Hello, and welcome to The Grand Tour,
and this, the Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato.
Unlike the normal Huracán, which was designed
to prowl round city centres late at night doing nine miles an hour,
this was designed to blast across a desert
doing a hundred and sixty.
It's got the roof racks, it's got the flared wheel arches,
it's got beefed-up undersides, long-travel suspension.
It is the Lamborghini 'Rogue Hero'.
And it's not just Lamborghini getting in on the desert raid act.
This, is the Porsche 911 Dakar.
It has four-wheel drive, skid plates
and fifty millimetres more ground clearance than a regular 911.
Even Morgan's having a go.
Yup, this is the CXT and it too stands upon stilts.
It's got adjustable rally spec dampers
and an external roll cage.
Nice.
All these cars are of course very tremendous,
but they're also very not cheap.
The Porsche is a 173,000 pounds.
The Morgan is 204,000
and this is 250,000.
And that got us thinking.
Could we build a rally raid car for less?
A lot less.
Let's have a look at what we've bought.
I went for this, a Maserati GranCabrio,
for which I paid just under 26,000 pounds.
Richard Hammond has bought this,
it's an Aston Martin DB9 V12 Volante,
which cost him 22,000 pounds.
And Jeremy Clarkson, this, the Jaguar F-Type V6S,
25,000 pounds.
And needless to say, we've just had a text
from Mr Wilman.
Go on.
It says,
"You will now turn your purchases into desert racers.
"When you finish, you will report to the railway station
"in the town of Choum, which is in Mauritania."
Where's Mauritania?
Perhaps he's misspelt Mauritius?
Well, it isn't anywhere.
It's not a real place.
- Well, Mauritania. - What are you on about?
Come on.
"The Lion, the Witch, and the Looking Glass,"
"Alice Through the Wardrobe," all of that.
You go through the back of the wardrobe,
you say a cheery hello to the talking lion as you pass in,
and you watch out for the people running about
with playing cards on as tabards.
You've got C.S. Lewis echoing around in there.
- Yes. - Lewis Carroll.
They were not travel books.
You don't think this place exists?
There's no such place as Mauritania!
It turns out, however, there is such a place as Mauritania.
It's a former French colony in West Africa.
And this is what it looks like.
Two thirds of this vast country,
it's four times bigger than the UK, has been buried...
by the Sahara Desert.
Which means that for the most part, it is mile after mile
of nothing...
and nobody.
But here,
in the middle of this gigantic sea of super-heated emptiness,
there is a railway line,
and it does pass through the small town we've been told to report to...
Choum.
I'm told you get a lot more for your money in Mauritania.
I thought it'd be more colourful, with talking animals.
It's nice and quiet.
- Isn't it? - Yeah.
It's too hot to make any noise.
It's really hot.
- 46 degrees. - Ooh!
It's a dry heat though.
- Don't say, I hate that. - I hate people...
It's just hot!
- Ooh, there's a restaurant. - Where?
Let's get a... Oh, we can't get a beer.
- What? - Dry country.
- What? - Mauritania's dry.
- Seriously? - It's Muslim.
What kind of fairy-tale land doesn't serve gin?
I do have some mildly alcoholic hand sanitiser, if that's any good.
Keep hold of that.
Can I just say how nice it is
to be back doing The Grand Tour, proper Grand Tour.
- Yeah. - Know what I mean?
Yeah. Somewhere dusty and in this case, imaginary.
Is this man coming to do some panel beating on this van?
I know what this is.
It's a van. It's a really old broken van.
Mr Wilman said before we left...
He said, "I've provided a backup vehicle for if one of your cars goes wrong."
Why has he sent a van?
And he says everything we need for this trip
is in the back of the van. Oh, it's open.
You are sure? You're not just nicking somebody's livelihood?
Nope. No, he said. He said.
But it does beg the question, how do you suppose
our cars are gonna get... He said he'd deliver them for us.
The van had plainly been bought locally
and we'd arrived by air,
so Hammond reckoned there could only be one possible answer.
So you think a train is going to come along here with our cars on it?
Well, a train... This is a likely spot to see a train, isn't it?
Yes, I'll grant you that.
Yes. The only way in and out is train. How else are they gonna get here?
As there were no automated departure boards
to tell us when a train might arrive,
we settled down for the wait.
Have you seen how many empty plastic bottles of water there are here?
Many.
Look, one... I mean, two, three, four, five, six,
- seven, eight, just there, nine, ten. - Yeah.
I would find the manufacturers and simply kill them.
It's harsh, but it is a mess
and they're going to be here for a long time.
- Forever. - It's a waste.
It's not often you get to wait for a train just by the tracks, is it?
No.
- You couldn't do this in Paddington. - No.
What if it doesn't come?
What if our cars aren't on it?
- There. - Where?
There. That's it. That's gotta be it.
Yes, you're right.
God, it's enormous!
That is the biggest thing I've ever seen!
It is the biggest thing I've ever seen.
- Can you see cars? - No.
I'm tall enough to see iron ore.
- I can see bits of... - Iron ore, iron ore.
- What's that? - People.
Chaps, that is the guard's van.
- That is the end. - Look what's in front...
- In front of the guard's van? - Yes. Look.
Look, that's a flatbed one, that's a different type of carriage.
- That's like a flatbed. - There's three things on it.
- Yeah! - They are the cars.
The train came to a halt,
and as we assumed it would be setting off again quite soon,
we had to work quickly to get our cars off.
So what do you do? I've no clue.
What normally happens with cars on a flatbed like this,
on a Hornby railway, is you put it in a siding with a ramp
and then you drive them onto the ramp and down.
But they've got the guard's van behind.
Yes.
He's not gonna set off without his guard's van, is he?
No, so that all goes, presumably back to... There must be a turn there.
- We can't push it. - There'll be a shunter.
This is basically a full-sized train set.
There'll be a shunter on the other line, that's how railways work.
Having found a shunter train, James spoke to its driver
in his best French.
"Buona sera. Passo il oh il to oh shuntero?"
That sounds a bit...
That could be James coming with a shunting engine, fully erect.
If he's driving it, yeah, he'll have blown the engine.
If he's on it, he will be more aroused.
Shunting engine.
- He's on it! - I'm on the shunter!
Properly three-legged old man went past.
Oh yes!
Is this the best day of James May's life all of a sudden?
He's got an entire railway network.
Actual full-sized train set.
If you've ever had a Hornby train set you'll know exactly how this works.
There we go.
Oh, here he comes, here he comes.
With a train worker approaching,
it was now my turn to roll out the French.
Monsieur.
- Merci. - Vous vous...
Je voudrais vous
you to...
uncouple.
And meanwhile, here comes James.
I was coming to see which bit you were...
I've never seen anybody happier.
Oh, he's going. Go on, get on it.
- Run away! - Horror!
One.
- One, one, one. - Here we go.
At the wheel of his big blue shunter engine,
James pushed our cars and the guard's van into a siding,
detached the car wagon...
So now, forwards. Release brake.
...and then reattached the guard's van to the train,
which, having taken on more passengers, set off again.
Au revoir.
- Au revoir. - Au revoir, mes amis.
With the sun setting, we then had to get our cars off the wagon.
Which meant firing up
the station's extremely old and broken telehandler
and deploying my farming skills.
Tiny bit more... stop.
Is this the first time we've ever tried to do something properly?
We haven't done it yet.
Tiny bit more. That's it.
I then set about retrieving the other two.
I think your car might be heavier than mine, James.
Down you go. Down.
Tell me when I'm clear.
- I think you're all right. - That'll do.
We've done it.
We've got all three cars into Mauritania.
The next morning, after a short and hot, drink-free sleep,
we assembled to examine our modifications.
Starting with my Jaguar F-Type.
I'm a bit disappointed if I'm honest.
It hasn't worked out quite how I imagined.
What did you imagine?
Well, you know in the 70s and 80s,
- kids, when I say kids... us. - Us. Yeah.
You'd buy flared wheel arches for your Escort
and then you couldn't afford to buy big enough wheels to fill them.
Yes, net result it looks ridiculous.
When you come round the back...
It's roughly 18-feet-wide at the back.
If I hadn't have bothered with the wheel ar...
Why put the wheel arches on? You haven't got wheels to fill them.
Despite everything,
it's still a "Jaaaag".
- That's good. - It actually says "Jaaaag".
I've changed the badge.
You've changed the "baaaadge".
And then I've got the horn bill on the bonnet
coz I've lifted the air filters up.
Yeah.
Then I've gone for the Stratos light pack.
You're busy explaining your ugly baby, aren't you?
These are aesthetics.
Yes, and when it comes to aesthetics, Hammond, you're on very, very thin ice.
- You are actually. - Hold on a moment.
No, there is no 'hold on a moment', you've brought a Metro cab.
Do you wanna know what it is?
It's an Aston Martin DB9, ruined.
'The Ruined' is what you should call it.
Mine is mildly spoiled, yours is totally ruined.
Noise, noise, noise.
Headlines: It's an Aston Martin you can live in.
That is a tent, it folds out, it's a house.
I live at number 1, Aston Martin Street.
- That's a tent? - That's a tent.
This is beautiful, it looks like a shark, it looks stealthy.
Sorry...
It's filled with potential and that potential is to live in it.
And why have you given it carbon fibre breasts?
Because I've raised the air intakes at the front.
Oh, so it's the same as my horn bill arrangement.
Yeah, so that's what that's doing.
And then I've raised the suspension.
- You've got your lighting rig. - That's enough.
We will go and look at my car...
- I don't want to talk about your car. - No, you do.
- No I don't. - This way.
Well done, James, that is unquestionably
- a good-looking car. - It does.
You've even put nice stripes on it.
I have.
I've never liked the look of this car.
But now you do.
That actually is improved.
Where's your... How have you got your air filters up?
Actually the bonnet is different.
