OPINION: Clarkson, Hammond and May are more important to a generation than Enzo Ferrari

It had been dying for a few years since Jeremy Clarkson left the first time, but kids like me soldiered on, and its end was a blow to a 13-year-old boy, left bereft of any kind of car content – certainly not one that involved talking about the cars with some kind of humour. This was a long time before the days of YouTube.

And then it happened. In 2002, Top Gear was back. But it wasn’t just back as before, this was Top Gear made, surely, just for me. It had silly comments, they made lots of noise in supercars, tried to do stupid things. It wasn’t exactly what it would become, but at that age it must have been akin to when teenagers first heard David Bowie in the 1970s.

Over the next decade it just got better. Jason Dawes left and James May joined and that trio of Clarkson, Hammond and May became like a comfort blanket. At one point you were getting something like 20 episodes a year and even though ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ became a parody of itself, they were golden to a teenager.

And that’s not just the story of a teenager who grew up to become a motoring journalist. It’s the influence on a whole generation. It wasn’t some niche phenomenon, Top Gear as was ended up on BBC One. That’s the kind of place you should see the News, or a ten-part epic reproduction of War and Peace, not three idiots messing around in cars.

I would cite motoring magazines as the reason I jacked in an already failing career in engineering to become a journalist before I even left university. But I probably wouldn’t have started reading Car Magazine or Evo if it hadn’t been for Top Gear. The influence Top Gear could have on the public became incredible, the value to the BBC was astonishing. 

But at the very heart of it, it was three men who got on, not only showcasing a real friendship on television, but telling those of us growing up dreaming about cars that we weren’t that weird. 

You probably also need context to that sentence. Since I was 13 the world has become more and more hostile to the thing that is my passion. Speed limits have become stricter, emissions standards tougher, car pricing higher. Mostly for good reason. But that doesn’t help the passion to spread. Top Gear and the trio did. It was an outlet before YouTube had a million influencers making content.

In reality, the sustained growth of car content and car culture into the 2010s was far less down to the car companies themselves – which at times have raced each other to become less interesting – and far more about Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Ask someone on the street to name someone famous related to car and it will absolutely be Jeremy Clarkson. The likes of Enzo Ferrari just won’t get a look in.

It inspired people to make daft things on YouTube, to try and make car reviewing feel more like an art than just a consumer video. No way you’d have found Car Throttle existing or Henry Catchpole making sumptuous reviews that feel more like television production than simply videos. It’s all, in some way, inspired by the Clarkson, Hammond and May approach to making cars interesting.

Controversies have followed them around since their high point in around 2010. And sometimes you have to acknowledge that perhaps the time came to end a long before it was acknowledged. But despite knowing that I will find half of each episode disappointing, I still get excited for a Grand Tour special. And I still find myself going back and watching all the old specials after a series of Clarkson’s Farm. It’s a comfort blanket, a body of work that will forever live with me and transport me back to being 14 again. That makes cars seem wonderful.

For that, we can only really say thank you to everyone involved. To Jeremy, James, and Richard. To Andy Willman, to the BBC, to friend of GRR, Richard Porter and far more people that will never be public names. Top Gear and its presenters changed the future of a generation. They showcased a world where you could be a car community, not just a car owner. 

This week it all comes to an end, but let’s celebrate how far it came.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.