Top Gear Tonight: The last ever Top Gear with Clarkson Hammond & May

The last ever Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May airs tonight on BBC2 at 8pm with old SUVs, affordable classics and an elephant in the room.

The BBC promised to air a single episode of Top Gear with Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May with the missing footage from the two cancelled episodes after Jeremy Clarkson’s fracas, and tonight we get to see what the Beeb has cobbled together as we say goodbye to the most successful show the BBC makes.

The two missing pre-recorded pieces – an outing with cheap SUVs and one with affordable classics – will be linked by Richard Hammond and James May with, it’s been rumoured, a big plastic elephant to denote the elephant in the room – the missing Clarkson.

Clarkson himself – despite (or perhaps because he had to) fulfilling contractual obligations for additional voice-over work on this final outing – has had a dig at the episodes cobbled in to one programme, damning it with faint praise by saying ‘one of them is quite good’ and neither are the best they’ve done. Which is doubtless true.

Despite that, the BBC is expecting tonight’s Top Gear to bring in the biggest audience ever for the show, surpassing the previous record Top Gear shows (one with Lewis Hamilton and the other when Richard returned from his accident), and it will no doubt be running on Dave for the next century or two, gathering more ‘watches’ in the process.

Once of the two pieces tonight is on affordable classics (which should have aired in March), with Jeremy in a Fiat 125 Spyder, Richard in an MGB GT and James in a Peugeot 304 Cabriolet, with the japes including brown beer, breakdowns and a classic ar show, with ample opportunity to extract the Michael from men with oil under their fingernails, patches on their elbows, beards on their faces and a pint of something ‘Real’ in their hands.

The other piece sees the trio buying cheap SUVs – with Jeremy in a Vauxhall Frontera, Richard in a Jeep Cherokee and James in a Shogun Pinin – with the Top Gear nemesis – caravans – featuring heavily, watersports, snow and an off-road challenge.

What we won’t be seeing is the Stars in a Reasonably Priced Car – which should have been Gary Linekar and Henry Cavill for these two episodes – and we probably won’t see the other missing stuff like the VW Golf R versus Subaru WRX STi from Richard and  Jeremy on the ultimate luxury limos.

But despite this being the last episode ever of the Top Gear we know and love, Top Gear will return in 2016 with Jeremy transformed in to a skinny ginger man with big glasses – Chris Evans – and a format that will probably be more like TFI with cars.

And the ‘real’ Top Gear – with Clarkson, Hammond and May – will return under the auspices of whoever has the deepest pockets and offer the trio the most freedom – take your pick from Netflix, Amazon and ITV – with a new name, and probably before the Beeb get Chris Evans’ Top Gear together.

Top Gear – the missing episodes – airs tonight at 8pm on BBC2 (UK time).