The Grand Tour The Grand Tour Series 1

The Grand Tour: Series 1, Episode 3 – Opera, Art and Donuts

  • The travelling tent lands on the quayside in Whitby, England.
  • Clarkson, Hammond and May go on an Italian Grand Tour in an Aston Martin DB11, a Rolls-Royce Dawn and a Dodge Challenger Hellcat.
  • Jeremy faces the consequences of a foolish bet.

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Episode Guide

The tent is on the quayside of Whitby harbour in North Yorkshire.

The presenters go “Grand Touring” in Italy with May in the Rolls-Royce Dawn, Clarkson in the Aston Martin DB11 and Hammond in the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. Clarkson and May’s tour starts at the Palio di Siena horse race, before viewing The Birth of Venus painting at Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Clarkson and Hammond race each other the Mugello Circuit.

In the tent the presenters discuss Whitby jet.

Returning to Italy, Hammond visits the Lamborghini Museum whilst Clarkson and May watch Carmen staged at the Verona Arena, in the Piazza Bra. The tour continues via the Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza and ends up in the Venetian Lagoon.

Simon Pegg “falls to his death” from Whitby Swing Bridge. Clarkson presents his take on automated vehicles.

Fulfilling their bet from episode one, Hammond and May destroy Clarkson’s house at Diddly Squat Farm in Chadlington, Oxfordshire.

Trivia

0:02:25 – Jeremy’s family proudly comes from Tickhill near Doncaster.

0:03:06 – Yorkshire did have one car maker of note. They were called Jowett, they were based in Bradford and they went out of business in 1954.

0:03:06 – The BBC sit-com Last Of The Summer Wine ran from 1973 until 2010, although it felt like a lot longer.

0:03:51 – Magaluf is a resort on the Spanish island of Majorca. It is where a lot of young British people go to compare notes on interests such as drinking, dancing and casual sex.

0:04:40 – The Palio di Siena is a bareback horse race around the Piazza del Campo held twice a year to honour the Virgin mary. Palio is also the name of a Fiat.

0:05:09 – The Rolls-Royce Dawn has a 6.6-litre twin turbo V12 engine with 563bhp, 0-62 in 4.9 seconds, and a top speed of 155mph (limited).

0:05:17 – The Aston Martin DB11 has a 5.2-litre twin turbo V12 engine with 600bhp, 0-62 in 3.9 seconds, and a top speed of 200mph.

0:05:36 – The official name of this colour is actually Cinnabar Orange. Other colours available on the DB11 include Silver Fox, Yellow Tang, Silver Blonde and Hardly Green. We’re not making this up.

0:06:38 – The Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat has a 6.2-litre supercharged V8 engine with 707bhp, 0-62 in 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 199mph.

0:08:18 – As on all modern Rolls-Royces, the Dawn’s Spirit of Ecstasy’s radiator mascot electrically retracts. This stops people stealing it when you’re parked and means if you run over someone, it won’t stab them in the kidney.

0:10:46 – The very British Rolls-Royce Motor Car company was bought by the very German BMW in 1998.

0:15:00 – The painting Jeremy and James are looking at is The Birth Of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Or, as Hammond would call it, That Nudey Lady Standing In A Shell.

0:17:39 – Jeremy is talking about the classic, metal-toothed Bond baddie Jaws played by Richard Kiel. He appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me, where he pulled the roof off a van, and Moonraker, where he smashed through a building in a cable car and then disappeared off into space with a lady.

0:21:47 – Sometimes on The Grand Tour the director eventually has to tell the presenters that play time is over, otherwise they’d be out there all day.

0:24:59 – Richard Hammond went to art college. Not that you’d know.

0:28:53 – A Kilkenny cat is an Irish expression used to describe something that fights with pluck and tenacity. No one knows where it comes from. Well, it comes from Kilkenny in Ireland, but it’s not entirely clear why.

0:30:33 – Oxford is British university city. It’s near where Jeremy lives, which is why he knows an abnormal amount about its ring road.

0:35:02 – Rolls-Royce claims the Dawn is ‘the sexiest Rolls-Royce ever built’. Mmm.

