Top Gear Quotes

Jeremy: The Corvette is stuck in British Home Stores! Turning circle: not good enough.

TV Show: Top Gear
[Q: Can I afford it?]
Jeremy: Prices start at around £8500, but you need £11000 to get a decent, mid-range model, so if you have £11000 to spend on a car, then yes you can. But if you've only got 40p, then... no... y-you can't.

TV Show: Top Gear
[Q: Is it green?]
Jeremy: Yes. Very.
[We see the Fiesta in the background. It is, indeed, painted green.]

TV Show: Top Gear
FAQ about Fiesta: What if I am asked to take part in a beach assault with the Royal Marines?
[There follows a sequence of Clarkson being transported to a beach on a marine troop landing craft. During the sequence, there are three marines in the car with Clarkson, and comments are made relating to how easy it is to shoot from out of the car's open windows and the convenience of the cup holders coincidentally being the correct size to hold hand grenades]

TV Show: Top Gear
[as the Fiesta drives through the surf toward the beach]
Jeremy: Come onnnnn!
Royal Marine: [from the back seat] Are we nearly there yet?
Jeremy: [laughing, to the Marine corporal in the front passenger seat] The kids are being annoying. Shoot them.

TV Show: Top Gear
[Closing the episode]
Jeremy: Anyway, that aah, that's all we got time for this week. Next week, for reasons we don't understand, we're on at nine o'clock. So we'll see you then. Unless you're watching this on Dave. In February. In the middle of the afternoon. In which case we hope that you get a job soon. Take care, see you soon, bye!

TV Show: Top Gear
[During the opening sequence]
Jeremy: Tonight. I look at the future of sports cars. James investigates the future of quite literally everything. And Richard Hammond smashes up another caravan.

TV Show: Top Gear
[About to drag race the Tesla Roadster against a Lotus Elise]
Jeremy: Right, it's on. I... think. There's no noise at all, but anyway. Put it into drive — [it] has a one-speed gearbox. They tried it with a two speed but that kept breaking. So one it is. We're in drive and I'm ready.
[The Roadster pulls away from the Elise]
Jeremy: God almighty! Wave goodbye to dial-up and say hello to the world of broadband motoring! Twelve and a half thousand RPM, I could not believe this! That's biblically quick! This car is electric! Literally!

TV Show: Top Gear
[While driving the Tesla next to the Lotus Elise, after overtaking it after the Hammerhead]
Jeremy: The volthead has overtaken the petrolhead. And yes, [puts finger next to ear, mimicking a telephone] yes, I've just heard, it is snowing in hell.

TV Show: Top Gear
[Both Roadsters are unavailable, charging or broken]
Jeremy: I did think that the Teslas would bring a bit of peace and quiet to our track with their electric motors. [I] didn't think it would be this much peace and quiet though. [walking off] That is the sound of silence.
Jeremy: [voiceover] What we have here then is an astonishing technical achievement: the first electric car you might actually want to buy. It's just a shame that in the real world it doesn't seem to work.

TV Show: Top Gear
[back in the studio with James]
Jeremy: I tried to be fair. I did try, but it was... it didn't work.
James: It's not good though is it?
Jeremy: No, I think the price will come down, you know once — what's he called — BradCruise and LeonardoDiClooney. Once they've bought six hundred each, then the price will drop. And I guess once they've made a few of them they'll get better at the reliability.
James: Well, that's as maybe. But — and as I aim to demonstrate later on in the show — battery powered electric cars will soon die altogether.
Jeremy: No, we are looking forward to that film. Well, I am anyway.

TV Show: Top Gear
Jeremy: Grandparents, if you've got grandkids that like cars, what they like is cars, okay. They don't like towels with car names written on them.
James: Exactly with this sort of thing you can buy a bottle of red wine for 2.99, 3.99 in the shops. If you get a bottle of red wine with the Alfa Romeo logo on it, it's 15 quid.
Jeremy: Oh I can beat that May. This is an ice scraper OK. It's covered in Santa's pubes, it's got SAAB written on it... £38.50.
James: What!
Jeremy: It's given us an idea. [produces a plate of vomit, to groans from the audience] See this? It is a plate of sick. Now it is utterly worthless. But if I just pop a BMW badge on it, £13.80.
Richard: [produces a false arm clad in a baggy purple sleeve] It does work, this sort of branding. This wizard's sleeve for instance.[Clarkson laughs madly] Absolutely WORTHLESS, but it bears a Ferrari badge. 45 pounds. [Audience pays attention to what James has]
James: [holds up a fencing foil with a load of sausages speared on it] This pork sword...
Richard: No!
Jeremy: James don't do the pork sword! [holds up a stuffed chicken] This cock...
Richard: Has it got four rings on it?
Jeremy: Yes it has! Put this cock in your wizard's sleeve
Richard: Thank you
Jeremy: It's all gone horribly wrong.

TV Show: Top Gear
[On The Stig]
Jeremy: Some say that he doesn't like to get his helmet wet. A point that was proved last week when he was caught in the back of shot by an eagle-eyed viewer.
[The Stig is shown in the background under a yellow umbrella during one of Boris Johnson's practice laps]
Jeremy: All we know is, he's called The Stig!

