On his first driving experiences
My first driving experience was as a toddler. My grandfather owned a Bentley and he would let me sit on his knee and drive it. I was three years old then! My first car was a Ford Cortina 1600E, which was a very cool car, actually. It was a 10-year-old car when I bought it in 1977 — seems like a 1000 years ago now!
On the best Italian cars
I have driven too many to name. My current favourite is the Alfa Romeo Giulietta. The Ferrari F355 is extraordinary and the Ferrari 375 GTS is the best-looking.
On self-driving cars
I don’t believe autonomous or self-driving cars will happen in my lifetime. I have tried semi-autonomous cars and it doesn’t quite work. It’s not something that you would trust your life with. Unlike a pilot flying an aeroplane who has the option of putting the plane on auto-pilot which would mostly work. But “mostly works” is not good enough for autonomous cars.
On EVs
By 2050, electric cars obviously would have come in thick and fast. We would have had to learn to kill time which would be interesting. Something we haven’t done for a long time. The idea of sitting and looking out of the window while your car charges for eight hours at the service station is unfamiliar. As a species, we are going to have to relearn the art of killing time.
On a memorable car moment from the GT
For me, it was while filming for The Grand Tour in France. I was in an Aston Martin and Richard Hammond was in a Porsche. The camera crews were way behind us in their cars. I said on the radio to Hammond that this Aston Martin felt like a missile. And he said, “It’s not as fast as this Porsche.” And I said, “It bl**dy well is!” And the next thing we knew, the police were after us and had seized our driving licences. We were banned from driving for six months in France. What fascinated me was the fine which translated to ‘whatever you had in your wallet’! We were both doing the same speed and Hammond had €40 more in his wallet and his fine was €40 more than mine! No receipts were issued. And as the police were leaving in their van, our camera teams arrived in a fleet of Range Rovers. And as the police watched, two of the crew members got out of the Range Rovers and drove off in the Aston Martin and Porsche. Hammond and I got into the chauffeur-driven Range Rovers and you could hear the cops thinking, “How did they organise THAT? Within half an hour, they had somehow concocted a fleet of Range Rovers to rescue them.” So, I had to have a holiday with no car!
On his film watching
I am a film enthusiast and we tried to re-enact the nine-minute 1976 French film Rendezvous directed by Claude Lelouch. The film shows a high-speed drive in a Ferrari (with the camera fixed to the front) through Paris in the early hours one Sunday morning. We went to the police force in Turin and asked, “Could we do that today with a Bugatti Chiron?” They said an emphatic, “No, you can’t drive through Turin as fast as possible in a Bugatti!” Then we suggested, “You know you could be on TV?” No surprises that we were granted permission immediately! We have been inspired by this film and have done the same thing in a Bugatti. We would be crucified by road safety laws! You get the same sense of cobbled streets. And we raced through all the traffic lights which were plainly red!
