Top Gear: The Perfect Road Trip 2 Page #6

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more and more laps,

the toll on the cars started to show.

Until eventually, Hammond's Testarossa

could take the punishment no longer.

I see steam!

(ENGINE WHIRRING)

None of these are good signs. Um...

I think Hammond's car is wounded.

I'm hoping it is.

Oh, come on.

Victory is mine and tastes sweet.

CLARKSON:
But Hammond

thought differently.

It's not over yet.

- Oh, for crying out loud.

- At the heart of this machine,

that's a simple four-cylinder engine.

- Is it?

- It has at the moment

heat seized. All the metal has expanded,

it's stuck.

- Is it?

- It's like when you get a bad back

at your age.

Then every now and again, it eases.

- Does it?

- Give it a rest. The parts will contract

and it'll fire up.

It's gonna do just that.

Not... Not now...

- But in a...

- When is it going to do that?

I'll pick the moment.

I'm good at this.

I know when it'll start.

It's gonna start.

If that starts, I'm gonna kill myself.

(ENGINE CRANKING)

(ENGINE STARTS)

(HAMMOND LAUGHS)

Get in!

Get in! Come on!

Ah! Yes! That is mechanical sympathy!

I'm at one with the machine.

CLARKSON:
Because the

prancing horse whisperer was right,

the race was back on.

(LAUGHS)

I'm still in this.

I'm still racking up those laps.

Please break now. Please break.

After many more laps,

the gods of good fortune

finally decided to smile on me.

There has been

an extraordinary accident.

I've spun.

The engine is jammed on full revs.

It's in first gear.

And the clutch pedal is being held down

by a broom, I have no idea

where that came from.

Luckily though, it's held in place

by two ropes

which are attached to heavy objects.

One is a wheelbarrow

with a concrete block in it.

The other is this building.

What worries me though

is this small fire has broken out

underneath this rope.

Now, if it were to snap,

the broom would be dragged out

by the wheelbarrow,

the clutch would ping off

and the car would roar off

into that building.

I've no idea how to stop this

from happening.

I'm just a passenger in this accident.

Think, Jeremy! There must be

something you can do.

(SCREAMING)

(LOUD THUD)

CLARKSON:
Oh, no!

(CAR APPROACHING)

- Well, mate, congratulations, you win.

- What happened?

Extraordinary crash.

- Really hard into the wall.

- But you're not hurt.

No, I was thrown clear.

Amazing! I don't know how it happened.

But I was thrown out

and it's gone in the wall.

- You did this on purpose.

- I didn't!

You've deliberately

thrown the race.

This is a hollow victory.

CLARKSON:
That night at the hotel,

there was good news for Hammond

that I hoped would put a smile

back on his face.

- Do you do spaghetti Bolognese?

- Yes, sir.

- You do?

- Yes.

I'll have that then, please.

Actually, I'll have

a spaghetti Bolognese.

It's traditional spaghetti Bolognese?

- Perfect.

- At last!

- One's just proposed to the other.

- That's romantic.

A-ha.

CLARKSON:
Excellent!

HAMMOND:
Um... What's this?

- It's spaghetti Bolognese.

- No, it's not.

- It is.

- Oh, no, it isn't.

It is. It's spaghetti and sausage.

In Italy, spaghetti Bolognese

is spaghetti with sausage.

Look. Actual sausage.

Why don't they call it

spaghetti with saus...

- It's not spaghetti Bolognese.

- Just stop with the name!

How could... If an Italian

comes to Britain and asks for

a cooked breakfast,

you don't give him

a cooked swan, do you?

You give him bacon and eggs.

- It's not right. No.

- Eat it.

- It's not right.

- It is.

CLARKSON:
The next morning we woke near

the beautiful town of Siena.

And outside our hotel,

the producers have provided two cars

that would take us in and around

it's narrow, medieval streets.

There was the new Mini Cooper S

which was shotgunned by Hammond.

And an Audi S1 which, as

a result, would be driven by me.

I was expecting a Fiesta S and a Golf GTI.

Oh, we drove those last year.

- (GROANS) Oh, yeah.

- So, this is their replacement.

- Well, it's quite interesting,

'cause I've never driven an S1 before.

And I've not driven a Cooper S, so...

So it'll be a voyage into the unknown.

- Yes, it will.

- That's what it'll be.

CLARKSON:
All we did know is that

Siena is a rabbit warren,

made up of 6.7 million narrow streets.

In a town like this, size matters,

and the smaller the better!

HAMMOND:
Small is always best.

And that's what troubles

me about this new Mini.

It's 10 centimetres longer

than the last model,

which was 65 centimetres longer

than the original Mini.

So, it isn't really mini.

I don't wanna sound like

somebody's dad here, but,

when are they going

to stop calling it the "Mini"?

As a bloke you are called "a young man"

for a lot of years. But the day comes,

and must come, when nobody calls you

"young man" any more because you're not!

And perhaps because it's so big,

it needs a bigger two-litre,

turbo charged engine,

which develops nearly

200 brake horsepower.

This feels a lot better than

I expected it to feel.

It feels fantastic.

It feels expensive,

which is as well, because it is.

With everything on it,

as this one has got,

you'll be looking

at the best part of 25,000.

There are some other issues as well.

The old new Mini, the one

before this one,

had a sort of zany feel to it,

had that massive speedo

that was as big as your face,

and they've moved the window

switches out to the doors.

It's got this big,

round thing in the middle,

but it's not a dial any more.

It houses the screen.

It's trying to be both

sensible and a bit crazy.

CLARKSON:
I, on the other hand,

had no worries at all about the Audi S1

because on paper, at least,

it sounds like it could be a gem.

Now normally, a hot hatchback

is a normal hatchback

with a bigger engine,

and this does indeed

have the same engine

as the Golf R.

228 horsepower, two-litre turbo.

But it also has

four-wheel drive.

And that meant removing the standard

car's torsion beam

and replacing it with

a four-link setup.

Which meant redesigning

the entire rear end of the car.

That must have cost Audi a fortune!

It also has adjustable dampers and

a six-speed manual gearbox.

So what you're looking at here

is a compact,

228 horsepower, four-wheel drive,

turbo-charged Audi.

Could it be, then,

that the Quattro is back?

To find out, I radioed Hammond

and suggested a race.

Hammond, I propose

some form of competition.

Excellent! Is it rallying?

No, not rallying.

(OVER RADIO) Think about it,

both of these are rally cars.

The original Mini Cooper

and the Audi Quattro.

- Perfect...

- That was a million years ago!

These are now urban pocket rockets.

So, I propose

we have a race

into the middle of Siena. Okay,

first one to the Campo wins.

What's the Campo?

Campo is like a square

in the middle of the city,

except it's not a square.

It's where they have the horse race.

What, so it's grass?

(OVER RADIO) No. It's cobbled.

Um... Anyway, listen, right.

Last one to get there

has to wear white

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