This is a sort of facsimile of the MC bonnet
if you remember the gigantic mid-engine super car
and it has extra vents in it
and it has a slot there.
This is like Christmas morning and you got a better present than me.
I don't feel very good.
It's exactly what it is.
I'm so cross that your car looks better than my car.
- Well, of course it does. - It looks damn near as good as mine.
- And what's with the roll cage? - In case it rolls over.
Oh, hang on.
Aha!
Here it is...
- Text. - Text from Mr Wilman.
Go on.
"You have driven across deserts in the past, but this is the big one,
"this is the Sahara, the biggest desert in the world.
"And you will now drive across it for a thousand miles
"to the beach in Senegal where the Paris-Dakar used to finish."
Wait a minute, we are doing the Paris-Dakar?
We are... This is boy's own dream.
It's actually better than that,
because we don't have to do the boring bit from Paris, we're just doing...
The deserty exciting bits you want to do.
- The best bits of the Paris-Dakar. - That's quite epic.
- That is legend. - Gentlemen, gentlemen.
This might have something to do with why the Paris-Dakar
no longer happens in this part of the world,
because there's more.
"You are currently in a Foreign Office red zone.
"The government says terrorism cannot be ruled out
"and over the border in Western Sahara, there's a small war going on
"between separatists and the Moroccans.
"We've even had to warn the Moroccan Defence Ministry about our presence here
"in case they think our crew vehicles are an assault force and attack,
"so behave yourselves."
With that warning ringing in our ears,
we fired up our engines...
And knowing only that to get to Dakar, we had to keep heading south-west,
plunged into the Sahara.
450 horsepower,
doing the Dakar in an Aston.
Despite Hammond's enthusiasm,
there was no doubt that our cars faced a daunting task.
Because they really hadn't been conceived
to do this kind of thing.
We've brought lightly modified supermodels to a kickboxing championship.
Thing about my car is, it actually started life
when Maserati was part of Ferrari,
but then halfway through its development,
Fiat, who owned the whole lot, decided that Maserati
should be part of Alfa Romeo.
So Maserati started again and used
a chopped-up Quattroporte to make this.
The F-Type was a bit of a hotchpotch.
It started out in life as an XJ saloon
and then they cut it down to make the XK,
then they cut it down again to make the F-Type,
so it's really a cut and shut of a cut and shut.
The engine's a bit of a mangled up mishmash as well
because they wanted a V6
but couldn't afford to develop their own, so they got their V8
and just chopped two cylinders off it.
And there we are, V6.
It works! And I've gotta be honest, it does.
Especially with a super charger, which you can hear.
My car was actually styled at Jaguar's design centre
in a corner of the office behind a curtain, genuinely.
And then it was put together using quite a lot of Ford-based parts.
But it is still an Aston Martin,
and many feel it's the first proper Aston Martin
since the old DB days.
Oh, sat-nav's woken up.
Just south of Manchester, apparently.
Ooh, look at this. Dunes!
Proper Sahara.
Dunes are notoriously dangerous.
So we decided to muck about.
Oh, yeah. We are not the rogue heroes. We are the three kings.
And thanks to my USB connectivity, we have a soundtrack.
♪ If you leave me now ♪
♪ You'll take away the biggest part of me ♪
♪ Ooh, no, baby, please don't go ♪
♪ And if you leave me now ♪
♪ You'll take away the very heart of me ♪
♪ Ooh, no, baby, please don't go ♪
♪ Ooh, girl, I just want you to stay ♪
Oh, f... ing hell!
Ah, don't cut the corners.
There's a top tip there.
Oh no. Oh no.
I think my air-conditioning just packed up. I genuinely think it did.
Ho! Oh.
That is an unbelievably rotten bit of luck. Mine's working.
What is the temperature out there?
48 degrees.
Holy cow.
Um...
High engine temp.
Stop.
Mine is telling me to stop immediately.
Good God.
Hi.
Ah.
What seems to be the trouble, sir? Having a spot of bother, are we?
A lot of it can be explained by that.
Oh, yes.
- What have you got there? - A fan.
Right.
From Peter Jones.
It really has stopped working in there.
That's what I'm wondering, if it's lost the belt.
- What's that? - That's coolant,
I suspect, that's probably come out of here.
And it's weird, cos it says it's hand built.
- Yeah, I think... - Which means done really carefully.
"Handbuilt in England."
- Handbuilt in England. - That's the problem.
- That's why... - There it is.
It's still off the dial.
You can't just sit there. You're going to have to get...
I'm going to have to let it cool, that's all I can do.
I can't touch anything.
- You've got to mend it. - Why can't you touch it?
Because it's hot.
So you wait for it to cool down, then take the engine out.
It'll never cool down. It's 49 degrees.
It's right at the top of the gauge.
No, no, no. External temperature.
Uh...
63.
- What, that's Fahrenheit? - Fahrenheit, yes.
- Well, it's not 60. - That's a summer's...
This thinks it's in Nottingham.
It does, look.
It's 63 degrees Fahrenheit and it's in Nottingham.
That's what it thinks.
So, what are we going to do?
Given that Hammond had a house and a car
which believed it was in the East Midlands on a nice spring day,
I decided not to give him my fan.
And then we left.
OK, sitrep. We've done 15 minutes of travel and two of us are still moving.
Mercifully, I worked out what was wrong quite quickly.
This fluid that I thought was coolant from the engine
that had boiled over and come out
isn't engine coolant. It's power steering fluid.
It's come out of there.
That just got hot and boiled because it was so hot in the engine bay.
I need to get heat out.
Right, Mr Wilman's backup van.
There must be tools.
Ooh.
Really? God, I hope I don't need that.
Oh, hang on. Tools? Right.
Oh. Oh, that's causing me pain. It hurts me more than you.
There.
Please start.
Yes. And I've given you air.
There was one other thing I could do to help cool the engine,
but it was unimaginable.
I don't want to do it. I'm going to have to do it.
Turn the heating up,
because that will actually pull hot air out from under the engine bay
and deliver it to me.
Oh, yeah, that is hot now.
Argh.
Up ahead,
I hadn't felt this alone since James and I drove to the North Pole.
Mauritania is empty. Totally empty. Look at it.
No one comes here.
When we got the filming permit,
it was number 58. The 58th filming permit
this country has issued since 1960.
That's 63 years.
They've only issued 58 filming permits.
Hammond, you're back.
Made holes in the bonnet
and I'm running with the heater on. I don't have long to live.
Ooh, I don't fancy that.
We continued onwards with our boil-in-the-bag colleague
until our thirsty engines needed petrol.
Which, because the Sahara doesn't have many service stations,
meant pulling over at a fuel bowser that Mr Wilman had provided.
How have you got yourself in that state?
We got... we got seat belt marks.
- I'm in an Aga. Literally an Aga. - Oh dear.
- Can I just have a word with you two? - What?
What?
Chaps, before we set off, Mr Wilman said,
could we stage a, let's be honest, contrived accident? Yeah.
Where the fuel tanker blows up.
The what?
Because he'll want us to have "oh, no, we're stuck in the desert
"with no fuel" panics.
- TV jeopardy. - There you go.
No, no, no, no, no. He wants an explosion to put in the trailer of the show.
- Oh, right. - I'd vote no to that.
- I would as well. - I'd vote no.
- That's cheese. - I don't want to blow it up.
- Plus he wants us to. - Right.
So let's look after this with our lives.
It's the most precious thing we have.
Right, I'm full. May?
- Yes? - She's all yours.
James, where are you going?
I'm getting a length on so we can get it round here.
Could you press the button to, um, it's down there?
- It's got a little... - Oh, yeah, got it.
- Yeah, it's there. - It's there.
- We can see that. - It's got a petrol pump on...
- Can you press it? - Yeah.
- Anything else? - Yeah, can you press it?
- Uh, I, yeah, I, I... - Would you press it, please?
- I've done it. - He did press it.
- He didn't. - He did.
Apart from I did.
- You didn't. - I just pressed it again.
Could you turn the ignition on and press it, please?
Oh, that means two things.
There you go.
So, they're really good instructions.
- Ow! - I warned you, James.
It's the hottest thing in the...
Ow! Ah! Ah!
Having filled up from the very toasty fuel bowser,
we moved on.
And pretty soon, we encountered our first big geological problem.
Chaps, I'm a little bit unnerved by that...
endless cliff face
in front of us.
I mean, there is no end in sight.
There is no end in sight of that mountain range.
Bugger.
If somebody's gone to the bother of making this track,
they wouldn't just build a track to the bottom of the cliff, would they?
Soon, we found out why there was a track.
Why the bloody hell would somebody build a tunnel
in the middle of the Sahara Desert?
Probably a mine for something scary.
Mining what, though? Dust?
Hammond, there'll be nothing scary in it.
Hey! James, we could have a race down here.
That's an excellent idea and I don't want to take part.
Don't you think that's a good idea?
Who can reach the highest speed and then brake before hitting...
Oh, no, you can't do that.
- Oh, shit, shit! Guys, stop. - Why?
They're bats.
There's a lot of bats. Out. Out now, everybody out.
Bats aren't dangerous.
Bats aren't... That's just... You're thinking of Scooby-Doo.
- You've heard of Ebola? - Yes.
You bleed from your eyes, your nose, all your orifices,
- all of them. And then you die quickly. - Yes.
But just enough time for your family to get to your bedside
and then you explode, showering them with infected blood.
Most experts agree it lives
in bats in West Africa.
And we're in West Africa.
- But we now have a problem. - Not really. We don't go in the tunnel.
Well, no, we have to go in the tunnel.
We have to go in the tunnel and we have to drive incredibly quickly.
No, not incredibly quickly.
You'll kick stuff up.
It could be in bat guano, did you say?
- It could be... Yeah, nobody... - That's bat poo.
Yeah, bat poo. Which would be on the floor.
Exactly. You'll kick it up with your wheels by going...
