Television needs feeding constantly. And in the darkest days of the pandemic, when everyone was at home gorging on box sets, the whole industry became like a labrador puppy that had somehow been crossed with a T. rex. Its appetite for new stuff became voracious.
As a result, the people who make the actual shows were ordered by the bosses to come out from under their kitchen tables and go into the world to make literally anything. A girl who’s good at chess? We’ll have that. Some Koreans who wear peephole bras on their faces and everyone gets shot? Yup, that too. An old man who can’t farm farming? Perfect.
I know of one crew who flew to Australia to film a well-known Aussie actor going though his fitness regime. They dutifully lived a solitary life in their hotel rooms, doing whatever it is men do in these circumstances, until finally shooting could begin. And on day one the well-known Aussie chap hurt his foot. So they had to come back to the UK until he was better. And then they flew back out to Sydney, where they spent another ten days in their hermetically sealed rooms, watching pornography from 2005 because they’d consumed everything made since then on their first visit. And nothing new had been produced in the meantime.
The Grand Tour was in a similar pickle. Just because we couldn’t do any actual grand touring was no excuse. The viewing audience was stuck at home starved of things to watch, so we had to get out there and make something. It wasn’t officially listed as “key work” but, actually, it was.
So we had a meeting. And quickly it became apparent that foreign travel simply wasn’t going to be possible. Our budgets are generous, but we can’t keep a crew of 50 in a hotel for ten days when they’re not producing anything. Apart from, you know … that. Which meant we had to film in the UK.
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The result has been named by Amazon as Carnage A Trois, which is a clever play on words but it’s not the working title of the show I came up with. Which was “What’s the Matter with the French?”
I didn’t know back then that when the programme finally came out we’d be in a full-scale diplomatic bust-up with Johnny Frog over scallops and submarines and migrants. That’s just a coincidence, like H982 FKL. But we’ll roll with it.
The actual reason for deciding to have a look at the French is that in all my motoring life I’ve owned cars made in Britain, America, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and Italy. But I’ve never had anything made in France. Neither has Hammond. And neither had May until he recently bought some kind of Alpine Renault. Why is that? Why would three guys who love cars not want to buy something from the country that pretty much invented motor sport? That’s what we set out to answer in the show.
As soon as the research began, it quickly became apparent that the problem is not with French cars. It’s with the French themselves and their stubborn refusal to be like anyone else. Ketchup, for example, is banned in school dining rooms. Work emails may not be sent at weekends. Pre-Covid, no one was allowed to eat at their desk. You must, by law, go out and do it properly, in a restaurant. They’re watching all the iron filings that make up the people of the world being drawn slowly towards the magnet that is America, with its burgers and its Budweiser and its 24/7 way of thinking, and they’re simply not playing ball.
Then you have the French people’s response to new government laws, which almost always involves flares, burning sheep and the occasional murder. The French are pretty much ungovernable. As de Gaulle once said: “How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?”
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I should make it clear that I have an abiding respect for the French. I admire their almost total disregard for the feelings of others and I much enjoy my time in their country. I even like eating their buntings. But I will admit that they are a bit weird. And you can see this in the cars they make.
Back in the Fifties, Citroën looked at what everyone else was doing with suspension and decided that, instead of using springs made from metal, they’d use spheres full of some kind of synthetic fluid. A decision that came after they’d flirted with the idea of using a propeller to move the car. And rear-wheel steering.
Renault made a car that was completely back to front. Matra made a two-seater sports car that had three seats. And Citroën — again — gave us a car with the stereo mounted vertically between the front seats so all the crumbs from your pain au chocolat would fall into the cassette slot.
Even today, when car design is completely global and homogenised, they’re still at it. Look in a modern Peugeot, for example, and you’ll notice that its steering wheel is mounted below the dashboard. This means it has to be the size of a shirt button, and it does beg the question: why?
However, there is one part of the French car culture that’s much easier to explain: their willingness to have parking accidents.
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In Britain we always have one eye on the resale value of our cars. We don’t choose a bright orange car with green seats because it will be harder to sell, and if we have a bump we worry a buyer will be able to spot the repair.
Now, imagine how much less stressful life would be if you kept your car until it was ruined and then wrecked it and bought another. If you never had to think about the second-hand value, you could use the bumpers to do bumping, and the alloys as an audible reminder of when you were near the kerb.
This is the French way. One of our researchers — a French woman — said that her parents have never sold a car, and none of her friends have either. They all just buy something small and cheap and then literally run it into the ground. And this seems to be the case no matter how successful they become. The French Premier League star N’Golo Kanté drives a Mini with a stoved-in wing, last time I looked. Maybe this is why the French have never made a large off-road car. Because what’s the point? If you don’t care about the paintwork, you can just use the family hatchback to go up an Alp with the kids for a picnic.
Of course, despite all of this, the French have made some tremendous cars over the years. Almost all of their hot hatchbacks were, and still are, hilariously good fun to pedal hard. But the best French car, in my book, is the Citroën SM. It was powered by a Maserati V6 engine and this blend of French and Italian brittleness made it one of the most unreliable cars ever made. It was also very difficult to fix thanks in part to the fact that all of the wiring in it was black, so you could never tell what wire did what or even where it had come from.
But it was beautiful to look at and a sumptuously comfortable and extremely stylish place to sit. And I’d very much like to use one on our next Grand Tour adventure, wherever that may be. I just wouldn’t want to bring it home with me afterwards.
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The Grand Tour Presents: Carnage A Trois will launch on Amazon Prime Video on Friday
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