There’s a moment in The Grand Tour: One For The Road, the recent emotional send-off for Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, where Clarkson, enjoying his Lancia Montecarlo’s twin-cam engine along a mountain road, goes into a bit more detail on why the trio – and he in particular – have decided to wrap things up.
“I’m simply not interested in electric cars,” he explains as the engine rasps away behind him. Now, at the One For The Road watch party and Q&A he recently held at his new pub, The Farmer’s Dog, Clarkson went into a bit more detail on his feelings on most modern cars.
“After 35 years, do I still have the same love for cars? No. Honestly, no. They’re all s****… 80 per cent of them now, 90 per cent, I couldn’t even identify them. I don’t know what they are, I don’t care. And then [the manufacturers] go ‘We’ve got a new hybrid drive system’ – I just couldn’t give a s***.”
However, Clarkson also offered up his views on the future of classic cars, and his outlook is a bit more optimistic here: “When the internal combustion [engine] came along, the horse got booted into touch, but it doesn’t mean that all horses were eaten. There are some people who still ride around on them, and they have fun.
“I think, keep a car like that,” he said in reference to his Lancia, “there’ll always be petrol to buy, you’ll always be able to enjoy it, and just because everyone else is driving around in a microwave oven or a chest freezer, doesn’t mean you have to.”
It’s not the first time we’ve heard such an outlook, with other famous car enthusiasts like Jay Leno and a certain James May professing a similar view over the years. Indeed, while various nations are looking into banning the sale of new internal combustion cars, nowhere has yet announced a deadline for any outright bans, and isn’t likely to any time soon.