One at a time. Incredibly quickly.
Right, windows up.
Air on recirculation so it takes the air
in the cabin and sends it back into the cabin.
I don't want Ebola.
Right, here I go.
That's good. Doucement. Doucement.
No!
- And there's the Ebola. - Run away.
Oh, there's a bat!
A bat went past the window!
I've got Ebola!
How long is this bloody thing?
Oh, there's the end!
Relax, relax, relax.
Oh, Christ!
What the...
the bloody hell's that all about?
- Going in. At a sensible speed. - Don't make, don't kick up
- a load of dust. - I'm not going to kick up dust.
Shit.
So that's the border with Western Sahara.
Hammond, Hammond, Hammond.
Richard Hammond, can you hear me?
Oh, there's light, there's light!
- Stop, stop, stop! - Bloody hell!
Aaggh!
Back up exactly where your wheels are.
It says "mines".
Yes, you're in a minefield.
Back up exactly where your wheels are,
'cause we know there are no mines there.
You're going to drive over the barbed wire,
which will probably give you a puncture,
but relax on that.
Right.
You're safe.
- Minefield. - I know.
That is Western Sahara.
Do you think it really is a minefield?
Well, it's the kind of thing you generally take a sign's word for.
If it said "Caution caterpillars",
I'd go and have a look.
But, I mean, you only need to put the sign up, don't you?
Yeah, but you might have put the mines in as well.
Yeah, but if I were them, I'd just put the sign up.
- You're lazy and don't have any mines. - Yes.
No, but in my mind, there aren't any mines there.
- Shall we go for a little jog? - No.
What the hell is...
- What's that? - It's a minefield.
- A minefield. - Hammond's been in it.
- You've been in it? - He crashed through the fence.
We now had a problem.
In front of us was what we had to assume was an actual minefield.
While behind us was a tunnel full of infected bat dung.
I don't want to go back through the tunnel of Ebola.
And even if we do go back that way, there's that massive cliff face.
Yes, but that's a problem to try and overcome.
That's something to try and solve.
- That isn't. You can't solve it. - Yes, so, we have no choice.
- That's navigation. - You're right. You're absolutely right.
We have no... We cannot...
- Stop! - Not in the minefield!
Stop!
- Stop! - Stop!
Wilman might get his trailer.
No, well, are you gonna stand here while he does?
No, I'm gonna back up.
The fuel tanker
disappeared out of sight without detonating.
But that didn't change our minds.
So, we turned round...
And went back through the tunnel.
How are we going to get over that?
I don't know how we're going to get over.
After many hours, we eventually found a rough track,
which looked like it might go to the top of the escarpment.
Ooh, this is bumpy, this bit.
Yeah.
Come on, Jag. You can do this.
This car is actually surprising me.
I suppose it's 'cause it's light, isn't it, the Jag?
Well, that makes a huge difference, yeah.
I think mine probably weighs more than two tonnes now.
Come on.
Oh!
Oh.
Oh, bloody hell!
God, come on!
Bollocks.
Here he comes, in the Jaguar.
You're going to hit that big rock.
Behold the...
Oooh.
If you can move and give me a tiny nudge, Jezza, that would be brilliant.
The gazelle has moved the walrus.
Thank you very much.
Come on, gently. Yes, yes.
I'm beginning to rather like my Jaag.
I'm sorry I was initially disappointed in it, because it's bloody brilliant.
Eventually, we achieved our objective.
Well, this is definitely the top.
I'd say.
And that appears to be a... that's a building site.
Is that our fuel bowser?
He must have got through that minefield, mustn't he?
Mr Wilman's going to be furious
'cause it hasn't blown up. He's got nothing for his trailer.
Yeah, uh, chaps, I'm inclined to stop here.
Why?
You'll see.
- Ho-ho, look! There's a road. - Ooh, yeah.
Well, yeah, there is, and it is a nice road, but...
- Exactly. - It's down there.
It doesn't join up with here, does it?
It's not connected to here.
- We'll drive down here. - What?
- We'll drive down here. - Yeah, down that track.
It's a cliff!
There's too much gravity immediately available
between where we're standing and that road.
And it isn't a cruel and unpredictable mistress.
No, it's bloody reliable.
- Listen, if I go first... - Yeah.
Which I'm prepared to do...
- Really? - Yeah, I'll go first.
The backup van's there, yes?
Yes.
That's bound to have some cable in it.
Why don't I attach my car to one of those diggers?
Actually, we could use the other one as a pulley.
And then I drive down,
but I've got the safety of the cable.
Years ago, at some point, you confused engineers with cartoonists.
What this is, is a very, very, very commendably elaborate suicide.
Nevertheless, there was no other choice,
so we went for a rummage in the backup van.
That is a proper cable.
Is it rated to four or five tonnes?
Looks like it.
It'll be incredibly heavy.
- Right, are we ready? - Feet.
Here we go.
Once I'd rigged up the cables
with no help at all from the digger drivers,
and paid their boss...
Ten thousand MRU's.
Lord Clarkson.
I don't have a check guarantee card, I'm afraid,
but it's OK, because I have a "Jaaaag".
I then explained the setup to my colleagues.
- So, I drive over there, yeah? - Yeah.
And then the chap in that digger is going to drive forwards
at the same speed I'm driving down the hill.
- And then, those pulleys. - Yes.
He can swing this arm.
So, as I perhaps change direction as I go down the slope,
picking out a route,
you'll need to tell him to swing it right or left. So...
- Does he speak English? - What?
- Does he... - No.
They're all actually Mauritanian, but they speak Arabic and French.
- Arabic? No. French? - French. I'm your man.
With my back-up sorted, I climbed aboard.
Are you going to go down in gear or in neutral?
I've got to drive, haven't I? I need to be in first.
Right, are we ready?
Stand on us, we'll see you right. You have our support.
Jesus.
- Bear left. - Little bit of left.
Bit of left.
You're very close to the... you're driving off a cliff.
But the good thing is, due to my Stratos spotlights,
I can't see that.
OK.
I can now see what I've got to do for the first time.
Don't like this.
Actually, really don't like this.
I need to go left.
If you can ask him to swing his arm left.
Swing his arm left. On it.
'Cause I don't want to go down that gully.
S'il vous plaît, beaucoup...
left.
Droite.
Whatever you mimed, Hammond, wasn't bad.
Come on, turn, turn, turn, you bastard.
Come left, come left.
Come left, my little mountain goat of a car.
- That's better. - All straightened.
Christ, what am I doing?
Oooh, hoohoohoo.
I'd now reached a point where I reckoned I could go the rest of the way
under my own steam.
It's not a practical, everyday kind of solution, is it?
- It's not quick. - No.
- And you need a couple of spare diggers. - Yeah.
Oh!
OK, here I go.
Ooh, God, struth.
I'm going sideways.
Straighten out!
OK. Speed and power!
I'm on a road! I'm on a road!
Hammond and May, your turn now.
It's really easy, not frightening at all.
Before we could join Jeremy, though, we had to make sure
that our precious nine-tonne fuel tanker got down safely.
If you had to lower a fuel tanker down a cliff,
which two human beings would you least like to be in charge?
Are we one million percent sure this is going to be safe?
Not a million percent, to be honest.
This is heavier than the Jag, though, even with him in it.
Right, send it down.
- No, that's too much. - Too much. Back a bit.
- Bollocks! - Oh, dear.
That noise is horrible.
At the halfway point, the driver asked us to release the cables
so he could do the rest of the drop on his own.
OK, I know what it feels like for that man in that fuel tanker.
Bottom loosening.
I think we need a bit of serious left-hand down
if he's going to avoid the problem that Jeremy had,
'cause he mustn't go too far that way.
He needs to start going left as soon as he can.
James, now that we've moved down the hill a bit further
- for the first time. - Yeah?
Have you seen what I've seen over there?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, my God.
Oh, no.
Gentlemen, the fuel bowser is down.
It's stuck, but it's down.
Guys, good news.
He's made it just about to the bottom. It's not going to blow up, which is good.
And the front bumper has come off,
which I think's going to work quite well as something in the trailer.
That's amazing. It's really, really...
That was proper impressive.
Something else.
But, I mean, it's just... And it's no explosion, nothing.
- How did you get down? - Oh, we came on the road.
Are you telling me...
I'm not going to lie. It was quite a surprise.
It's behind the building site.
That's why they've got those diggers and things over there.
- They've been building a road. - They've just got to the top.
- It's a nice road. - It's lovely.
We're all here. Everybody's happy.
I'm not happy. I came down there. I came down that, in that.
Yes, well.
That was pretty easy. It's a new road.
It's lovely. Fresh tarmac, a little sand on the very edges.
With the sun setting and tarmac beneath our wheels,
we decided to knock off as many miles as possible before dark.
I'll admit that in the day, it is a bit toasty warm, but now...
It's just gone seven o'clock.
The sun has just gone down behind the hill there.
This is absolutely delightful. A mere 38 degrees.
As night fell, we pulled off the road to make camp,
with James and I assuming Mr Wilman had put some luxury tents
in the backup van.
I'm trying to remember if I've ever been as irritated as this.
It's pretty poor.
This is... Even a boy scout would say no to that.
Where's he got them from?
Did he go to Glastonbury the day after it finished and just helped himself?
But I can't... I mean, I'm 63 years old.
I can barely touch my knees, leave alone my toes.
How does he think I'm going to get dressed in that in the morning?
And do you know what's doubly irritating?
No, but go on.
- Hammond's tent is better. - It's much better.
I'm never going to be able to get to sleep
knowing that Hammond is having a better time 20 feet away.
I do not need a tent like that.
It's translucent apart from anything else.
Did he go into a shop and say, "What is the cheapest tent?"
"What is the cheapest tent?"
You know supermarkets are claiming to recycle their carrier bags...?
After a wretched night,
we headed south-west once more into the vast heat of Africa.
