The most dangerous job in motoring television is no longer testing a supercar on a wet track. It is saying, with a straight face, “Hello, we are the new presenters of The Grand Tour.”
After more than two decades of Clarkson, Hammond and May turning mechanical failure into an international export, Prime Video has handed the keys to Francis Bourgeois, James Engelsman and Thomas Holland.
All six episodes arrive on 4 September in more than 240 countries and territories. No pressure, then. Just inherit one of the world’s best-known motoring programmes and try not to reverse it into a ceremonial fountain.
Who are the new three?
Francis Bourgeois is the joyful railway enthusiast whose videos made trainspotting look like the correct emotional response to being alive. His real name is Luke Nicolson, and before internet fame he studied mechanical engineering and spent six months working at Rolls-Royce.
Engelsman and Holland are the duo behind YouTube motoring channel Throttle House. Holland founded it in 2015, with Engelsman joining in 2018. Their videos combine proper car knowledge with the sort of friendship that can survive somebody buying an obviously doomed vehicle for content.
It is an unusual trio on paper: the train man and two internet car men. In practice, that may be the point. Copying the old lineup would create three tribute acts in bad jackets. The new series needs people with their own obsessions and chemistry.
What did Clarkson, Hammond and May say?
The handover appears to have been more supportive than a cynical viewer might expect. Bourgeois told The Independent that the message from the former hosts was essentially to make the programme their own. James May’s advice was similarly direct: do your own thing.
Clarkson has also joked publicly about the responsibility of taking over. Beneath the mischief, the useful message is clear. The original trio’s relationship cannot be reconstructed from spare parts. Their successors have to build something recognisably related but personally theirs.
Holland has admitted feeling trepidation. Sensible man. Fans can become oddly territorial about television formats, as though changing the presenters alters their childhood by deed poll.
What happens in the new series?
Prime Video says the six-part run travels from Angola to Malaysia and California. The team tackles remote desert tracks in impractical cars, explores Malaysian car culture and heads to the United States for performance machines, fighter pilots and an encounter with the legal system.
The ingredients therefore remain familiar: ambitious journeys, questionable purchases, competitive pride and the possibility that somebody will end a day covered in dust while insisting the car is basically fine.
What changes is the rhythm. Bourgeois brings open-hearted enthusiasm. Engelsman and Holland already know how to turn automotive detail into accessible comedy. The programme’s test will be whether those styles create a genuine three-way friendship on screen rather than three individual channels sharing a hotel booking.
The OutOut verdict
Replacing Clarkson, Hammond and May is impossible, which is precisely why the new hosts should stop trying before they begin. The old team made hundreds of hours of television and turned their habits into a language: the crash, the pause, the accusation, the enormous fire.
The new trio deserves room to be different. If they fail, the old specials still exist. If they succeed, a format that looked finished gets another life.
Besides, giving The Grand Tour to an engineer who loves trains may be inspired. When all three cars break down in Angola, at least one presenter will know the timetable home.
