The long awaited episode of The Grand Tour has finally been shown, and we get to see how Rimac Concept One electric supercar did competing against two other supercars.
This summer very exciting news for Croatian car enthusiasts came from the production of The Grand Tour, the british motoring television series for Amazon Video, when it was announced that they will finally take the pride and joy of Croatian auto-industry, the luxurious and innovative electric supercar made by the Rimac car company, their Concept_One. Then, while they where filming the segment, the news struck that Richard Hammond managed to crash the 1200 horsepower car in the Swiss Alps, almost killing himself in the process (luckily, he merely broke a leg).
This night the episode has finally premiered on Amazon, so we get to see the whole story of the competition of the past, the present and the future of supercars. Representing the past, there was the Lamborghini Aventador S, 100% petrol-powered car, driven by Jeremy Clarkson. The present was driven by James May, Honda NSX, which is a hybrid car. Hammond was, of course, behind the wheel of the Croatian sensational fully electric-powered Concept_One.
Clarkson, of course, made fun of Hammond’s car, calling it “a lady shaver” throughout the episode, pointing out the wonderful noise his Lambo made in the tunnel, while Concept_One is extremely quiet, and of course both May and Clarkson wouldn’t stop talking about how Hammond had to take the car to the race on a lorry, because he didn’t have enough range to go there, race and then come back (one would, though, expect the Switzerland to have enough chargers to acommodate an electric car; they also joked that there was only one charger in a 100 mile radius around the hotel where they were situated where Hammond could charge his car?). But, through all the jokes, Concept_One seemed to continue impressing all three of them with its performances, and it was quite obvious when they engaged in a drag race, which was basically decided within the first quarter, as Concept_One drove off as if it were racing against a Yugo (and if you don’t understand that joke, all I can say is: lucky you!). After that race, Clarkson admitted on tape: “I’ve never seen anything move as quickly as that. Not with number plates.”
Before Hammond started the race the other two hosts made a bit of fun of him, explaining how he’ll become a huge star in Croatia, and that we’ll put him on a coin (apparently they don’t know that we have plants and animals on our coins) or a stamp. And Right after all three of the cars finished the hill climb race (two of the cars were driven by the hosts, while Clarkson had a test driver for Lamborghini take over for him because of his huge head problems) came the moment we’ve all seen on Youtube before – Hammond’s scary, scary crash down the hill in a million Euro car, the car catching flames, the chopper taking Hammond to the hospital. Since all of it happened after the finish line, May explained that they had no cameras filming the scene so they had to take clips off Youtube, so basically not much in terms of new footage was shown in this show. Clarkson’s Aventador was the fastest in the race, which is no wonder since it was driven by a professional driver, and May told us the story of how Rimac Concept_One kept catching fire for 5 days after the crash, as one battery cell ignited another one etc. (he even taught us that the phenomenon is called “thermal runaways”).
Great promotion for Rimac, probably would’ve been even better if the ending was not so – explosive!