But on the plus side,
this leg of the journey started out
as a slice of petrol head heaven.
First, there was a gravel rally stage.
And then, there was what felt like an alpine pass.
Whoa, tarmac!
Jesus! What a road!
And then...
We hit a surface that all of us absolutely hate.
Oh God, it's washboard.
Oh, bad bit.
Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Let it end.
Now, please, I beg of you.
You might not believe this is bad, viewers, but look.
One of my air vents has been shaken free of the car.
From where we were sitting, that was the least of his problems.
James, your Maserati looks very wobbly.
Like fall apart clown car wobbly.
The wings are moving, everything.
Oh my God, I see what you mean.
The whole body is vibrating.
It's absolutely shocking in here.
Do you think Mr Wilman thought to put some spare pelvises in the backup van?
Oh God.
We have done 42 kilometres of this.
I'm sick of this washboard road.
Mercifully, a town with smooth roads
soon hoved into view.
This town, Chinguetti,
a thousand years ago, and I do mean a thousand years ago,
was a staging post between Timbuktu and the coast,
and they stored all their literature here.
Every building was a library. All of learning was in this town.
Today, the town is split in two by a Wadi full of soft sand.
And crossing it plainly required a vast amount of speed and power.
Holy Jesus!
Jeremy's here.
It's quite a nice little square, this, isn't it?
My car's looking a little bit... It looks quite rugged now.
And what's all this?
Ah! I don't know.
Oh geeeee.
Geee, that's not good.
That's supposed to be inside somewhere.
Is it oil or water? Or oily water?
- Sandy, oily water? - It's neither.
- It's power steering fluid. - What?
The power steering fluid is getting incredibly hot
because of all the work it's doing, and the heat.
Have you seen?
I can see the bonnet's up, should I...
Oh, it's just a minor... it's just the temperature,
- bit too much heat here and there. - It's been crying.
Yeah, it has had a little weep.
Um, it's a known thing
that they do it in the desert, DB9s.
- Listen. I wanna look round this town. - Yes.
I've got something I want to look at in this town.
- What? No, no, what? - It's a library.
There's lots of libraries. Look, "Bibliothèque", that means library.
There's three of them, I think.
There used to be what, 700? All of knowledge,
I'm right, aren't I, pretty much, was stored here.
All of Arab knowledge, yes.
Right, we'll see you in a minute.
The reason why I wanted to look around this historical site
is because soon, it won't be here.
The desert is... eating the town.
- What? - It's eating it.
Bloody hell. Look at this.
He's not gonna be mowing his lawn anymore, is he?
So it's feet deep, metres deep.
- Why is the desert eating the town? - Look at that!
Well now, there's a thing called global warming.
Heard of that.
And because of it, the Sahara Desert is moving south
at the rate of four metres a year.
So this is what, wind moving the sand?
Yes, it's just... Well, the vegetation is dying and becoming desert.
- Hundred years, all that's desert. - Gone.
That's probably the top of a house.
Bloody... I'm staggered by this.
- Tell you what though, Hammond? - What?
It has given me an idea.
What?
You're gonna like this.
Meanwhile, in one of the libraries,
I was being shown some incredible ancient texts.
There's actual gold used in this bit, this is gold.
Yeah.
It's gilded.
Yeah, this one.
It is stunning, this one.
Said that an American tourist
visited the guy in the library,
and he asked him to sell him the book.
Then he told him if he would sell it,
he's gonna give him a house in Florida, and he said no.
It's the legacy of his great-grandparents.
I think you did the right thing.
You don't want a house in Florida.
It's all hot and sticky and full of people with guns.
Can I touch a 500-year-old astronomy book?
This is the relative motions of the Moon and...
the Earth and the Sun.
So that's pre-Copernicus, presumably, so it's about the same time,
and in the Arab world I don't think they had yet recognised
that the Sun should be considered in the middle.
Bear in mind as well that what we're talking about here,
the 11th century, is our understanding of the 11th century...
Having sent the librarians into a deep sleep,
James finally emerged into the sunlight.
Hey, how are you doing? Was it good?
Yeah, it was bloody fantastic.
Lots of books but this ancient one with diagrams in about lives of the prophets,
and every one was an illustration, like a picture.
His mood is about to change.
What have you done? What have you done?
Well we've been hanging around. We've walked about,
looked at the town, haven't we?
- You've noticed. - Oh that?
- Ah. That wasn't us. - No.
- It's... - We got back
from looking round this other bit of the town...
- Yes. - And found this.
You've heard of dust devils, those little like spinning winds?
- Yes. - Where you parked, at this intersection.
I think it maybe amplified the effect of the wind
and just picked it up and deposited it there.
And you saw this happen?
No, we didn't, cos we were looking round the other town.
The only other thing we can think of,
we've wracked our brains, is that they don't have tickets here,
if you park in the middle of the road.
The traffic wardens simply fill your car with sand.
That's a... that's very good.
But what if my car doesn't work? And how the hell do I get it out?
- Where's the key? - Ah.
Where did you leave it?
On the centre console, where I always leave it.
If you just open the doors, the sand'll fall out.
Well, it's locked.
You see, I never lock my car.
Just in case this exact thing happens.
OK, give me a shovel, I'll get it. You...
Oh, bugger off then.
Having left James to sort out his freak sandstorm issue,
we headed for the backup van,
because we'd decided to solve the problems
caused by the horrendous washboard roads.
Oh God, it's a, it's a...
Oh, burning, ah!
Ah! Thank you.
If you wanna do any welding.
Or chainsawing.
Or role play.
Now hang on a minute. I could do something with these.
Yes, I can.
While James toiled away emptying his car...
Oh, stupid.
...we got busy with what we'd found in the van,
and soon our washboard solution modifications were ready.
- So I found this in the truck. - Yes.
- It's a cultivator. - It is.
It might work,
but normally cultivators are towed behind the tractor.
Yes, but I'd have to drive over the rough road before cultivating it level.
That wouldn't work.
No, it would be more sociable.
I'm not.
- You're not what, sociable? - Sociable.
I want this for me to work and make my life better.
But I think you'll find my solution
surpasses this by a factor of several million.
I've literally no idea
why Mr Wilman put two snowmobiles in the van,
knowing we're going to the Sahara Desert, but I'm glad he did.
Let me explain. OK.
Instead of using the skis, I've fitted wheels at the front,
but we're not really interested in this.
What we are interested in is the tracks.
They're gonna be whizzing along in front of my wheels,
smoothing out the ridges
in the washboard.
So when I arrive, incredibly smooth, it'll be like a billiard table.
They're gonna be going eeeee, like two massive belt sanders?
Yes. Exactly right, they're belt sanders,
mounted to the front of a Jaguar F-Type.
- Yeah. - Off road Jag.
An F-Off roader type.
It's incredible, isn't it? Rather than be locked up in a drab cell,
in a jacket that does up at the back,
you've had so many opportunities to make your insanity real.
There it is!
With the technical briefings over,
it was time to put theory into practice.
Raising rig.
Richard Hammond. To the future.
I'm guessing that most of the people in this town
have not yet seen a snowmobile.
They're going to be quite surprised to hear what its primary purpose is.
Obviously, I have it in a raised position right now.
I can hydraulically lower it.
It's just like James Bond's Lotus.
In normal car mode, it's just a normal car.
Once we came to a washboard section of road outside the town,
we prepared for our maiden trial.
Snowmobiles are running.
Right, I'm doing it. I'm doing it.
Here we go. Lowering.
And here we go.
By Jove, I think it's working.
I mean I...
Yeah.
I am sculpting the roads. I'm smoothing them.
Ha ha ha ha!
I am grading the road.
God!
Cannot believe that this is happening.
Oh yeah.
And I'll just sit here now and relax.
And it's not just me that's benefitting. Remember that.
The whole of Africa is benefitting.
Oh, stones are coming. See, it's kicking up some stones.
Oh yeah, that can happen.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, that's some big stones.
But despite this teething problem,
when we pulled over a few miles later to inspect our work,
the results were unquestionable.
You look on the left-hand side of the road, which is what we have graded,
that side,
and then look at the right-hand side of the road, which we haven't graded,
- I mean it... proof. - It works, it works.
- You could run an F1 race on that. - Oh, easy.
We then decided to be fully public spirited,
and drive side by side, so we could smooth out all of the road.
OK, Hammond, let's go.
We could do dual carriageways.
I reckon I can go a bit deeper here.
Just gotta... I'm learning to finesse the system now.
Shit!
Oh shit!
Oh, my God!
I've never seen anything like it.
I just saw a puff of smoke and it leapt that thing and...
At least there are no witnesses. Apart from the people in this lorry.
Ooh.
- I'm just gonna quietly move along. - Yeah.
Right.
If I drive alongside, people won't spot that there's one missing.
Yeah, good thinking Hammond.
Well, that was unique. I'm pretty confident...
Oh.
Oh, I think it just broke.
After this second incident, we decided to abandon all road mending
for the foreseeable future.
Initially, our experiment was brilliant, and then everything went
terribly, badly wrong...
very quickly indeed.
Had you prepared speeches? I had.
I didn't know whether I'd get a CBE or an OBE.
I was gonna get a statue and do a TED talk.
I'm probably not gonna get either now,
particularly if my snowmobile crashes into a remote village.
Assuming May would eventually catch up,
we decided to press on.
But, as darkness fell, my Aston began to play up.
Again.
Er, I'm just overheating again.
I've been told to stop immediately by the car.
I can't seem to get past third gear, so it's running at too high RPM.
OK, Hammond. Um, there's literally nothing I can do about that.
No, that was a sigh, but you're right.
As my colleague's taillights dissolved into the night,
I was left to trundle on... alone.
Er, it's late and I can't go much more than 20 miles an hour.
The gearbox is failing. It won't shift up. I'm stuck in second.
