Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May on the end of the road for The Grand Tour

But now the beloved motoring trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are revving engines for the last time in The Grand Tour: One For The Road.

The last instalment comes more than two decades after they first appeared in Top Gear, and it brings to an end the hit Prime Video series which began in 2016 after the trio left the BBC show, having been on screen together since 2003.

“I don’t think it’s sunk in,” muses Hammond as he talks about their last ever Grand Tour adventure, which sees them heading to Zimbabwe in three cars they’ve always wanted to own: a Lancia Montecarlo (Clarkson), a Ford Capri 3-litre (Hammond), and a Triumph Stag (May).

The 54-year-old continues: “You could see it starting to sink in when we were shooting the final scenes … people were starting to realise, ‘Oh, hang on a minute, this is the end'”.

“I think it’ll probably hit me slowly over the next few months.”

The Prime Video series has boasted some impressive stats – an additional 180 cars were used for background and supporting appearances – and there were 73 breakdowns across all series, with Hammond responsible for 38 of those.

Join the thousands of people who already receive the Yorkshire Post newsletter each day

The stunt at the end of season five, episode two, (The Grand Tour: Eurocrash), which saw the three presenters driving onto a moving cargo plane is cited as their most ambitious stunt attempted, and it took two years to plan.

In 2006, while filming Top Gear, Hammond was in a serious accident when he crashed a jet-powered dragster at nearly 320mph. It left him in a coma for two weeks and with serious head injuries.

“We’re a big family,” he explains.

“We’ve worked with the same people for 20 odd years, and not just in a normal way.

“We’ve shared tents in jungles and dog sledges and ferries across African lakes, incredible experiences together. We’ve seen one another, good and bad, happy and sad and strong and weak, and so that’s a real bond.”

TV star Clarkson, 64, who recently opened a new pub, The Farmer’s Dog, in Asthall, near Burford in Oxfordshire, reflects on the final goodbye with his usual wit.

“I’m not saying this in a derogatory way by any means, but James has the emotions of a stone,” he quips.

“He just doesn’t do emotions, so there were no tears from him. Hammond, yes. I was surprisingly unemotional in a weird way because I can see James and Hammond any time I want to, they’re only a phone call away, and I’m sure we will.

“And I’ve done enough of the travel, I was worn out by it”.

Clarkson is also being kept busy by his other TV venture, the Prime Video series Clarkson’s Farm which began in 2021 and has become a hit.

“I’m 100% convinced I would have been a lot more emotional without the farm show,” he adds.

Asked why now was the right time to bid farewell to The Grand Tour, Clarkson says: “Because I’m too old. It’s a young man’s game. The other thing is that if we were to sit down and ask, ‘Where next?’ – well, we’ve been everywhere.

“We’ve done everything you can realistically do with a car, and the world has shrunk and that’s the tragedy. The world is a much more troubled place than it was 20 years ago.

“We were very lucky to do what we did, when we did”.

The trio’s long-time producer, Andy Wilman, credits the show’s popularity to them.

“Besides their chemistry, those three have incredible intelligence about walking a line where it remains a car show where they are the stars,” he says, adding: “If an alien landed and watched it, they’d go, ‘That’s not a car show; it’s about those three guys’.

“It is about cars, but I think it’s a quite charming journey into the male brain, which is done through cars.”

For May, 61, the time was right to end it the show. He explains: “I’ve always said if it ends tomorrow, which it nearly did at one point, that I should just be grateful that I had the opportunity. I could always have gone back to some sort of proper life and done something responsible and sensible. But it didn’t end, it kept going. In the end we got to the point where we said, ‘No, we must stop whilst we’re still vaguely ahead. We mustn’t keep going until we embarrass ourselves.'”

May, who has also filmed the Our Man In … series with Prime Video, says it was important the final film is “joyous”.

But jokes and well-meaning jibes aside, the trio have been fan favourites in households around the world. It is, Hammond says, because their passion for the subject matter was genuine.

“We always said you don’t have to be a car geek to watch our shows, because we do that for you. Our audience was incredibly broad, and only some of them were car nerds like us. But even those who weren’t car nerds would have been very quick to spot if we weren’t.

“It lives in our hearts and you’ll tell that enthusiasm is compelling.

“So that was part of the secret, and part of it was, I don’t know, we just were lucky. The world wanted a show about three misshapen guys exploring their passion for subjects together and caught on, and that was the opportunity to do what we did. We were lucky.”

The Grand Tour: One For The Road starts on Prime Video on September 13.