James May on filming The Grand Tour’s ‘dangerous, burn-your-face-hot’ stunts
The Grand Tour returns on 16 June and there are a couple of absolutely hair-raising stunts, including one where Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond attempt to drive onto a moving aeroplane as it drives down a runway.
Stunts have always been a key part of The Grand Tour and Top Gear, and speaking exclusively to City PM, James May took us behind the scenes on filming this month’s new feature-length edition, The Grand Tour: Eurocrash.
“I was exposed to danger, as they say in road safety videos,” admits May of one of Eurocrash’s most dramatic stunts. In it, the trio are driving old vintage cars around a racing track when they are fired at by people on horseback with bow and arrows. “They assured us that the arrows wouldn’t go through but they might stick – it wasn’t a pleasant experience,” says May. “We all came out of it okay but I can’t say I liked it. I wouldn’t do it as a hobby.”
May isn’t aware of any precaution that would have 100% ensured the presenters weren’t fired at directly. “I don’t think anybody was 100% certain,” he says. “I think once or twice they deliberately missed to scare us…”
May was driving a 75-year-old vintage Crossley, of which the arrows “punched some holes in the bodywork of. The bow and arrow is a pretty formidable weapon.”
Read our full interview with James May: Top Gear’s future and my real relationship with Jeremy Clarkson
As for the aeroplane stunt in the trailer, “it’s something we’ve actually talked about for a long time,” says May. “It started as a debate, if you had to drive onto the back of a moving aeroplane, we were imagining a Hercules.”
However May ended up having to a four-metre-long, two-metre-wide Crossley with a max speed of 40 mph to perform the stunt. “I had great difficulty catching up with the aeroplane. I had a couple of attempts and then just fell back off again. And mine is an open car and the heat is coming off Russian spec, old jet engines. Even when an aeroplane is taxing it’s pretty unpleasant.
“I probably made six or eight attempts before i got it right. I had to give myself a big run up to get myself to the car’s heady top speed but just as you get there you go into the wash of the jet engine. My car tends to wobble about a lot, I don’t think it would have fallen over but it doesn’t feel very nice.”
How did it feel driving when he got right up to the plane? “Chuffing hot, burn your face hot if you got too close to it,” says James May. “It’s also very smelly. Turbines aren’t very efficient so it basically smelt of burnt paraffin, it smells like bad camping. Very hot, very noisy as well, it’s not like a modern turbo engine.”
As for that tiny, underpowered car, somehow it is actually road-legal, but can it go on UK motorways given its top speed limit? “That’s a good question,” admits May, who filmed the new feature-length series in Eastern Europe. “I think it probably shouldn’t be – when I come to power there will be a strict no Crossley rule . My worry was that I would end up in the ditch, basically.”
The Grand Tour: Eurocrash returns to Prime Video on 16 June
Our full interview with James May is available to read here: Top Gear’s future and my real relationship with Jeremy Clarkson