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The next era of The Grand Tour is upon us. We know who the new hosts are set to be—Throttle House duo Thomas Holland and James Engelsman along with celebrated weird train TikToker Francis Bourgeois—and now we know when the trio’s first season is dropping. Six episodes will go live on Prime Video on September 4. Hey, that’s a Friday.
Announced with the tagline, “New Show. Same Knobs,” the rebooted Grand Tour promises “big adventures, questionable car choices, and plenty of laughs,” and will include the following scenarios, all pulled verbatim from Amazon’s press release:
- Crossing the Angolan desert in track cars
- Exploring Malaysia’s vibrant car culture
- Heading to California to test cutting-edge performance cars
- Challenging fighter pilots and even an entire nation’s legal system
That just about covers the bases for old-school TG/GT: massive odysseys in vehicles woefully ill-fitted for the task, fish-out-of-water cultural excursions involving cars, and pretending to push the limits of international law. The announcement came with a few choice quotes from the stars, and I’ve got to hand it to Bourgeois for painting quite a picture in words with this one:
“Since completing the filming of the series, I haven’t stopped replaying every moment in my head. It has made me laugh, made my heart race and my stomach turn…remembering the tent I shared with Thomas and James filled with sulphuric farts whilst Angolan jackals snooped around outside. It feels as though it was a dream but knowing we will get to share our adventures soon makes me so incredibly excited!”
Farts and jackals—I hate to say it, but this new series is indeed signaling all the right things. Holland and Engelsman are likely a known quantity to many people reading this, but if you’re less familiar with Bourgeois and what he might contribute to a car show, check out this train-chasing video he did nearly two years ago with Chris Harris. It was actually recommended by one of the commenters (thanks!) on my colleague Andrew’s previous blog about the Grand Tour reboot, and it’s a nice little watch involving a Mercedes-AMG CLK DTM Cabriolet. Solid recipe for success; we’ll see how the feature-length effort bears out.
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Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
