Jeremy Clarkson: Toyota thank sacked Top Gear star (video)

With Jeremy Clarkson sacked – and the future of Top Gear unclear – Toyota have put together a short video to thank Jeremy for his years of torturing Toyotas.

Toyota and Jeremy Clarkson haven’t always had the same opinion about Toyota cars, but the end of Jeremy’s current Top Gear run sees Toyota stepping up to say ‘Thank You Jeremy’.

Toyota has cobbled together a series of Jeremy’s Toyota outings on video – going back to The Toyota Celica in 1994 and Toyota Corolla in 1997 – and majoring on the stuff that really shows Toyota in a good light, and who can blame them for that?

So we get the bits about the brilliance of the GT86, how it’s impossible to kill a Toyota Hilux, and how wonderful it was on the trip to the North Pole with May.

It’s a nice tribute to a presenter who is undoubtedly brilliant, but flawed.

Flawed, he may be, but he’s not going to disappear and will be back on our screens somewhere, and Top Gear will return because the BBC has no choice but to try and make it work without Jeremy (and probably Hammond and May too).

But they tried to make it work after Jeremy left before and ended up giving up – and the team behind it ending up as Fifth Gear – until Jeremy and Andy Wilman created ‘modern’ Top Gear and took over the world.

The mostly likely outcome seems a new Top Gear from the BBC that fails to attract a significant audience, and the three amigos – Jeremy, Richard Hammond and James May – going off to Netflix or Sky or ITV and recreating their chemistry with a much bigger budget, and much bigger salaries.

But if Jeremy has any sense, he’ll take the summer off, get fit, eat properly, relax and make a decision on what to do next in the autumn.

But pigs might fly too.

Toyota’s Thank You Jeremy Clarkson Video