OK, are you ready? In three, two, one, go!
-It's a long car. It takes a long time to go past. -That's what it is.
I'd better brake for this left-hander, change down.
Oh, concentrate!
And approaching the jump.
JEREMY: He may get air here.
There you go.
-And...across the line. -There he is.
RICHARD: Yeah.
JEREMY: James May, you just set a lap record.
Yes!
The fastest ever lap
in a Jaguar XK8 around this track.
JEREMY: Next up was me, in the tight-fit XJR.
It is quite snug in here. Look, really.
-There is a problem. If I hit the top of your head... -Oh, hang on!
RICHARD: That's what that's for!
It's a helmet hatch. That's what it is.
You'll almost certainly be killed, though.
You know when they take the top off a boiled egg?
-You do the countdown. -In three, two, one, go!
(ENGINE REVS)
Yeah, there's some dust.
And there we are! I have unleashed 385 horsepower!
And I would now demonstrate that this 17-year-old car had lost none of that horsepower.
Oh, yeah. Just feel the tail going nicely.
Oh, bollocks! It didn't.
I have slightly got that wrong,
but we can edit that out and cut to this, and it looks good.
God, he's all over the place. Look at that!
JAMES: He's completely messed it up.
RICHARD: Yeah, he's just... What... What is he doing?
I've had a spin there. A slight spin has gone.
I'm blind as a bat now.
That's... That's added to his time quite a lot.
There we go, speed up again now.
And...
You ready?
...across the line.
1:54.
JEREMY: But the important thing is,
that's a lap record for the XJR, and it's still working.
Here we go. In three, two, one, go!
Here we go, unleashing 4.2-litre straight-six.
JEREMY: Because Hammond's 50-year-old Jag was a senior citizen,
we hoped he'd take it easy.
However...
Let's do this properly. Come on!
RICHARD: Back at the finish line,
my colleagues were not impressed with me.
JAMES: There's oil everywhere, and coolant.
All you had to do was go round pretending it was a bit dramatic
proving that a Jaguar worked properly and was durable.
I gave it a bit of the beans in a corner, bit of a tail-out.
This lot at home are fooled. They think I was trying my hardest.
I pulled a face. I went like that.
-What did you do? -Gave it--
And look at the back of your car.
Smashed rear window. Boot lid, no other word, off.
Does it actually start?
(ENGINE STRUGGLES)
(METALLIC CLANGING)
(ENGINE OFF)
-I think you threw a rod. -It's all fixable.
What was that? What was that "glang" noise?
It could be a rod going through the side of the wall. I can fix this.
And sure enough ...
I would have bet my left ear that Hammond would never be able to get that Jag going,
and yet, he has!
Turns out the actual damage was nowhere near as bad as we thought.
All I had to do, straighten the boot lid,
top up the water in the radiator, that did need doing, that was it.
Yep.
Never noticed the sun roof before. That's good.
So, there we are,
proof you can go off-road racing with three Jaguars,
and all of them will survive.