Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Grand Tour: Eurocrash’ On Prime Video, Where The Guys Road Trip From Poland To Slovenia In Three Ridiculous Cars

At the start of The Grand Tour: Eurocrash, we encounter hosts hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond on a ferry to Gdańsk, Poland, with maps on the table in front of them. Because many of the countries they’ve road tripped through either have a “terrorism problem” or has banned one of them from their roads, they’re going to do a road trip “that no one has ever thought of before.” It starts in Gdańsk, winds its way through Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, and ends at Lake Bled in Slovenia.

THE GRAND TOUR: EUROCRASH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The cars the hosts have picked for this 1100-plus-mile road trip are completely “inappropriate”: Richard picks a mid’00s Chevrolet SSR, a convertible pickup truck (yes, you read that right), Jeremy drives off the ferry in something called a Mitsuoka Le-Seyede, which takes a common Nissan “saloon car,” as Clarkson puts it, and adds body panels and fake exhaust tubes to make it kinda-sorta look like a Mercedes SSK. James, ever quirky, putters out in a 1947 Crosley CC Convertible, a 4-foot wide car with a roof that snaps on and an engine that generates all of 26.5hp. “Mr. Wilman” (EP Andy Wilman) has provided a whopper of a backup car: A purple hot rod with the words “Titties ‘n’ Beer” on the doors.

The SSR and the Le-Seyede aren’t the greatest cars, but they handle themselves reasonably well. But James is struggling in the Crosley, almost getting knocked over on the highway by passing tractor trailers as he toddles along at a speedy 38 mph. The car stalls out repeatedly. So at the first stop, at a raceway near Gdańsk, James comes way late to do a qualifying lap in one of the Soviet-era Formula One-esque cars. Jeremy is too fat to fit in one, so Richard is the only one who gets to race.

Jeremy and Richard prank James by having people lift the Crosley and move it inside the hotel restaurant, but James gets back at the pair at the next stop by making “changes” to their cars. Either way, James keeps missing tourist stops, like a massive Jesus statue or the stalag depicted in The Great Escape because the Crosley is so slow and stall-prone. Eventually he gives up, gets in the “Titties ‘n’ Beer” backup car, and has the Crosley towed from stop to stop. But the hot rod is no prize, either.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Clarkson, Hammond and May have been doing this for over 20 years, between the original incarnation of Top Gear or the seven years they’ve been doing The Grand Tour. Of course, Eurocrash is one of the feature-length GT episodes Prime has been producing over the past few years, like A Massive Hunt.

Performance Worth Watching: This time around, we’ll give this to a wax statue of Formula One legend Nigel Mansell that the guys steal from a bad wax museum in Kraków. Some of the funniest moments are when the statue takes the brunt of abuse, like when archers in Slovakia shoot at the cars, or when the sun coming in the window of Jeremy’s car melt his face. All the while Jeremy and Richard are doing Mansell’s Birmingham accent.

Memorable Dialogue: “I have produced larger and more attractive bogeys than this,” Jeremy says about the Crosley.

Sex and Skin: Oh, we wouldn’t want any of that, would we?

Our Take: Listen, we know that the shtick of the Grand Tour hosts is pretty well known by now, and it’s now been tainted a bit by the blowback created by Clarkson’s written remarks about Meghan Markle. But, dammit if there weren’t moments when we laughed out loud at the fellas’ antics, as well as just enjoyed the chemistry the three have together, whether they’re being goofy together or being competitive rivals.

Also, we know how much of The Grand Tour is more semi-scripted sitcom than actual reality show, with a team of mechanics doing the modifications to the cars that the hosts say they did themselves. But we come for the travel scenery, the goofy camaraderie between the hosts, and the shots of the ridiculous cars they drive being abused and pushed to their sometimes-low limits.

We even got excited during the final scene, where the guys have to drive their cars onto the cargo ramp of a taxiing jumbo jet, fighting jet wash the entire time. After taking this road trip with these three guys, we were rooting for the cars to make it to their destination, especially the Crosley, which usually can’t get out of its own way.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Grand Tour: Eurocrash is a funny, scenery-filled road trip with everyone’s favorite group of British goofballs. What’s not to like?

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.