And if I run it any higher than one and a half thousand RPM,
the engine overheats.
Also I'm getting warnings telling me check battery off switch,
brake failure, stop safely and my dashboard lights have gone out.
Oh, they've come back!
SRS airbag service urgent.
Rollover protect fault. DSC service required.
Come on.
Gonna get you to camp.
Bit of work.
The next morning, James and I were reunited.
Oh God.
Oh.
Oh I'm empty.
- Morning, May. - Morning.
Have you seen what's missing from this picture?
Yes.
I am behind the other two. They're some miles ahead.
I will find them,
but I can't go on any further, until I've sorted this car.
So I kipped here last night, cos I can,
cos I've got an Aston Martin hotel.
But the Aston Martin bit isn't working very well.
I did the launch of this car. I remember when they came out.
It's from the exact point when cars started getting cleverer.
But not clever enough.
Normally everything electric on a car was controlled by a separate wire,
which is OK when all you had was a horn.
But by this time, everything was worked with electronics,
so they combined them all into one gigantic, very clever wire
that went all the way round the car and stopped off at all the different things.
And the car can feel everything, its brakes, its suspension,
which is great, until it can't feel them.
So if it can't feel its gearbox, it stops using its gearbox.
Somewhere in there is one little thing that's just shorting across,
and it's sending the whole of its central nervous system into meltdown.
And it could be anywhere in there.
What's made it worse, is the desert. It's hot. Full of stones and sand.
It's hot, so it needs cooling.
Here is a little radiator at the front, tiny little cooler.
That cools oil for the gearbox, which is right at the back.
One of the stones has gone through the radiator, and made a hole.
That's allowed the oil to leak out and spread over the front of the radiator,
mingle with the sand and build a brick wall in front of itself.
So the gearbox is overheating.
That I could probably do something about, but as for the electronics,
I'm just gonna have to look
until I can physically find a problem to mend.
After an hour of fettling, I got back on the road,
but the Aston was by no means mended.
I'm moving, which is good. But I've only got one gear
and I've no idea what's happening to the engine or anything else
cos none of my gauges are working.
Temperature, nothing.
That's why it's not letting me change gear.
It's not giving me any information because it's not getting any information.
Oh, hello. The fuel bowser.
Well, I've no idea if I've got any fuel, but I'll get some anyway.
My gauge doesn't work.
- Oh, look. - Here he is.
- It's working! - Yes. More or less.
I'm just gonna give it a rest.
- How many gears have you got? - One.
- Which one? - I don't know.
Absolute catastrophe.
Right, fuel.
- I've no idea if I need it. - I didn't have...
- You've no dials. - I've got nothing!
It does that as well. I don't know what that is.
You never heard Bond's Aston sounding like that, did you?
- Sounds brilliant. - How fast were you going, Bond?
"I don't know. Speedo were broken. I only had one gear."
- Do you know what? - What?
- We've been here three days. - Yeah.
- I must have drunk 60 litres of water. - Easy.
I haven't peed once and now I think this has encouraged it.
I can feel one coming. I'm gonna go for a slash.
- I haven't had a pee. - No, don't need it!
Well, the sun has boiled it all out of us. But...
But it's actually got... No, genuinely, I haven't had a pee since I got here.
Go and have one.
I'm gonna try, because it's been a while.
I definitely still don't want one.
After a few minutes of assuming the position,
we finally had some sort of success.
You know you get those charts that tell you the colour of your pee.
- It tells you how healthy you are. - Yeah.
This colour's not on that chart.
This is just a thin stream of hot sand falling through a milk straw.
Mine's like a stair banister.
I could actually pull it, and it's made a toffee.
Might do that again in another week.
Ah! My seat is so hot.
Ignition on. Dashboard off.
That is working.
Do I have drive?
No, yes, I do.
- What was that? - What the...? What?
What the hell was that?
What? Why would it...?
Why did you tie it to the fuel bowser?
You and I were...
May.
- Did you do this? - What?
Well, somebody tied it to the fuel bowser.
What if the fuel bowser had blown up?
Oh, I know what that is.
The freaky meteorological conditions can tangle up
a stray bit of strop blowing around, and tie it onto things.
That's my home.
I can't put it back on.
- Cos it's smashed. - What a rotten bit of luck. Let's go.
That means we're going to have to look at an Aston Martin DB9
driving through the desert and not...
a Metrocab.
- This is bullying in the workplace. - I didn't do it! I was having a piss.
Well, it wasn't a piss. I was ejecting some Rolos from my body.
That's a beautiful car you've got there, Hammond.
Shut up.
Today our plan was to reach the capital city of Nouakchott.
And as we didn't think that would take too long,
I suggested a cultural diversion.
I was talking yesterday to um, an old woman outside that library,
and she said if we keep going down this road,
we get to this enormous eye in the desert.
What?
Apparently, it's called the Eye of Africa.
It's supposed to be the most amazing thing on Earth.
- Is it? - It's a weird geological event.
But some people say it's the Lost City of Atlantis.
It was actually... Nobody knew about it
until the Apollo astronauts saw it from space.
Really?
I know it sounds implausible, but that's what she said.
Did she also try and sell you some magic beans?
If we pick up the pace a bit,
we'd have the time to spend a little while looking for it.
I can't pick up the pace. I've got one gear.
Well, listen, May and I can form an advance party
by picking up the pace, all right?
And when we find it, we'll give you a bell.
If you find a spare tent as well, I'd be grateful.
Taking me to the Eye of Africa. Here I come!
That super charger. Eat. Eat fuel!
What else is out there in the desert, along with the gigantic eye?
A massive nose.
I know there's a pair of huge tits out there.
Having made good progress on the smooth tarmac,
James and I were nearing the location of the mysterious eye.
OK, James. If the old woman is to be believed
the gigantic eye is along here.
There isn't an eye.
Well, you won't be saying that when you crest that hill,
and there's an enormous eye there. You just watch.
A good few miles back,
my chances of joining the other two were becoming slimmer.
Right, gauges have just come on briefly, and it's bad news,
temperature really high.
All I can do
is proceed at what pitch tells me is 2,000 RPM in my one gear,
and I could do with stopping and putting my roof up.
I'm gonna pull up in this magnificent village square,
because I'm being cooked.
I give in.
They can drive with their roofs off. I'm not brave enough.
Please don't be stuck.
Oh God!
No, that's not acceptable.
Ooh!
Christ, I've just...
Um...
That's the rollover that deploys in a crash.
That's good.
Well, it can't happen again, can it? It's gone. It's just see... ah.
Um, I just tried to start it, and it's, it's...
Things just got a lot worse really quickly!
Meanwhile, deep in the desert,
we still hadn't found what we were looking for.
No eye, no eye, no eye.
Camels, camels' eyes, but no eyes.
Christ, that is a terrible noise!
Aghh.
What is the point of this, Clarkson? There is no giant eyeball.
We're just wrecking the cars.
For a bit more persevering we might just get over that crest there,
and there it is.
Bollocks!
Cock!
I'm stuck, and it's your fault.
All this stuff about seeing from outer space.
Think about the thing, the Great Wall of China, famously
"you can see that from out of space."
You can also see it when you're standing next to it.
It is there. You just, you won't let me go and have a look for it.
Or it might have been a fairytale that Gypsy Rose told you,
because you'd given her £1.50.
All right, all right, fine, well I'll... we'll give in.
I don't like giving in, but I'm going to give in.
Yeah, but you're giving in looking for something like an eye
in the middle of Africa.
- Yes, it's a huge eye. - Huge, but how huge?
Well, it's, the way she described it, like massive huge.
- Where's Hammond, by the way? - That is a good question.
I'm assuming he's not bothered to coming to look at the eye
cos he just thinks...
OK, I know this is probably a pointless exercise, but let's...
No signal at all.
That is of no help.
There's no huge amounts of fluid that've come out,
but even if they had, that wouldn't explain it just being dead at the key.
It's clearly electrics.
If its feeble 2005 brain has given up, I've had it.
The only other thing, battery.
That's not gone flat has it? But it's behind this seat.
Oh dear Lord! Salvation!
No way. Hang on, let me just check.
The live battery terminal has shaken loose.
Literally this has shaken itself undone. It was like that.
I got going, and there was more good news,
because the gearbox had decided to actually be a gearbox again.
Aston Martin! Yeah ha ha ha!
I've got gears, and everything.
Meanwhile, on our way back to the main road,
May and I had been rather distracted by something we had found.
This.
- Bloody Nora, look at this! - Hey, look!
Jesus wept!
- Ho ho ho ho. - Is that an oasis?
Literally no evidence that I'm English.
Wait.
Come and have a seat. I've got just the thing we should be listening to.
I can't find anything to commemorate the demise of Richard Hammond.
You know Gordon Lightfoot also died today. So...
- Did he? - Yeah.
♪ If you could read my mind, love ♪
♪ What a tale my thoughts could tell ♪
♪ Just like an old time movie ♪
♪ 'Bout a ghost from a wishing well ♪
♪ In a castle dark or a fortress strong ♪
♪ With chains upon my feet ♪
♪ You know that ghost is me ♪
♪ And I will never be set free ♪
♪ As long as I'm a ghost, you can't see ♪
Just to give you an idea of how empty Mauritania is,
I've now done a hundred miles on this,
the main road from one side of the country to the other,
and I haven't seen another car, not one, nothing.
It's just...
it hurts your head,
the bigness of this place, and the emptiness.
I do believe it's a disfigured Aston Martin.
Yes, it is.
My colleagues caught up with me
just as my haunted car started to play up... again.
I've lost gearbox.
Oh, now it's beeping!
Why have my windows opened?
Why have my... who... I didn't ask them. Why have my windows opened?
It's actively disobeying and tormenting me now.
It's, uh, decided to open the windows,
and take away the ability to change gear,
accompanied by a maddening beep.
I thought the beeping might be happening
because the car didn't believe my roof was secured properly.
