Jeremy Clarkson has said electric cars mean Top Gear is needed now more than ever, despite the BBC confirming that it had no plans for the TV show to return.
Once a jewel in the corporation’s crown, the programme was put on ice after the presenter Freddie Flintoff was seriously injured in a crash during filming in 2022.
The former England cricket captain has now spoken about the trauma he suffered after the three-wheeler he was driving overturned. He said the accident made him realise he was treated as a “piece of meat”.
More than two years on, the decision by BBC bosses to keep the show “rested” — amid claims that the brand is tainted — has sparked concerns it may never return.
Clarkson, who devised the programme’s reboot in 2002, said: “It would be sad if it never came back, that would be very sad.
“There’s room for a car programme at the moment because cars are changing so fast and electrical cars are coming along and nobody really understands what’s a good one and what isn’t.”
The original Top Gear, which ran between 1977 and 2001, focused on car reviews and consumer advice.
“Back in the 1950s motoring journalism was important because all the car companies were trying new things — different types of engines and different types of gearboxes — and you needed people to steer you through the complexity,” Clarkson said.
“Then by and large it was unnecessary for the last 40 years and now it’s necessary again because [when] I look at a kilowatt per hour car, I have no idea what that means.
“I need someone like Chris Goffey or Frank Page from the old Top Gear to come along with a sensible jumper, and William Woollard, and tell me ‘this is a good one, that isn’t a good one’.”
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However, Clarkson said he will not be fronting any future remake. “I just don’t understand or like electrical cars, so I wouldn’t be interested in doing it.”
His co-presenter Richard Hammond, who also jumped ship from the BBC to make The Grand Tour with Clarkson on Amazon a decade ago, was more optimistic that Top Gear will come back “at some point in the future”.
“I remember watching [Top Gear] as a kid when it was, you know, telling you about what cars, it was a magazine format telling you about the latest cars,” he said. “It’s becoming a more important subject because it’s tied up with all of our futures. As consumers, the choices we make around automotives are of greater significance than ever before, we need to understand them.
“We need to understand the difference between a full battery electric vehicle, a hybrid, an internal combustion engine running on fossil fuel, an internal combustion engine running on fully synthetic fuel which can be manufactured, or running on hydrogen.
“All of these options are going to be available to us … So any programme that can tell us about that is going to become more important rather than less.”
Despite the comments, the BBC said there was no update to their 2023 statement putting the show on ice.
This said that the BBC was “resting the UK show for the foreseeable future” given the “exceptional circumstances”, adding: “We know resting the show will be disappointing news for fans, but it is the right thing to do.”
One entertainment industry source was more blunt. The brand is “tainted” after Flintoff, they said, calling a return “unlikely”.
The BBC is keen to point out that the brand lives on with shows filmed abroad, licensing deals and the Top Gear magazine.
In Flintoff, a new documentary on Disney+, the 47-year-old former cricketer talks in detail for the first time about the accident and its impact on him.
The film features footage from December 2022 when an open-topped Morgan Super 3 overturned at 40mph at Dunsfold racetrack in Surrey, leading to Flintoff being airlifted to hospital.
He said the crash, which left him with severe facial scarring and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), demonstrated that TV presenters were considered to be largely expendable.
“That’s the danger that television falls into — and I found it out the hard way eventually,” Flintoff said. “Everyone always wants more. Everyone wants that thing that no one has seen before — that bigger stunt, or to dig that little deeper.
“In some ways they think: ‘Let’s have that near miss because that will get viewers.’ I should have been cleverer because I had already learnt it in sport after all the injuries and injections and times I got sent out on a cricket field like a piece of meat. That’s where TV and sport are quite similar. You’re just a commodity.”
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BBC Studios, the commercial subsidiary of the corporation that made Top Gear, “reached an agreement” with Flintoff which the company said “supports his continued rehabilitation, return to work and future plans”. It added in a statement: “We have sincerely apologised to Freddie and will continue to support him with his recovery.”
A health and safety investigation into the accident found that “while BBC Studios had complied with the required BBC policies and industry best practice in making the show, there were important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear UK productions”.
The BBC said the report, which was never made public, “includes a number of recommendations to improve approaches to safety” including “increased clarity on roles and responsibilities and better communication between teams for any future Top Gear production”.
