Free The Top Gear Story by Martin Roach

May’s first show in Series 2 and this is often best seen when they are basically fooling around. And what better to fool around with than a caravan?
    The series has a hate-hate relationship with the little white traffic jam-makers. Over the years, Clarkson and chums have made no secret of their intense dislike for the homes-on-wheels (perhaps on a par only with cyclists). This has manifested itself into numerous hilarious stunts. The first time that the innocent ‘van’ was desecrated came in Series 2, Episode 1, when they burnt the show’s debut caravan with the afterburner of a drag-racing jet car; however, the tense relationship really worsened in Series 2, Episode 6. For this show, the team tested the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII versus the Subaru Impreza WRX STI. After the clip had been shown, Clarkson revealed an out-take of himself in one of the cars, going berserk as the crew followed a caravan up ahead at a snail’s pace. He went on to describe the hotel-on-wheels as ‘the bane of our lives’. Clearly, something had to be done.
    In response, the Top Gear team attempted to set a new land speed record for caravan towing. The current record stood at 128.8mph, so they sent new boy James May to a track to see if he could top that. Using a turbo-charged Mitsubishi Evo 7, which could generate more than 700bhp, a stunt driver called ‘Lee’ (notably not The Stig as would be the norm in later series) and an Abbey GT 214 caravan, they attempted – and failed – to beat the record time. A combination of cross winds, caravan kitchenette window blow-outs and ultimately, the Evo blowing a piston defeated them. Still, May had his revenge and dropped the caravan from a great height off a crane at the end of the show.
    In Series 3 (otherwise largely dull when it came to fun features), the schoolboys/presenters took the caravan owner’s car of choice – a Volvo 240 estate – and attempted to see how many caravans it could jump over, Evel Knievel style. They chose the car because it was ‘the caravan’s friend’. ‘Every summer they ruin our roads,’ declared Hammond, before going on to slaughtercaravans as transport vermin. So, how many caravans could the Volvo jump? Not many, it transpired.
    The vendetta was taken up a notch in Series 4 while playing darts with cars. Using a gas-powered cannon normally reserved for mad stunts in James Bond movies, Hammond and May perched themselves on the top of a quarry and proceeded to fire six old cars at a dartboard, way down below. After several disputed shots, they decided to clarify the bullseye with the placement of the ultimate target: a caravan. With telling poignancy, the very last car is a caravan-loving Volvo and Hammond triumphs by hitting the bullseye/caravan perfectly after which he announces: ‘We are all winners because the caravan bought it!’
    However, it was in Series 5 that Top Gear revealed their most vicious-ever caravan abuse when James May joined Hammond to play the aforementioned ‘Caravan Conkers’. It was actually the much-maligned Health and Safety Executive (HSE) who inspired this challenge after they had declared in 2009 that children wanting to play the age-old game should wear safety goggles (Clarkson has gone on record as calling the HSE ‘the PPD’, which stands for ‘The Programme Prevention Department’).
    Two enormous green cranes were provided by the same specialist team who had worked with the car-launching hydrogen cannon for the previous car darts sequence. Hammond and May then proceeded to engage in a three-round competition of conkers using a selection of six of Britain’s finest fibreglass homes, such as the Musketeer, the Sprite and of course, the Ford Mondeo of the caravan world, the ubiquitous Monza. Before battle commenced, there was much talk of 3-er and 9-er conkers, with each presenter displaying a genuine glint that betrayed a childhood spent playing the actual game in the playground.
    The caravans were painted a