The Grand Tour

Richard Hammond Reveals What His First Top Gear Car Review Was

Richard Hammond recently opened up during a DriveTribe interview about how he landed the Top Gear job. As part of his application process he had to set up a show reel where he reviewed a car and then he had to do a piece on a car at his actual audition.

So what cars did Richard review in order to get him the Top Gear job? You’d think it would be something pretty snazzy, exotic and European, but you’d sadly be wrong as Richard proclaimed:

“They had put together a little demo reel on my company car which was a Renault Laguna.. literally. And when I went for the audition I had to do a piece on the Skoda Superb.. a little walk around piece talking about the car.”

A Renault and a Skoda.. wow, Richard much have really felt like he’d hit the big time there. All jokes aside though, the boring cars were probably chosen for that exact reason.. they are boring. If Richard could make a Renault Laguna and a Skoda Superb sound interesting, then the producers would be onto a winner. Thankfully, it seems, he did. Richard continued:

“And then I had to sit with Jeremy and do a version of what became ‘The News’ on the show eventually.. to check if there was any banter. I knew of Jeremy, I’d seen him on the TV a million times obviously,… and got on fabulously and I just came away thinking ‘wow those people making that show.. they’re going to have an incredible time.”

Little did he know that a few months later, Richard would get a call asking him to come and join the show as a presenter. It was probably one of the best decisions the producers of Top Gear ever made as the three amigos were born and the worlds most popular motoring show began to take its shape.

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