Right, May, what is your thinking?
Well, I've bought this Renault 9. It's the GTL.
And I've flown Abbie out to drive it
and we're going to drive 50 miles to a place called the Garden of Paradise.
Why can't we just go where we're going?
Cos I just said we're going to the Garden of Paradise. It'll be nice.
-So Abbie gets a two-minute head start. -Mm-hm.
You won't be able to catch her.
-We will. -You won't.
-A two-minute head start... -Yes.
-..and you think we can't catch her up in 50 miles? -Exactly.
That's not in good condition.
It wasn't very expensive.
Start the engine, please.
(ENGINE STRUGGLES TO TURN OVER, STARTS)
-Oh, well. -Oh, well.
Oh, we're in trouble now.
-Right, you ready? -Purrs like a kitten.
In three, two, one...
-Go! -(ENGINE STALLS) -(ABBIE CHUCKLES)
-Professional racing driver. -She's good. She's good.
-You've bought a dog. -It doesn't work!
(ENGINE REVS)
-There. -Ooh.
So James May's experiment...
Is an Aston Martin DBS, twin turbo,
faster than an ancient rusting Renault 9?
18 seconds.
Stop sounding excited about this ridiculous escapade.
Two, one, begin.
(REVVING)
Right, let's get this charade over with, shall we?
And prove that James is mad.
The point of having a GT car with tonnes of power is it makes you feel good
and it's nice. But it's not quick.
All cars in the real world go at the same speed
because how fast they go is dictated by external factors,
not the car itself.
Traffic lights, speed cameras,
other cars, pedestrians crossing.
All these things just bunch everybody up.
If you have a powerful engine in your car, you can get home at night more quickly.
Which means you spend more time with your children.
Which means they're less likely to grow up as glue sniffers.
JEREMY: Soon we were out of the town and on the motorway.
But there was a problem.
These speed cameras, they're at every 100 yards.
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.
But Abbie has got the same problem.
She's not getting away from us.
-No, but we're not catching her either, are we? -No.
Once we got off the motorway, though, Hammond and I splashed the brown roadblock
and got cracking.
Abbie is a brilliant driver.
Make no mistake. She's a lot better at it than me.
But I've got 14 times more horsepower.
All I had to do to catch her, then,
was overtake everything.
But that wasn't easy.
Single unbroken line. Can't overtake.
Can't overtake.
Right, we're stuck behind a Lada.
-Oh, God, car coming the other way. -(HORN)
Oh, come on, come on, come on.
And there's Jeremy Clarkson behind a lorry.
As I am.
JEREMY: The finish line at the Garden of Paradise was close.
And as we entered the outskirts, the patio of paradise,
Abbie was in sight.
The race we knew would be ours
but then it turned out that actually
the finish line was in the 14th Century.
RICHARD: Oh, my word.
Getting narrow, very narrow.
(KNOCKING)
Oh, I don't know how much
a carbon fibre chin spoiler is on one of these
but I bet it's a lot.
(REVVING)
Abbie, however, wasn't worried about that sort of thing.
(KNOCKING)
That's the sound of a crow rubbing against a Russian stereo.
(SCRAPING)
That was not good.
-Hello. -Hammond, I'm beached.
I'm going to find another route.
-Oh, is it really round here? -(KNOCKING)
A lot of noise from the boot now.
JEREMY: Meanwhile, I'd found another route
that wasn't much better.
-(SCRAPING) -Oh, God.
James May's ideal motor race, this. I'm doing four, three.
By this stage I knew I'd lost.
So I needed to come up with an excuse.
Are these for the head?
A hat.
This is not Bentley country now.
This is really Land Rover territory.
James May, you are a bloody idiot.
Sit-rep, man arrived at the window,
took 30 units of currency away and I now have this hat.
Eventually Hammond and I found Abbie's victorious Renault at the finish line.