While touring Stalin’s homeland of Georgia, Jeremy Clarkson mounted a bust of the Soviet ruler on his Bentley roadster. The stunt could reportedly be explained by his forthcoming program about world dictators

Georgia’s First Channel on Tuesday broadcast a video showing the former Top Gear host driving across the country with a bust of Joseph Stalin mounted on a Bentley roadster.

It is unclear what was behind the escapade with the bust, but the former BBC presenter told First Channel that he was collecting information about world dictators.

“Two months ago I was in China, we were filming the museum of Mao Zedong, working on the topic of dictators, since it is always interesting,” Clarkson said.

Clarkson – along with other Top Gear presenters Richard Hammond and James May – went to Georgia as part of Amazon Video’s Grand Tour project.

A day before taking to the road, the trio visited Stalin’s museum in the small town of Gori, where he was born in 1879 to a shoemaker and a peasant’s daughter.

Stalin was, and still is, a highly controversial figure in Russian history. While some praise Stalin for his contribution in defeating the Nazis and reconstructing the war-torn country, others accuse him of launching a wave of terror, in which millions of “enemies of the people” perished in prison camps.