TV Show: Top Gear
[During the power lap of the Tesla Roadster]
The Stig: [in Morse code] I like Gary Newman.
The Stig: [in Morse code] That pork tasted funny.

TV Show: Top Gear
[On the Honda FCX Clarity]
James: [voiceover] ...the most important car since the car was invented. Here it is. It's called the FCX Clarity. And I'm afraid it's a four door Honda.

TV Show: Top Gear
[After testing their V8 rocking chair]
Jeremy: It hasn't worked, because the noise is so great, you'd never hear the television, would you?
Richard: That... and the fact that the old lady has disintegrated. Her head's come off!

TV Show: Top Gear
James: So far, most electric cars have been appalling little plastic snot-boxes that take all night to recharge and then take half a minute to reach their maximum speed of forty. And then run out of juice miles from anywhere.
[James drives past a Toyota Prius]
James: Prius. Sucker.

TV Show: Top Gear
[On the Honda FCX Clarity]
Jay Leno: In America, we like people to know about the good work we are doing anonymously.

TV Show: Top Gear
[on the Embarrassing Flirting Award]
Richard: In third place: James May, for this fantastic, sonorous approach when presented with two girls during our Alfa Romeo trip through Warwickshire.
[The clip with James May saying hello to the girls from Series 11, Episode 3, is played, prompting uproarious laughter from Jeremy, Richard and the audience.]
Richard: I'd forgotten how bad it was!
James: You have to start with "Hello".

TV Show: Top Gear
[During the opening sequence]
Jeremy: Tonight. Richard tries to start a motorbike. James fill his car with petrol. And I get a British Rail sun tan.

TV Show: Top Gear
[During the coming-in-this-series preview of the Val Thorens race from 13.5]
Jeremy: Get out of my way, Frenchists!

TV Show: Top Gear
[The steam engine has had a water injector malfunction, then resume operation]
Jeremy: You know they say steam engines have moods…
Engineer: It was its time of the month for about ten minutes.

TV Show: Top Gear
[on the Stig]
Jeremy: Some say he invented the curtain, and that he recently submitted a £20,000 expenses claim for some gravel...for his moat. All we know is, he's called the Stig.

TV Show: Top Gear
[About the London to Edinburgh race]
Richard: When we left the action, Jeremy was in the lead just approaching Doncaster, I was in second place and as you would expect Captain Slow was bringing up the rear...
James: Steady.
Richard: ...Hoping to take me from behind.
James: Yeah alright.
Richard: And then press home his advantage and take Jeremy in the tunnel...
James: Stop saying things like that!

TV Show: Top Gear
[Jeremy, covered in soot, has just walked into the bar and collapsed after running there from the steam engine]
James: [holding a glass of beer up to Jeremy's mouth] Jeremy! Speak to me!

TV Show: Top Gear
[Jeremy has just left Berwick aboard Tornado, but has found out that James is in the lead.]
Jeremy: How far north of Berwick are you?
James: Less than ten miles.
Jeremy: How far?
James: Less than ten miles.
Jeremy: Seventeen?
James: No, less than ten!
Jeremy: Thirty?
James: [losing patience] LESS THAN TEN!! [laughs] What a cock-head! Honestly!

TV Show: Top Gear
[Jeremy, Richard and James are beginning on the news.]
Jeremy: Now as we know, to try and shore up the car industry, the Government recently announced that if you scrap your old Singer Gazelle, you get £2000 off the price of a new car.
James: But why is it just cars?
Jeremy: What are you suggesting; "Dear The Government, I've just found some rancid bacon in the back of my fridge; can I have a big pile of money to buy a shiny new lobster?"

TV Show: Top Gear
[During the news, discussing the Skoda Fabia Scout]
Richard: ...so presuming that it comes with a 10p piece, bit of string in the glove box, and it pitches up on your doorstep every year to ask for a pound to clean itself.
James: So I supposed that every summer it goes off and sort of stays in the countryside somewhere, and is... touched inappropriately.
[crowd laughs]
Jeremy: No, no James. [crowd continues laughing] No, no James. That's the Skoda Catholic Church.

TV Show: Top Gear
[Jeremy is about to discuss a car smaller than the Peel P50.]
Jeremy: Now, we have some bad news.
James: [dryly] Dacia Sandero.
Jeremy: [firmly] No, not the Dacia Sandero.

TV Show: Top Gear
Jeremy: Get off topic, just for a moment; you see, I was driving down here this morning and I couldn't help noticing that my Mercedes just said on the dashboard [puts on bad German accent] "your service is due in tventy-six days". [resumes normal voice] I just thought "How Germanic and boring is that?"
Richard: [whispering] ...and precise.
Jeremy: And then I was thinking "What's going to happen on the twenty-seventh day when inevitably I still haven't had it serviced?"
James: [in bad German accent] Cooler, sree veeks... Mezzr. Clarkson...

TV Show: Top Gear