James May joined Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond for the second season of the BBC series Top Gear in 2003, and the trio became an (un)holy trinity of global car culture, connecting to people around the world with a universal language of internal combustion, humor, and occasional nuclear-grade controversy.
Producer Andy Wilman, who’s been with the show(s) since the very beginning, describes James May as “the viewer,” in the co-host dynamic. “It’s almost like he’s got half a foot in the living room, and it’s not a show he really likes,” said Wilman. And that’s exactly May’s appeal—especially for viewers who tell themselves they’ve only got one foot in fandom.
We spoke to May about the series finale of The Grand Tour, which airs Friday, Sept. 13 on Amazon. Titled One for The Road, the two-hour special brings the guys to a country they’ve never visited before, Zimbabwe, then caps off the series with a return to the Botswana salt flats where they ended their first travel special for Top Gear in 2007—bookending their adventures with some particularly poignant editing that I won’t spoil for you here.
Over more than two decades, May has developed some strong opinions about cars, roads, and countries that he was kind enough to share…
James May has had a lifetime of car-related adventures around the globe with Top Gear and The Grand Tour.
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Men’s Journal: What’s the best car you’ve ever driven for the show?
James May: I’d have to say the Ferrari 458 Speciale.
What about the worst car?
Definitely the Crosley from [The Grand Tour special] Eurocrash.
How about the best roads to drive in the world?
There’s a place in Japan up near Takayama [the Hakusan Shirakawago White Road] that winds up through the mountains. The scenery is lovely, and there’s a noodle bar at the top. I also liked that road in Colorado where the rock formations are on either side [State Highway 141 in Mesa County]. And I like the A-40 between London and Oxford.
Do you regret anything over the years?
Probably crashing the [Mitsubishi] Evo [in “A Scandi Flick”], because it hurt, and I felt bad about it because I really like that car, and I know it has a very dedicated fan base. And they’re a bit pissed off at me for smashing it up. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to the Evo owner’s club. I won’t do it again.
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Forty-six episodes of ‘The Grand Tour’ were released over six series.
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What were the most exciting locations you frequented?
It all tends to be quite exciting because we make it that way. There are various bits of the U.S. I’ve liked. I really like filming in bits of Africa—Botswana and Zimbabwe—Japan is wonderful to film in, so is France and, to be honest, England is wonderful to film in if you’re driving the right car and having the right adventure.
Any place in particular that was a nightmare to film in?
I think for driving that was Madagascar. That road you wouldn’t even call a track—it was just the way the lorries went. That was challenging. Administratively, Italy is quite a challenging place to film in. It’s not really challenging for us in the car, but it’s challenging for the people who have to organize it because they have rules unlike any other country about what you’re allowed to show and not show, and you can have a sweeping shot of the Coliseum, and it costs you 10,000 euros. So, from a filmmaking point of view, it’s Italy. From a driving point of view, it’s Madagascar.
How about a superlative: favorite moment from filming The Grand Tour over the years?
There was a wonderful one in Namibia driving across the sand dunes. There’s a great one in the recent [Zimbabwe] special. We arrived at the campsite at night and it was cool and the stars were out. We were very knackered, but I knew there was a beer waiting for me. And that moment, which you don’t really see in the film, I had a moment of euphoria. One of those things where you think, “I’m actually doing this for a living, and this is fantastic, and it’s all been worth it.”
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Over 20 years of creating crazy car concoctions for Top Gear and The Grand Tour has led James May to this final, train track-riding conversion.
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What would be the biggest surprise for people to find out about the making of these travel specials?
Probably just how long it takes in the planning, and just how many people are involved in setting up, filming, producing, and editing. This one’s two-hours long and I don’t know how many people were on the crew, but I think it was over 70. In the old days we used to have about 12 people but as things got more elaborate, the size of the crew, the size of the camp, and the size of the budget increased. It always amazes me, when you look at the TV business overall, that the yield is so poor in terms of the number of hours you get out as a proportion of the number of hours that are put in.
I think that would surprise people, especially the YouTube generation who are used to making what’s essentially TV content on a very small handheld camera or even their telephone, that a thing like the Grand Tour is still such an enormous operation. It’s like moving an army around.
How have the last 22 years changed you?
Well, I think there’s that old adage about travel broadening the mind, which I never used to be totally convinced by. I think that’s often an excuse for just going on too many holidays. But I think it has actually broadened my outlook of the world. One of the things that will be difficult about ending The Grand Tour is settling down to a couple of modest holidays a year rather than constant global adventuring.
So, in some ways it’s sort of spoiled me [and] possibly made me a little complacent about international travel and adventure, because I did it for a living and we were just doing it all the time. But overall, I think it probably did make me a better, more wide-eyed, more inquisitive person than I would have been if I’d stayed at home and worked in a bank.
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Jermey Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond drive down a dusty road in appropriately crusty cars for the last episode of The Grand Tour.
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Speaking of working at home, what would your father say about all of this?
Weirdly I was talking to him about it a couple of weeks ago and my parents are from that generation where if they’re really honest, they can’t believe this is a job—was a job, I should say. But at the same time, I think he’s secretly very impressed that, between us, we managed to turn what would appear to be a continuous boys’ laugh into a 22-year long career and a living.
It’s not quite as simple as we make it seem and the editors make it seem. It can be quite grueling and quite hard, but obviously we don’t complain about it. We don’t talk about that because it sounds churlish, [in order] to maintain that it’s the best job in the world because to be brutally honest, it is.
In the final drive across the salt flats, you say, “I hope we’ve brought you a bit of happiness.” Is that the sum of it for you?
Well, I hope we did, because I know a lot of people dislike us and blame us for all the ills of the world and all the rest of it. But over the years, I’ve had messages and letters from people who’ve said, “You three helped me through some very difficult times.” Through depression, serious illnesses, and even, to be honest, people who were contemplating suicide. And they said that The Grand Tour and Top Gear before it helped them through that.
So, if we’ve done that for just one person, I think it was worthwhile. And the important thing we always have to remember is we’re doing it for the viewers. They were our first responsibility, and I think if we did make a lot of people very happy, if only briefly, it was a job worth doing.
Well, thank you for guinea pigging yourself for the rest of us.
Yeah, somebody had to do it.
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