The hit BBC show Top Gear was at its all time best last week when the team; Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May decided to take a road trip across the USA. The only difference being that instead of hiring a car, they were going to buy one second hand and see how far they could get.

Setting off with just a measly $1000 each they split up and visited several different used car salesmen.

Eventually after hours of searching, Jeremy Clarkson managed to lay hands on a Chevrolet Camaro, Richard found himself a Dodge Ram pick-up, and James turned up proudly in a run down Cadillac.

After being dropped off in Miami, their target destination was revealed by the producers to be New Orleans; over 700 miles away!

They each set off in their chosen cars, and whilst Jeremy and Richard were boiling to death in their cars, James was the only one sensible enough to have picked one with air conditioning that actually worked, much to Richard and Jeremy’s disgust!

They travelled across America taking on various different tasks from the producers along the way, such as testing the brakes on their cars by driving at high speed then slamming the brakes on in order to stop (hopefully!) before they charged bonnet first into alligator infested waters.

Both James and Jeremy were fine with their attempts, but poor old Hammond almost ended up in the lake, just managing to jump out in time. Needless to say, his brakes were the worst!

Their next challenge was to spend the night camping, but to only eat whatever they could find on the side of the road (Road kill) Urgh!! Jeremy came up trumps when he disappeared for hours and finally turned up with a huge dead cow on the roof of his car, the guys decided not to eat it but that it was a pretty impressive, yet totally crazy result from Jeremy.

The next day, with a car stinking of dead cow Jeremy, James and Hammond set off again, their next challenge was to spray paint each other’s cars in the most offensive way possible then drive through a religious town in Alabama, this almost ended in real disaster when the guys were literally chased by a group of unhappy locals. Easily the best part of the show!!

They made it to their location in the end unscathed, and upon seeing the devastation still surrounding New Orleans they decided to give their cars away to the needy rather than sell them. Even this was fraught with difficulties though because they couldn’t even give one of the cars away, and were nearly sued by a lawyer representing the mission who they offered the cars to because allegedly one of the cars didn’t meet the specification that they had suggested.

All in all it was a fantastic hour of viewing and brilliant to see ‘The Hamster’ back in full swing after his almost tragic accident. Long live Top Gear!