Alex Unleashed on Cars

As we all know, The Grand Tour as we know it is over. Jeremy, James & Richard have officially parted ways after over 20 years working together, racing, shouting and laughing together. My social media feeds have been full of tributes and memes to the trio and it’s weird knowing that no more content with them is going to be made, it’s like when a comedian announces retirement, we just have to watch the old stuff I suppose. Now this isn’t a review of One for the Road, all I will say is Funeral for a Ford (the finale of Series 3) was the ideal finale and send off because the episode wasn’t just a tribute and send off for Fords iconic saloon car but a send off for the trio themselves. Consider how the story of the Mondeo and the trio intersect, it starts with the Cortina and the presenters first falling in love with cars and ends with the axing of the Mondeo and the supposed end of the trios work together. It wasn’t just a funeral for Ford, it was a funeral for them too. But of course...

After the Honda NSX went out of production, the idea of a more affordable and usable supercar went with it. Until 2 years later, Audi gave us the R8. This by the way is not to be confused with the Audi R8 LMP900 car that won Le Mans 5 times starting in 2000 then ’01, ’02, ’04 & ’05, ’03 was won by the Bentley Speed 8 though that car was based on Audi’s old R8C LMGTP car from ’99. Funnily enough, the R8 road car was first revealed as a concept in 2003 under the name ‘Le Mans’, the links between the 2 cars don’t end there, some even theorized the R8 road car would use a detuned version of the LMP900’s twin turbo V8, but Audi instead used the 4.2 Litre V8 from the RS4 saloon. That said, later down the line, a prototype R8 was trialled with the V12 turbo diesel engine from the R8 LMP900’s successor, the 2006 Le Mans winning R10 TDI. Though instead we got the R8 V10, more on that later. Upon confirmation the R8 was going to be built, some thought Audi would run into the same problem...