Sunday’s episode of Top Gear was a celebration of all things British, extolling the excellence of our nation’s car manufacturers by lining Jaguars, Aston Martins, ice cream vans and much, much more in a display of patriotism along the Mall. So why did BBC2 choose to follow it with a documentary profiling what went wrong with Britain’s post-war car industry and what the Germans did so right?


It’s a question pondered by the Top Gear presenters following the BBC’s decision to schedule one after the other, with Jeremy Clarkson taking to his Twitter account to question the choice of programming…

I am properly cross with BBC2. What on earth were they thinking of? — Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) August 4, 2013

Meanwhile, a furious Richard Hammond fumed to The Sun: “We’d spent months planning this show, they must have known. It was a kick in the teeth.”

Any viewers tuning in on Sunday evening would have noticed that as much as Dominic Sandbrook’s Das Auto praised the successes of the German car industry, it also dedicated a good chunk of time to panning their British rivals. No wonder Clarkson and co are red in the face…


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