One For The Road, the final episode of The Grand Tour fronted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, wrapped up their 22-year working relationship in a fitting fashion, and part of that appeal was the cars it featured.
While other recent Grand Tour specials have featured more modern, expensive metal, or deviated away from cars altogether, the trio of ’70s classics featured in One For The Road felt like a return to the early days of Top Gear specials, with each car neatly summing up its presenter’s personality and preferences.
As it turns out, it’s also made lots of people want a Triumph Stag. Online car sales platform Auto Trader has seen searches for the brawny V8 roadster increase by 793 per cent since One For The Road launched on 13 September, after May drove one in a very 1970s purple across Zimbabwe for the episode.
Richard Hammond’s Ford Capri in The Grand Tour: One For The Road
The Ford Capri driven by Hammond has had a similar effect, albeit not quite as dramatic. Specific searches for the GXL model featured on the show were up by 185 per cent. There’s no data on how it’s affected interest in the Capri overall, and that’s likely in part because Ford controversially brought the name back on an electric crossover a couple of months ago.
We also don’t have data on Clarkson’s choice of car, the Lancia Montecarlo (known originally as the Beta Montecarlo, and as the Scorpion in the US). There are likely two reasons for that – one, the Montecarlo was never as popular as the other two cars in the UK, and two, those that were sold here are likely all now unrecognisable piles of rust. At any rate, there aren’t any Montecarlos for sale on Auto Trader at the time of writing, while there are 10 examples of the original Capri (albeit no GXLs) and 12 Stags.
As for the actual cars featured in the episode, the Capri and Stag are both at Hammond’s restoration business, The Smallest Cog, to undergo a full restoration. Clarkson, too, has kept the Montecarlo, recently bringing it to an Alfa Romeo meet near his hometown of Chipping Norton, in much better condition than it was by the end of the Zimbabwe trip.
