Jeremy Clarkson Reveals His Most Hated Cars He’s Ever Driven

Recently, former Top Gear star and soon-to-be streaming sensation, Jeremy Clarkson of The Grand Tour, wrote about his 10 favorite drives of the past year for The Sunday Times. He’s also listed some of the worst cars he’s ever driven. Or as he calls them, ‘stinkers’. The list features cars in a wide range of categories, from roadsters and GTs, to a minivan of all things.

Not a single American manufacturer made the naughty list, which might be the biggest endorsement of Yankee engineering since the development of assembly line production for Henry Ford’s Model-T. Judging by how Clarkson responded to a few of the cars he drove around, a Model-T might actually beat some in a head to head competition.

“I would rather apply sun cream to James May’s back than travel again in a Hyundai i800,” Clarkson quipped about the no-frills Korean utility van.

As expected, the i800 was one of two cars to receive the dubious zero-star rating, along with the Nissan GT-R Track Edition. Though it looks considerably more attractive, the GT-R got the brunt of Clarkson’s criticism for what he considered a lack of comfort and safety.

“I’m always hesitant to say that a car is dangerous, because it’s a legal minefield, but this one gets bloody close,” Clarkson said.  “Twice in an hour I very nearly had an accident because of the sudden and unexpected changes in direction.”

Yikes. Again, the Model-T isn’t sounding too bad.

Other fixtures on the list include the lackluster Seat Leon X-Perience SE Technology from Spain, and the Infiniti Q30 Premium Tech, which Clarkson dubbed as a ‘tarted-up Datsun’.

Here’s the full list of Clarkson’s duds of the year, sorted by rating but in no particular order:

1. Vauxhall Astra SRi NAV (2 stars)
2. Infiniti Q30 Premium Tech (2 stars)
3. Skoda Superb SE L Executive (2 stars)
4. Zenos E10 S (2 stars)
5. Renault Kadjar dCi 130 Signature Nav (2 stars)
6. BMW X1 xDrive25d (2 stars)
7. Seat Leon X-Perience SE Technology (2 stars)
8. Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0 TDI (2 stars)
9. Nissan GT-R Track Edition (0 stars)
10. Hyundai i800 (0 stars)

We’d love to see an episode of The Grand Tour where he rips apart his most hated cars, but while the show isn’t going to return to reviews after altering its structure with the new series, we highly doubt something like this would happen.

The Grand Tour: A Massive Hunt, has only recently been published to Amazon, and with it receiving mostly positive reviews from fans, the hosts now plan to show off Scotland in their next special. Filming for this has already ended earlier this year, with the team now focussing on the editing of the  episode.