Top Gear needs no introduction. For a generation of petrol-heads, this British car show with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May at the helm, was the ultimate source of entertainment for all things automotive. In fact, it wasn’t just car lovers, Top Gear was quite popular among regular folks, too. So much so that it made it to the Guinness World Record in 2013 as the world’s most widely watched factual TV show. At one point in time, more than 350 million people across 200 countries would watch Top Gear. It was remarkable for any television show, let alone for one that was based on cars – a topic that common folks find boring otherwise. What Top Gear achieved back in the day, it’s a feat that might not get repeated anytime soon by any car show. Period.
What made Top Gear so popular and entertaining was not just dry British humor, mind-boggling challenges, or BBC’s stupendous cinematography. Instead, it was the chemistry between the hosts that turned Top Gear into a great success. The three-middle-aged men babbling about cars and doing stupid, funny, and sometimes controversial stuff with cars as props was something that drew the audience to this car show. And while the regular format – featuring car reviews, absurd challenges, star-in-a-reasonably-priced-car, et al – was brilliant, it was the Top Gear Specials that made the show epic.
When Top Gear had Clarkson, Hammond, and May as its lead protagonists, they went on some crazy adventures around the globe. Fans are often divided on what’s the best Top Gear Special of all time – some say it’s Botswana Special that had them in splits, while some prefer the beauty and challenging terrain of the Bolivia Special over everything else. Similarly, there are Top Gear lovers who find the Polar, Burma, or USA Specials to be the best of them all. However, if we were to choose just one, it'll be the Vietnam Special that'd get our vote.
Now, you may not agree with us – which is fair, to each his own like they say – but, with the means of this article, we are going to try and convince you that the Vietnam Special is indeed the greatest Top Gear Special of all time.
It Was Not Just About Cars
For a TV show that made its name primarily because of cars, it’s kind of ironic that the Vietnam Special didn’t feature any. Funnily enough, all three used motorbikes for this special. In fact, if you have to be precise, poor Clarkson wasn’t even on a motorbike, he had to make do with an old and beaten Vespa scooter.
The show begins with the trio arriving in the city of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and each presenter was given 15 million Vietnamese Dong to buy their set of wheels for the challenge that lay ahead. While the seemingly huge amount of cash makes them ecstatic initially, they soon come to realize that it was an equivalent of just $1,000. With that kind of money, they wouldn't be able to buy a used car. The only option they were left with was to get a motorcycle/two-wheeler.
Clarkson, who passionately hates motorcycles, wasn’t very kicked about this idea but had to buy himself a Piaggio Vespa just for the heck of it. Meanwhile, Hammond and May, who are known bikers and have a huge collection of motorbikes back at their base in the UK, bought a Minsk 125cc and Honda Super Cub, respectively. To see these three – people whose day job was to drive Ferraris, Porsches, and Bugattis at break-neck speeds – atop those puny motorbikes, it was quite amusing.
The best part was the challenge though. The trio had to cover over 1,000 miles on their bikes, starting from Saigon in the South to all the way to Ha Long City in the north of Vietnam, closer to the Chinese border. They had to do it eight days, which they said the ‘the Americans couldn’t do in 10 years.’ The whole journey was filled with laughter, light moments, breathtaking scenery, and Clarkson’s endless rants on motorcycling. Not to mention, with their underpowered and unfit machinery, there were multiple breakdowns on the way, while the journey was also full of tense and dangerous moments too. During the filming of the road trip, Clarkson also had a small accident where he falls off his Vespa while going over a pothole. Fortunately, he escaped with minor bruises from that and continued riding till the final leg of the journey.
There are a lot of comical moments during the road trip. Like the time when Clarkson spends hours to get to grips with the Vespa during the start of the journey, or when May and Clarkson encourage the hotel staff at Hue to paint the whole parking lot and Hammond’s bike pink. Then there was the tradition of gifting each other heavy gifts, attempting to pass the driver’s license test at a Vietnamese driving school, cheating the producers by covering 200 miles on a train (to the wrong destination, eventually), and last but not least turning their motorbikes/scooter into amphibious bike-boats to cover the final leg of the journey in Ha Long Bay. The whole episode was side-splittingly funny.
You have got to say that the motorcycle trip across Vietnam was one of the most complete road trips on any television show or documentary. It captured the essence of motorcycling – be it the thrills, freedom, or dangers of the two-wheel world – beautifully. Even for someone like Clarkson, who hated motorcycles from the bottom of his heart, he could also see the joys of road-tripping on a motorcycle. Although, in the end, he did say that he still wasn’t sold on biking. Typical Clarkson.
Vietnam, You Don’t Know Man, You Weren’t There
The Vietnam Special stands out for one more reason – Vietnam. Before this special aired in 2008, not many of us knew about Vietnam or were aware of its beauty and idiosyncrasies. For most of us, it was just a tiny third-world country with a torn past because of the Vietnam War through the ’60s and ’70s. Through the lens of Top Gear though, people saw the other side of this beautiful country that was seldom showed before.
Whether it was the maddening traffic of Saigon or the stunning bar in the middle of the Ha Long Bay, the visuals from Vietnam left the viewers equally mesmerized. And then there are the people and the culture. Be it the local cuisine with vodka in snake blood or the bright-colored silk suits from Hoi An, it painted Vietnam to a very different, and quite positive, light.
In making the Vietnam Special, not only did Top Gear produce entertaining TV, but they also definitely helped the country become a hot destination for tourists from all around the world. Not to mention, the country has many motorcycle groups that offer ‘Top Gear Vietnam Tour’ packages along the very same route that the trio took back in 2008.
As Clarkson concludes in the end, "It's hard to sum it up really. Perhaps, that's why people when they get back from this place always say the same thing – Vietnam, you don't know, man. You weren't there!"