My Crosley micro car is catastrophically slow & dangerous – never drink wine and bid, says The Grand Tour’s James May
HAVE you ever woken up after a skinful to find you’ve bought something you immediately regret?
I know I have.
I bid £4k for an MG I didn’t even want.
It seems James May makes a habit of it.
His latest purchase was this naff Crosley micro car from the 1940s, for a 1,400-mile road trip through Central Europe for tonight’s new episode of The Grand Tour.
Big mistake.
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May said: “It was shocking. It was catastrophically slow and also quite dangerous.
"Massive lorries were going past and blowing it off to one side. It was really quite terrifying.
“People love seeing great cars like Lamborghinis, Ferraris and so on but it’s a better story for telly when you’ve got a crap car.
“When I saw the Crosley I thought ‘Wow, that is actually ugly’ and I became a bit obsessed with it.
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“At that point, the bidding was only up to £500 but I ended up paying £12,000. Never drink wine and bid.
“Years ago, I bought a Mini by accident on eBay after I’d been to the pub. It was an absolute bag of bolts. It broke down twice on the way back.
“Now I do have a rule with social media which is ‘cork out, phone off’.
“You have to treat it as if you’re on an aeroplane and go into safe mode as soon as you start drinking. Otherwise suddenly you’re tweeting things, buying things.”
So he won’t be keeping the little American tin can, then?
May replied: “No. It can go in our holding museum. We’ve got a barn full of cars that we’ve used that have been forgotten about.”
As for the cars co-stars Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond handpicked for Eurocrash, they were even more cartoonish.
Jezza in a Japanese Al Capone gangster car (it’s really a Nissan underneath) and Hammond in a Chevy V8 convertible pick-up truck.
They’d look right at home in a Pixar movie.
Hammond said of his car: “It’s not very good as a pick-up truck because you can’t fit much in it due to it being a convertible, and it’s not very good as a sports car because it’s not light and fast.
I won’t spoil Eurocrash for you, except to say there’s an actual flying car in it, Hammond has another code brown, they kidnap Nigel Mansell, and there’s a spectacular finale involving a transporter plane and a very l-o-n-g runway.
It’s everything you want The Grand Tour to be.
The good news keeps on coming because Jezza confirmed the boys have already filmed another special in Africa.
He said: “For the next one – in fact, the next two – we’re back on slightly scary ground, doing things we used to do when we were in our thirties and forties. But now we’re in our fifties and sixties.”
Hammond added: “I love arsing about with my two stupid friends doing silly things. That’s why people come to us.
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“Amazon always want us to do more. They love what we do – and we love working with them.”
- The Grand Tour: Eurocrash streams on Prime Video from midnight tonight.