So, I pulled over to test my theory.
Bastard!
It's still beeping!
It's got a very convenient roof, you just press the button, and it goes down,
and then you have to get out and jump on it.
They do say that people are driven mad in the desert after a while.
What about in the middle? The bit in the middle.
Such a yobbo.
Just stop beeping! It's all right!
Did you say you thought you might be in second gear?
Well, it won't tell me what gear I'm in, but I think it's second, yes.
But if I go any faster, it overheats very quickly.
James, once again we face a dilemma, don't we?
We drive all the way to the coast at 38 miles an hour,
or... we don't.
Let me think about that one for a bit.
I've come to the same conclusion.
Absolute bastards.
There were still 200 miles to go to the capital.
So James and I pulled over
in a small town to rendezvous with the fuel bowser.
And we got an unexpected bonus.
This is a runway.
Yes.
I'm just thinking maybe...
while we're waiting for Hammond,
we could do some car stuff in our car program me.
- What do you have in mind? - Well, I'm thinking of a drag race.
Oh, what a good idea.
It'd be quite interesting, if you think about it.
And I have wanted to know actually since we set off.
You've got a lot more power than I have, haven't you? You've got...
I've got more power. I've got 434, but I've got more weight.
You're 434 horsepower. I'm 375. How much does this weigh?
- 2 tons. - Cos I'm 1.6.
- It'd be quite... - Interesting...
It'd be an interesting experiment, for the ladies and gentlemen.
Yes.
And so, with that decided, we headed to the end of the runway,
erected some drag race paraphernalia,
and prepared for the off.
Right, what do I need? Sport mode,
yes! Traction control, I think off.
I'm in manual, but due to the unique way I've modified this car,
I'm unable to change any of the programs.
Well, due to the unique way you filled my car with sand,
I have some trouble with the buttons, but I've got it now.
Wait a minute. Look who's here.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
- Just in time. - What?
- Just in time. - What for?
Drag race.
I'm not really in a position to do a drag race.
- Turn it off. - Ah, no, no, no.
That would be a poor move.
- Why can't you turn it off? - It probably will never start again.
You know we were on the verge of starting a very tense drag race?
Have you seen Terminator 3?
People have wondered for many years
when would Skynet become fully self-aware.
In an Aston Martin being driven by you in Mauritania, no one saw that coming.
What if this idiot learns to communicate with other machines.
- It is moronic, isn't it? - It's a moron!
Uh, Hammond, Hammond.
- What? - What's that?
What the bloody hell is that doing here?
- Is that one of yours? - Well...
- What do you mean, one of mine? - What else is it going to be?
- How long has it been going? - Since he let it loose.
- That was 150 miles away. Oh Jesus! - You released it into the desert.
- Oh, you don't... - What that, it's...
Jeez!
Awww.
- That was your fault. - What?
Well, it was your snowmobile. They aren't any others in the Sahara.
I can't possibly have predicted that it would hit the fuel bowser.
- You released it... - From 150 miles away.
- You released it into the wild. - I didn't release it. It escaped!
- We were told to behave ourselves. - Yes.
I think we should depart.
Yeah, we should go. Um...
- Fairly quickly? - Yes.
Please change gear. Change gear now.
Now! Now is the time. It's... now is the time.
Don't argue with me. Now is the time to change gear!
James and I covered ground at a brisk pace,
putting as much distance between us and the explosion
as possible.
And soon we became consumed by the stark beauty of our surroundings.
The view on both sides, especially that side, is spectacular.
It's almost like snow dunes, the sand is so pale.
It's fantastic.
My temperature has plummeted to 37.
Oh yes, I'm down to 38.
Wow! That's positively chilly.
Eventually, Jeremy and I arrived in the capital city,
where it soon became clear
that we aren't as well known as we are in other parts of the world.
Richard!
Somebody just called me "Richard."
If the young man wanted to see the real Richard,
he'd be waiting a long while,
given how Hammond and the Terminator were getting on.
Come back. Work, you twat.
Can we not just... OK, it's your gearbox.
Can we think of it as our gearbox?
We both, we share a gearbox.
The central locking just went off.
It just locked its doors.
Several hours later,
Skynet propelled my one gear car into Nouakchott,
where there was good enough Wi-Fi
for me to connect the car's malfunctioning brain
to a diagnostic laptop.
Right, 200 miles on one gear.
So laptop, I'm talking to it in zeros and ones, the language it understands.
And I'm now going to see what it's panicking about.
It's worrying about a lot. Oh my God!
I'm in passenger door model, it's worrying about its door.
Worry about your gearbox.
Global positioning module, that's why I was in Nottingham.
I don't believe most of these are mechanical faults.
Nothing's gone wrong. It's just got upset.
If I hit this,
this is basically the "don't worry" button.
I'm going to do it.
Forget about it. It's clearing them.
Please, give me control of the car, and let me drive.
So, hopefully...
Can't look.
Yeah! There you go!
That's nothing to moan about.
So I think I've got gears.
The next morning, as we set off to look around town,
it was the moment of truth.
It changed gear! It changed gear! It changed gear!
I've got gears. It just changed gear.
So, John Connor, you're fighting back.
Oh yes!
Our aim was to do a bit of sightseeing,
but immediately we got distracted
by the heroic brilliance of Mauritania's cars.
Yes, the suspension's gone.
He's just crashed. He just crashed.
Is that what that noise was?
Maybe, one explanation for some of the crashes that happened to this car
is the fact that you can't see out of it.
When, when does it stop being a car?
I suppose when it stops moving. Until then, it's a car.
I think one day it's driving on, and just disappears.
Eww.
Oh, that wasn't good.
He's going to keep, he's gonna keep going.
Fantastic.
He can't stop. That bloke got to hang on to the door.
- Another one. - Yes.
I like the pedestrian safety feature.
But it's working! It's...
Hammond you worried about your Aston, and honestly...
Well, that's why I can't make a fuss, isn't it?
I mean, I've only kind of started.
Having lapped up these Mauritanian war horses,
we decided to go to a café for a drink...
of hot brown water.
What does an MOT testing centre look like here I wonder.
Invisible. Ah! A Mercedes.
Look, every panel, more than once.
Not just once.
Oh yeah, that's a lifetime's work.
And, John, how's your car, or is Skynet still winning?
I'm fighting it, and it's fighting back.
Has it said, "Are you Sarah Connor?"
I'm wondering if I can sign up to be part of the Borg, and fight it directly.
That is a cracker!
Look at that.
- Great one, look at that one. - That's nice.
He's cruising, arm out the window.
That isn't tea, but it is quite nice, and even you will say it's quite nice.
It might have some tea in it.
- I'd rather have a beer. - You what?
I'd rather have a beer.
Now on that front...
I know of a chain of off-licences
to be found in every single capital city in the world,
and even in a dry country, a Muslim country like this one, which is very dry,
you could always get a gin and tonic or a refreshing pint of beer.
An off-licence here. What's it called?
It's everywhere. It's called the British Embassy.
Ah! Is it?
Best sort.
That is sovereign British territory.
Yes.
They're bound to welcome us, perhaps less so you,
and then we can have a refreshing drink.
- Where is it? - Finish your tea.
I don't want it.
At Hammond's insistence, I found the number for the embassy,
got us an appointment, and we headed over there...
immediately.
This is my favourite part of this job,
getting to a town like this...
Just the buzz you get from a town like this.
Gordon Bennett!
Hammond's had an accident.
He's just rammed my Aston.
Oh no, someone's driven into his pristine DB9.
You should drive more carefully, Hammond.
It wasn't me! He just went through.
OK, we have a winner. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
- Oh! - I have no idea what it is,
or was.
Well, I actually genuinely don't know what that was.
Not a clue, but it's a bit of estate car.
I think that's the end of our car spotting here,
because you simply cannot beat that.
After a few crash-free miles, we arrived at the British Embassy.
It's here, chaps. Here is our club.
Do you address them as Your Ambassadorship,
or something like that?
Yes, your Supreme-beings hip.
Or how about just 'landlord'?
Gin!
Anyway, listen, listen.
I find it polite when somebody says "Can I offer you a drink," you say, no,
and then they're, "Are you sure," and you go, "Well..."
And you look at your watch, and go,
"Well, all right, just the one."
But you don't say yes straight away.
Because, "Would you like a gin and tonic?" "Yes!" Don't do that.
Yeah, I think it's polite, yes, yes, yeah.
I can only think about gin.
Ooh that's very nice. Ooh isn't that very nice.
- Only the British do this. - There's a lawn.
- That's a lawn. - There's a bar, but don't look at it.
- Hey! - Good morning.
Good morning. How are you?
Colin Wells. It's very nice to meet you. You're looking very smart.
- Oh yes. - Hello.
He spent all night fighting the Terminator. Hence the shirt.
Successfully.
- Please go inside. - Thank you.
How's it been going?
Pretty good actually, for us two.
Um, we were slightly confused when we found we were coming to Mauritania,
cos while we're quite well travelled,
we all look, all of us... Well, he didn't think it existed at all.
He thought it was a C.S. Lewis invention.
But what did you feel like, when you got the posting?
Oh very happy. I wanted to come here.
- You wanted to? - I wanted to come here.
- You knew where it was. - I did know where it was,
and a lot of people in my life thought I was going to Mauritius
when I told them I was going to Mauritania.
Exactly. "Yes, I've got Mauritius." Mauritania?
I'm sorry, I should offer you a drink. I'm really sorry. Um...
- Yes please. - Would you like a drink? We've got um...
a good range of teas here,
if that would be uh... Would that sound all right to you?
- I've got English Breakfast, Ceylon. - No, um...
- Tea, yes. - Yeah, lovely.
I'll just go and order one of those.
- Thank you. - Just excuse me just for a moment.
That's very hospitable.
You lied.
- Now look what's happened. - It's your fault.
