charge a car than refill the petrol tank, which would be a problem for long distance journeys.
Hopping into the second Tesla provided for testing, Clarkson grumbled about the £92,000 price which was triple the price of the Lotus Elise he'd been comparing it to.
Then came the infamous moment where Tesla number two appeared to break down, as Clarkson said 'the motor's overheating and I've got reduced power'.
To make matters worse, when he went back to the first car that was still charging he said that the vehicle's brakes had broken.
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The Guardian reported in 2013 that Tesla later admitted to a court that the car had suffered a blown fuse rather than a brake failure.
Clarkson called the car an 'astonishing technical achievement' and 'the first electric car you might actually want to buy', before lamenting the 'shame' that 'in the real world it doesn't seem to work'.
Back in the studio Clarkson said that once more people bought the Roadster the price would come down, and the more Tesla made the better they'd get on reliability issues.
The car was then put into the capable hands of The Stig, who during this episode was listening to morse code messages which, according to Driving Spirit, said 'I LIKE GARY NEWMAN' and 'THAT PORK TASTED FUNNY' as he drove it around the track in the exact same time it'd take a Porsche 911 GT3.
Clarkson has always denied mocking up the Roadster's unreliability for comedic effect, insisting that despite the tomfoolery Top Gear was known for they were 'always scrupulously fair' in their review segments.