0:37:21 – The 6.2-litre, V8-powered, 707 horsepower Dodge Challenger Hellcat has an eco mode.

0:38:25 – The Hellcat engine is so powerful that during its development Dodge had to upgrade their engine test rigs or they would have been torn to pieces.

0:40:40 – Carman turns out to be an opera written by Georges Bizet and first performed in 1875. Despite the title, it contains almost no mention of crankshafts, bore spacing or double wishbone suspension systems.

0:41:23 – The DB11 is the first Aston Martin with a quiet start system. Press the starter button to fire the engine into full theatrical mode. Press and hold the starter button if it’s 7am and you  don’t want your neighbours to hate you.

0:44:54 – How many people in this crowd? We don’t know but Jeremy estimated it at ’47 billion’.

0:48:35 – Hammond’s very subtle speedboat is an 800 horsepower C237 SUNUS racing boat. It can do 115mph. Or just zoom around in circles with an idiot in it.

0:49:09 – Jeremy claims he nearly drowned in Venice.

0:54:37 – “It’ll go t’ foot of our stairs” – An old Yorkshire expression of surprise and amazement based around taking a trip to the base of a staircase.

0:56:52 – Bats are highly protected in the UK. Unlike rats.

0:57:25 – James May really is very unkeen on heights. Other things James doesn’t like; formal clothes, the Nurburgring, people who say ‘myself’ when they mean ‘me’.

 

Screenshots

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8 comments

website December 2, 2021 at 10:09 pm

The Grand Tour is back on our screens with new series’ first show showing up on Amazon’s Prime Video web-based feature the previous evening. Assuming you’ve perused Driving’s scene guide on The Grand Tour season 3, you’ll realize the presentation show is as activity pressed as anyone might think possible, highlighting a cutting edge muscle vehicle cavort through the roads of Detroit and Abbie Eaton’s anxiously expected Ebola drome lap in the McLaren Senna. This is what the pundits have made of The Grand Tour Season Three, Episode One up until now.clickhere

Reply
Danno December 5, 2016 at 8:08 am

At least there was no American pillock squeezed into a racing helmet drawling inanities.

Reply
The Grand Tour December 5, 2016 at 12:01 am

Was it really Jeremy’s house?

Reply
Sean McKellar December 5, 2016 at 6:16 am Reply
Fitzy December 4, 2016 at 5:50 pm

When they roll the Silhouette just before the go to Conversation Street, Clarkson in the middle can be seen wearing what appears to be ladies high heel shoes……………………………..check it out

Reply
Andrzej December 4, 2016 at 7:06 am

I… didn’t like it.
I agree with post above, everything felt too forced.
It’s more like watching people pretend to be trio and overdone it. Journey itself was kinda cut, in previous trips finale of it felt like the end, here I was all wut.

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Gabriela December 4, 2016 at 4:56 am

I feel like the show, in comparison to Top Gear, is too “americanised”. Everything about it feels a little bit forced and too over the top, even conversations between the three beloved presenters seem to lack a little bit of authenticity of their usual banter. The jokes are getting repetitive. Although The Grand Tour is shot beautifully, and the huge budget is clearly visible, it just isn’t as laid back as Top Gear was, which is a real shame. Episode three was so far the best one though, hopefully they will pursue this direction. Also, is it just me, or James barely even speaks during the studio (tent) bits, like Conversation Street? GIMMIE MORE MAY.

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Restalot December 4, 2016 at 2:50 am

The studio segments of this episode felt a lot more relaxed than the previous 2. Perhaps it is that they are on ‘home’ turf, but I think we can see them getting more relaxed with the format, and that was good as the jokes were a little more natural and the mood light.

The big film was a lot of fun. Yes, they were playing cliches but this was slightly different. Each of them was driving a car that was a cliche representative of them. Jeremy was the ‘Aston’ (who had a personality/colour conflict), James was the Rolls with the top down who loves art and quiet, and Richard, was the wanna-be-american boy who loved burning tires off in an american car. This will be a great film to re-watch as I’m sure little details will pop out about the cars=presenters.

Overall, this was as good as anything the last series of the show of which we do not speak. (It was on the BBC2, Sunday evening, filmed somewhere in Britain).

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