“Vroom vroom, brrrrrrrrrm, beep beep.” Patrick Freyne opens on that noise, then drops the real news: The Grand Tour new hosts are in the sixth season on Prime Video. Jeremy Clarkson gives the trio his blessing in the opening scenes, which turns a replacement story into a staged handoff.
Clarkson’s opening blessing
Three new hosts drive supercars across the California desert, and the old framework is still plain to see. Freyne writes that the show is “three men from the 2020s cosplaying as an early 2000s trio,” which is the right reading of the setup: the format survives even after the faces at its center change.
The original trio — Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond — made the earlier version work as a chemistry piece, and this season keeps the same broad machine running with different drivers. That is the business move here. Prime Video is not discarding the formula; it is trying to keep the format alive after the old lineup has moved on.
California desert convoy
The convoy runs on supercars and, in Freyne’s phrasing, “the last of mankind’s petrol.” That detail is more than a joke. It signals that the new season is leaning on the same excess and mechanical spectacle that made the name useful in the first place, even if the people inside the cars are no longer the ones viewers expect.
Freyne also asks, “Whither the Grand Tour?” before the piece lands on its answer: the show is back, but in altered form. Jeremy Clarkson’s blessing in the opening scenes gives the handoff a narrative cover, yet it also underlines how deliberate the transition is. The old trio is now history inside the episode itself.
Top Gear’s old formula
The clearest complication is the one the opening scenes create. The season presents itself as continuity with Top Gear, but the original trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond are no longer the main lineup. That makes the new season less a reunion than a controlled inheritance.
For viewers of The Grand Tour, the practical takeaway is simple: season six is not a revival of the old trio, and the show does not spend its opening on pretending otherwise. Patrick Freyne’s own family reaction says as much — “Maybe you could go to therapy now,” and, from the dads, “No, I’m sure there’s something else on,” — because this is a test of whether the format still works when the people change. The answer, at least for now, is that Prime Video thinks it does.