- Why is it my fault? - You mishandled it.
This is British territory.
Did we check that he does drink?
I mean it's unlikely that an ambassador wouldn't drink but...
Have you seen him?
That's not a man who's drank tonic water all his life.
If we'd immediately said, "Actually could I have a drink drink?"
I will agree. My good manners have got us into a spot of bother here.
Yes.
Can I ask whilst we're alone,
as you're a Jag driver, which painting are you going home with?
Cos there's some very nice ones.
- Where are you going? - Oh, chaps.
I've ballsed this up completely.
It's his "Ferraro Roche".
- You daft sod! - OK, that is...
That's not very am bass... These people are trained to be suave.
They're smart, and cool,
and you've knocked over their tower of Ferrero Roche, you cretin!
Put those back on in the right order.
- Sorry, I shouldn't be laughing. - You've trodden on that one.
- I haven't trodden on it. - Somebody has.
Right, quickly, sit down.
- Oh, sorry to be slow. - Oh, I say.
That's a rather fine pot.
Yeah, that's our official crockery.
That's exactly what I wanted, a cup of tea, it's very refreshing, isn't it?
It is.
Thank you very much.
After a polite pot or two,
we made our excuses and were able to resume our tour of the city.
Let's have another gear change. Come on, let's do it again.
Let's do it again. Come on.
Aww, another gear change.
Soon, we came across something rather intriguing.
What is going on here?
It's a very wide road.
I know what this is.
What?
They built an airport right next to the city,
and then the city grew, and sort of swamped the airport.
And they've been left with a runway right in the middle of the capital city.
Oh yes, cos look, there's more city over there, so it's...
- Yeah. - It's not on the edge. It's in it.
Is this not an excellent opportunity
for something we failed to do the other day, i.e. a drag race?
Oooh yes!
Runways are indeed for drag races.
- And he... - And he's mended.
You can take part.
I haven't raised it with the forces of evil in there yet,
but I'd love to have a go.
Since the runway was as empty as any other abandoned airstrip,
we decided we were good to go.
Right, sport, traction control off,
use the paddles, sunglasses down, windows up, ready.
It's taken sport mode away.
You know my sport button? It's decided I can't have it.
Oh no, I can again.
Thank you... Master.
V6, V8, V12.
Which would be quickest?
A good start from the Jag.
Oh! My car is fast!
One gear, two gears. Brilliant! It's working!
Hang on a minute. That is... that's traffic.
The runway has traffic. Holy shit, I'm gonna have a...
Whoa!
Maniac!
Jeez, what the...
Shit!
Oh dear God!
Oh, that's a... that's a... I was going to hit that...
Holy moly!
That was the weirdest drag race I've ever done.
This is not an empty runway, is it?
I don't think it's a runway anymore. I think it might be a road.
Let's not do that again.
Thank you for giving me the brakes when I needed them.
I'm very grateful and I appreciate it.
Thank you.
The next morning, we were up bright and early,
because it was time to leave Nouakchott.
These lorries full of sand, who are they going to sell it to?
They've got some lovely sand for sale over here.
There are big piles of it here.
In case you didn't like the sand earlier,
there's some sand there.
Very competitive market, sand.
Why do they sell sand?
You can literally walk 30 feet.
We then left the capital, heading south for Senegal.
And after a few hours, we started to notice a change in our surroundings.
I wouldn't call it lush,
but it's less barren than anything we've seen so far,
that's for sure.
I think we're very close to the edge of the Sahara Desert here.
What are they on the right? Are they cows?
Many cows. It's a herd. That's definitely been farmed.
Look at it.
And that tells me that we have crossed the Sahara.
Hello, cows. Look at you!
Grass. I'm driving on grass for the first time
in what feels like 500 years.
What we're looking for is a border into Senegal.
So there'll be, like, you know, a checkpoint. And in we go.
We drove further and further along the myriad of tracks,
but even after an hour,
we still hadn't found anything that looked remotely official.
Where's this bloody border?
I was expecting, like, a fence and a checkpoint, maybe.
Yeah, a passport and so on. Yeah, definitely.
Finally, our search seemed to bear fruit.
This has to be a border town. It has to be.
Oh, no.
I've got a horrible feeling.
Houston,
we have a problem.
That, I suspect, is the border.
Um...
Excusez-moi. C'est Sénégal, là?
Sénégal. C'est Mauritanie? Sénégal?
Senegal, right.
Jeremy, there's a huge river in the way.
The border is a bit more rivery than I thought it was going to be.
- I thought a fence. - I did.
That's all right. There's a bridge.
I'll get my phone out.
What are you entering? "Bridges near me"?
There's a road.
We're the best explorers.
- Oh, town there. No bridge. - No bridge.
Oh, Jesus. Well, how do you get to...
So nobody ever goes there in a car?
No.
OK, look, I've gone about a hundred miles down...
- That's... - upstream, and there's no bridge.
This is precisely why people use rivers as borders.
Could we get the cars on...
No.
On that?
Two of those boats, I was thinking about. It's a bit...
But boats that... Hang on...
What if we built a boat?
- Out of dust, or sand? - I don't mean an ark.
I just mean, like, a... What about...
What have we got here? Two, four, six... Nearly six tons of car.
It doesn't really need to be a boat. It just needs to be a platform.
What do you see a hell of a lot of here?
Just anywhere you stand?
What have I seen since I got here? Dust.
- Sand. - Goats.
- Camels. - That's it.
- And one other thing... - There's sand, there's camels.
In vast numbers.
Plastic bottles.
- Yes. - Flattened plastic bottle.
Yes, but plenty... We've just driven over that one.
What if we find... Well, find, just gather.
- Yeah, one, two... - As many plastic bottles as we can.
There's one over there. Over there. They're everywhere.
- It's a good point. - And we build...
If we could get... What do they do with... Look, nets.
- You're suggesting we get a fishing net. - Yes.
- Fill it with plastic bottles. - Yes.
- I agree that would float. - Yes.
- Then we put a car on it. - Yes.
I don't agree that would float.
- It will if you have enough bottles. - Exactly.
It's buoyancy. It's just physics.
It's not a cruel and unpredictable mistress.
No, it isn't.
- What isn't? - Buoyancy.
- Of course it is. - It's Archimedes.
It's been understood for...
Nobody would drown if it wasn't cruel and unpredictable.
- It's been known since antiquity... - Yes.
And the rules still work.
Also, we are tidying up.
- That I agree with. - That's true. Yes.
We're leaving the place better than we found it.
On that basis, then, shall we cue the music?
- Mm-hm. - Cue the music.
That could be very useful.
Perfect.
I need a lie-down.
No, all right? Just no. I'm not interested.
Oh. Oh, yes.
Having spent thousands of pounds
on a license to use all that A-Team music,
our raft was finally completed.
And to see whether it worked, we decided to send the backup van first.
- We've drawn a crowd. - Yes.
Expecting us all to drown, which we will.
- No, we won't. - We will.
- They'll be disappointed. - We will.
- Clarkson! - What?
- Straight back. Am I good that side? - Yeah, straight back.
Hey-hey-hey!
Right.
Now, um, this is my idea, yeah?
So I'm the captain. This time.
Uh, jobs. There are three.
I'm going to be with the van. So my job is drive it off at the other side.
James, you're on the front.
When we get there, you've got to get us on the bank and safe.
Jeremy, you're operating the motor at the back.
But, I just want to make this absolutely clear, I don't believe this will work.
Oh, it'll work.
Well, no, listen. Genuinely, genuinely, I don't want any cocking around,
'cause there's a disease.
Well, it's a parasite. Um.
Schistosomiasis. Uh, we can put that on the screen at the bottom
and you can Google it. And you'll know I'm not making this up.
In the Senegal River, which is this, OK? It's a parasite.
If you go in the water, it will attach itself to your skin,
burrow through your flesh, into your bloodstream,
where it is carried to your liver and your intestines, where it lays its eggs.
Don't jump in. Whatever happens, we'll chug across there.
It's only there. Look, it's there.
Firing up the motor.
HMS Shit is... aargh!
Eager to see some comedy capsizing,
the locals were happy to push us off.
- Oh, yes! - We're going.
Merci! Merci!
I think if you can turn us when we get out there.
OK.
That feels weird, calling Richard Hammond captain.
I shall do as he says, because when it goes wrong, it won't be my fault.
It's very slow, but it is going.
Slow and steady, that's all we need.
Relax.
Once we've got it turned, we'll make better headway.
I should have brought a chair.
The front's coming round.
The front is com...
Oh, shit!
- See if you can start it. - OK, trying the motor.
Uh, chaps! We've lost...
- What? - Nothing. Don't panic.
What have we lost?
Um, we've lost some of the bloody... The bottles have come off.
- What? - What?
The buoyancy bottles have com... We are actually...
No, that isn't like we're sinking. We actually are.
Everybody stand on this side as far out as you can.
- Oh, Jesus! - Who lashed those on?
Uh, Jeremy, it really is actually sinking.
- Engine has begun. - Excellent. Head for shore.
Right, I'm going to try and get us back, chaps.
OK, I think you're right. Let's... We'll learn from this.
How's it looking at the other side?
It's looking a bit sinky.
I think, we should be all right, I think.
It's gone again!
Oh, Jesus.
- Um. - Is that going down...
It's going down much more quickly.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
I think probably abandon ship.
Can you pass me a water bottle?
James!
Pass me a water bottle.
That's not worked.
- No, I don't believe it. - I'm the captain. Bugger this.
- Hammond, you're the captain! - I'm sorry!
Oh!
Thank you.
I'm not... I'm still on.
James, it's going to go all the way over. You'll have to go off.
Burrowing. They're burrowing into me.
I'm John Hurt.
It has sunk comp... Oh, God!
- Has it gone? - It's gone.
It's gone.
I'm all right!
Ha! Well...
- You can walk from there. - You can walk from there.
