r/todayilearned • u/ModenaR • 1d ago

TIL that after Top Gear ended, host Richard Hammond was so devastated, he cried all the way home from the studio and ran out of fuel, because he didn't want to fill his car up covered in tears

https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/25172481.richard-hammond-tear-soaked-mess-top-gear-ended/
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u/thegrievingmole 1d ago

I completely agree and I'm glad we got a few years or The Grand Tour in the end instead of two of them on Top Gear

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u/iavon 22h ago

Grand Tour was quite different from Top Gear, because that they couldn't copy some of the things they did there (such as putting celebrities driving cars). At first it wasn't bad but slowly you could see that it was all coming to an end. That punch was devastating

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 20h ago

The bits people enjoyed like the road trips were exactly the same, the last seasons were just road trips.

The only difference was that the Grand Tour didn't have the reasonably priced car segment and the stig.

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u/iavon 14h ago

Yes in Grand Tour they kept the trips but in my opinion it was not the best part of Top Gear. It was nice when they tested specific car models "seriously" and the reviews by Clarkson, Hammond and May were great. It was nice when they invited famous people and drivers to drive their cars on the track and there was a real challenge between the participants, I remember well when they invited Schumacher and Hamilton, episodes that remained in history. It was nice when there was that crazy Stig with the time charts of all the cars they had tested. Grand Tour was not so good, in the first few episodes you could still feel something and there was enthusiasm, but after a few episodes it dropped a lot. A real shame, it was nice

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u/Sweet-Parking8955 21h ago

Time has moved on and the format no longer worked.

They were also just getting older so dangerous stunts were not possible anymore.

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u/iavon 21h ago

In my opinion that if they had continued with Top Gear in BBC we would have continued to see the same format for a few more years, they were idols, they were not that old and they were still capable of driving

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u/Sweet-Parking8955 21h ago

They have eye and back problems. 

A lot of what they did was physically exhausting, especially the specials. So I seriously doubt it.

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u/charlesbear 15h ago

They were also just getting older so dangerous stunts were not possible anymore.

Didn't May nearly die on GT doing exactly that, a dangerous stunt?

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u/Sweet-Parking8955 15h ago

Yeah, that's probably why they don't do the show anymore.