Top Gear's back! Top Gear's back! Almost! Well, we already saw their Patagonia special last month, but the 22nd season starts in earnest this Sunday. To psyche everyone up for it, the three hosts sat down for a discussion and preview with fans, taking questions for nearly an hour.
BEWARE SPOILERS AHEAD. You've been warned.
There's actually a lot of inside-baseball information here for hardcore Top Gear fans, but let's get some of that out of the way first. The best thing to know is that this time, there's going to be a full ten episode slate. Combined with the aforementioned special, that brings Season (or Series) 22 up to 12 episodes, which is the most the team has ever done at once.
And it's especially appreciated, considering how in all of 2014 we basically only got seven, if we count the special towards this year.
So what's up for the next 10 weeks? Well, we can't be entirely sure, as the hosts convinced that the team isn't quite done putting together the entire run. But we can be certain of a few highlights:
- There will be a race across St. Petersburg, Russia, similar to the one they did across London all the way back in Season 10. Except instead of a big Mercedes, a boat, a bike, and public transportation, it'll be a little electric Renault, a hovercraft, a bike, and public transportation.
- An episode with a Bentley Continental GT, a Nissan GT-R, and a BMW M5 doing things in the Australian Outback
- American Top Gear vs British Top Gear
- Richard Hammond gets stranded in Northern Canada, whereupon he sends his distress signal out via a Breitling Emergency watch. Jeremy and James go to not-rescue him and appear to be driving a Ford Raptor and a Chevy Silverado, which I'm actually looking forward to, as I can't remember the last time they did a proper test of pickup trucks. Maybe that time Jeremy got things still out of a Ford F-150 Lightning?
- Other hijinks.
The rest of the hour is filled with the hosts discussing their favorite cars, favorite road trips, and the ways in which they with their fellow co-presenters would die.
So yeah, Top Gear's back.