Well, you say that...
But keep your feet moving or you sink into the mud and it kills.
- There's this much faeces? - Yeah, it is all faeces.
- And I have ingested... - A lot of it?
- A lot of it. - OK.
You're on your own.
You're gonna need some antibiotics.
A big needle full.
Um, can I just point something else out?
We've lost our van.
OK, that is bad, but...
we've already harvested enough materials to build rafts for the cars.
So we're not out yet.
What's he on about?
Well, there are flaws with that particular effort, yes.
We know we can do better and shall.
So as soon as you're out and all dried, there's only one thing to do.
No. It's cue the music.
What?
- We've still got to get across. - We're not over there, are we?
- I know you feel rough. - I do.
I know you're 63 and you're full of beetles
- burrowing their way out of your organs. - Yes. Into my liver.
And you're going to have chronic diarrhoea for the next week.
- Yes. - But over there is a bar.
- Yes. - Over here there isn't.
Yes.
- We go over there. - Yes.
- We're in the bar. - So we're saying cue the music.
- Yeah. - Cue the music.
The next day, we were ready
for border crossing 2.0.
Um, we've faced some complexities, I admit.
Because you've got to keep the front of the car out of the water, obviously.
But you've got to have the back wheels just in the water
because we've attached paddles to them,
like propellers,
which will give us forward movement or reverse movement.
Steering?
Well, there's a rudder here
which is attached to a sort of lever by the door mirror there.
And that won't work.
James and Richard think it will. I think it won't.
This is brilliant.
James, do you think this is going to work?
James, do you think this is going to work? Jeremy's asking you.
- James May? - What?
Do you think this is going to work?
What?
He's so old.
Do you think... this... is going to... work?
Yes.
Right, um, I'm going to give it a go. Going into gear.
Keen to see a repeat of yesterday's calamity,
the locals were even more eager to help get us going.
Merci.
Merci, monsieur. Merci, merci, très gentil.
Merci.
Rudder deploying.
Oh, don't touch the steering wheel, you idiot. It doesn't do anything.
Hello!
What I'm seeing, Richard Hammond, is you and the DB9 on a...
No, don't do that, you selfish man.
Our landing point on the Senegalese side
was a small beach just 400 metres away.
Right. So, now I'm going to execute a perfect curving turn.
Up onto the landing beach,
drive up, show my passport, Senegal, beer.
However, we soon discovered that for once, Jeremy had been right.
The steering didn't work.
I can't turn left. I can only go right.
I turn left even with full right rudder.
It won't... Mine won't turn right. I can only go left.
I'd love to be able to explain, ladies and gentlemen,
I'm arriving at the other side,
but I'm not. I'm arriving back where I started from.
Come on, you bastard.
Oh, I'm in the reeds.
Mayday.
Bollocks.
Full reverse.
Oh! No, you...
Argh.
We've built pedalos, haven't we?
Yeah, but with great brand names on the back.
For the next hour, we sailed around, managing to go everywhere,
except the beach we were headed for.
I'm drifting sideways in the wrong direction, is what I'm doing.
What I've done is two enormous U-turns.
The locals think we're deranged.
It's taking me back to Mauritania.
I don't want to go back to Mauritania.
Can anybody tell me what's down here, because that's where I'm going.
The sea.
I'm completely stuck in a corner with walls on two sides of me.
Turn, you bastard, turn.
I love the way she's just doing her washing,
as though this happens every single day.
Oh, bloody hell, no. Oh no.
Oh, my God.
Stop crashing into me!
I'm back in the reeds!
Has anybody managed to go the right way at any point?
No.
Having freed myself from the reeds again,
I made an important steering-related discovery.
If you go incredibly slowly, I mean, tick over, OK,
you can turn right.
If you increase speed, you go left.
With all of us deploying my new discovery,
we were soon heading in the right direction.
Oh, yes!
I am going to do it. I am heading for the shore.
Drive, drive!
I can smell beer!
Being intelligent, I knew I'd need a big burst of power to get ashore.
So I raised my roof to protect my head from the parasites.
Well done.
I'm so nearly there!
Please, just for once, go left.
Oh, I've hit the bank.
Our front wheels are in Senegal, does that count?
Oh, I think we're definitely in Senegal, yeah, I think we've arrived.
Wha-ha-ha!
Obviously, there is work to be done
returning these to be normal land-based vehicles,
but there's something more important to attend to first.
You two are different to me.
I look at that and I just think, "Oh, what an invention!"
Now, looking at it, savouring it,
is as enjoyable as drinking it.
Look at the condensation on the glass, look at the bubbles,
look at the... Savour the anticipation.
Mm-hm.
Because in my mind, it's as good.
Visually, this is a good experience. Aurally, it's annoying.
It's annoying?
I'm just seeing beauty, hearing bollocks.
Obviously, we decided to have more than one.
So, as Hammond was getting the next round in,
I slipped out to his car
for a bit of Terminator-based mischief.
If I Bluetooth my phone to this speaker
and hide that in Hammond's car,
I can play messages to him and he'll think his car is talking to him.
The next morning, we reconvened to continue our journey.
Right.
Get out. Get out.
- What the hell was that? - My car just told me to get out.
- No. - It told me to get out.
I must admit, I'd tell you to get out if I was that car, but...
- Get out. - Do you hear that?
I did hear that.
Well, that is weird, isn't it?
Were you in its computer the other night?
- Yes. - That's what's gone wrong.
I was deeply intimate with it.
Anyway, forwards.
I knew it!
Child.
Hello, hello. Bonjour. Bonjour.
Bonjour.
Senegal. Helluva welcome.
We were now just a couple of hundred easy miles to the finish line
in Dakar.
And with our epic trip this close to the end,
it seemed like a good time to reflect on the machines
that had brought us here.
We asked at the beginning of this show
if it would be possible to build a rally-raid Dakar desert racer car
for less than a Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato.
And the answer is yes.
Yes.
I'm staggered by this car. Absolutely staggered,
'cause it's clawed its way up rocky escarpments,
it's been across rivers, it's blasted across dunes.
And unlike the Aston, which is possessed by the devil,
and the Maserati, which, under the skin, is falling to pieces,
this has not put a single foot wrong.
I've been fond of cars we've used on these adventures in the past,
but nothing like as fond as I am of this.
I'm going to miss it badly when I get to Dakar.
Really, really miss it.
Now, if I'd said to you at the beginning "I'm going to take
"an exotic car from a small-volume Italian manufacturer
"and I'm going to modify it and I'm going to drive it across the desert,"
you'd have probably said, "No, you're not."
But here we are.
It's here!
On the way to Dakar,
the finishing point for the most dramatic and gruelling race in the world.
And let's not forget, mine is by far the best-looking of the three cars,
and mine is the only one that looks better now
than it did when it was standard.
I've actually improved the original.
Winner!
Now, you might imagine I'd struggle to mount a convincing argument
that I've improved my Aston Martin DB9 Volante
by turning it into a rally racer, but hold on.
If I hadn't done that, this car, left unchanged, would have simply...
continued living in Peterborough,
commuting between suburban home
and a middle-sized trading estate.
With the odd trip out to the golf club at weekends.
It would have stayed shiny and nice, but it would have become what it is,
which is a slightly outdated, slowly fading example
of a once-grand grand tourer.
By doing what I've done to it,
I've been able to bring it out here to do something incredible.
And those experiences are now written across it
in scuffs and scrapes and dents and cracks.
They are its lifelines, its laughter-lines on it.
And I love it.
I made it special. It wasn't special. Now it is.
We hit the coast in the surprisingly pretty town of St Louis
and turned south, running parallel with the Atlantic Ocean.
Which gave me an idea.
Why don't we go into Dakar on the beach, like they used to?
On the rally? It was finished on the beach.
Yes!
Naturally, my colleagues had no objections whatsoever.
So we turned onto the sand to complete the last 70 miles,
just as the races of the past had done.
Supercharger engaged.
Look at that!
Paris-Dakar! This is the finish!
It will be for these exact moments that people
endured the suffering and hardship of doing the Paris-Dakar.
This is what they did it for. This!
I'm going to pull alongside Richard "The Hamster" Hammond.
Look at this! We're in a poster!
Oh, thank you!
Never had so much fun!
What a wonderful, wonderful day.
Hello.
Text message from Mr Wilman.
"Before going into Dakar, you might want to check your news feeds."
Really?
BBC News.
Climate change, climate change, climate change.
Floods, climate change.
Try Twitter.
Oh.
Oh, Christ.
Hang on. Coming. Why have you stopped?
Wilman just said, "Check your news feeds."
That's Dakar.
What?
Dakar. There's proper major riots.
It's kicked off.
Oh, geez.
What's that about?
God knows. It's some political... I don't know.
- There's a lot of... - I know there's a lot, it's...
- And it's burning buses... - Oh, God!
- Have you seen this? - No.
Dakar.
It's properly kicked off. There are gun battles.
And there's fire. There's a bus on fire.
Yeah.
Um... right.
You can't take the crew down there.
No, I know. Nobody sh... I don't want anyone going down there.
I mean, I knew there were some protests planned,
but that's about three or four days.
It's over that opposition, but it's obviously kicked off early.
- That's now. - Or this is something else.
- It's happening now. - Or it's getting ready to go,
which means it's going to get worse.
Wait a minute.
Our flight home is from Dakar.
It is.
- Well, we can't do that. - It's not an option.
- St Louis Airport's closed. - What?
- St Louis Airport's closed. - It's closed?
Closed. Refurbishment. Checked it.
That means we've got to drive back to Nouakchott.
Seriously? Is that the only option?
Well, I'm not going to Dakar.
Come on, it'll be fun.
It's a there and back rally.
Right, then.
It does mean one thing.
- I can use the traditional ending. - Yes.
On that terrible disappointment, it's time to end.
See you next time. Thanks for watching.
F... ing hell.