-No, listen, it's... -Let me hear that sound again.
Oh, dear. It keeps doing that.
Stop doing that!
Hammond's cheap after-market alarm matched his cheap after-market wheels.
They leach into dry rot. They leach into the system.
-There's wires going everywhere. -Can't you just take it all off?
No, 'cause otherwise you could've stolen a car by just taking the alarm off.
They weren't that stupid in the '80s.
That's got it.
Jeremy and I decided to abandon Hammond and have a race.
From nought to 100 and then back to nought again,
so that we could test our cars' power and brakes.
Here are the vital statistics. 2.5 litre straight-six, 170 horsepower,
or at least when it was new. It may have lost a few.
Jeremy has a 2.5 litre straight-six with 170 horsepower,
or at least when it was new, he may have lost a few since then.
The difference, he's got a big slab of concrete in the boot.
It's not the paving stone in the back I'm worried about.
It's the automatic gearbox.
Doing a drag race with an auto is like doing a 100 metre sprint
in wellies full of tadpoles.
Yes!
Bit of steering wheel wobble coming in.
No concrete is the answer.
There we go, nought to 60. That was about 25 seconds.
90!
Must be able to do 100.
And there it is.
There it is.
No brakes, no brakes.
It's just not stopping.
Please, stop!
The gap between our supposedly identical BMWs was staggering.
...77, 78, 79, 80, 81.
281 yards.
There is another conclusion we can draw from this.
Which is what?
That as you'd expect, I've done this properly
and I have proved myself to be better than you at buying second-hand BMWs.
Well, your brakes are better.
And my engine's better and my gearbox is better.
Speed isn't everything.
Is it not?
After the race, we got Hammond's car going again.
And went to a Waking The Dead-style forensics lab
to find out in great detail what sort of life our cars had had.
You know the company we're using to do this...
They're called are called Manlove Forensics.
-Are they? -They are. No, they are.
Why are they called that?
Yeah, the boss is called John Manlove.
Oh. Not many fond school day memories for him, I bet.
They've actually already discovered that your car used to belong
to a Muslim man from Birmingham.
What, they can tell that just from swabbing the seats?
No, they found this letter in the foot well.
-Oh, yes. -Addressed to Jamir Masjid..
-It's from a mosque in Birmingham. -They're good.
They are good.
But the test they were doing went far beyond looking for old envelopes.
Do you know what I'm worried about most of all that they find in my car?
-What? -Gentlemen's relish.
I quite like gentlemen's relish.
Oh, you don't... Okay. You don't mean the stuff from the jar.
After many hours, the boss came over with the results.
-Hi, I'm John Manlove. -Can we stick to John?
Otherwise we're just going to get giggles.
-This vehicle here. -This is mine.
This had crisp fragments in it.
Crisps is fine. Nobody's worried about that.
-There was a little bit of vegetation. -Leaves?
Bits-and-pieces such as that and some flakes of skin.
They'll be mine. So that's not too bad, then.
-No, not too bad, fairly standard. -Let's move on, James's car.
Lots of skin in this one.
Including some nice, large flakes of yellowish skin with blood staining on.
-A scab! -Somebody's picked a scab in your car.
-Full of scabs. Go on. -Seriously?
-Anything else worth note? -Quite a lot of nasal mucus.
That's bogies. He's talking about bogies.
Were they smeared on the seat or the sun visor?
Little balls in the foot well.
-Shall I just finish James's car? -Is there more?
The last one was that the steering wheel was stained
with a chemical that can be present in high quantities in saliva.
Gob.
So, basically, if you're talking and driving, that's you may well expect.
So, Roy Hattersley owned it?
Picked his scabs off, spat all over your steering wheel
and dropped bogies in large quantities in your foot well.
I don't even want to look at your car now!
But then Mr Manlove came to Hammond's car.
First of all, there was some black sports type-tape
with what turned out to be blood staining on it.
Whoa, whoa... Sports tape with blood on the end of it?
-Somebody's been bound. -And murdered.
Again the steering wheel had what appeared to be saliva staining on it.
And lastly, we had pubic hairs and faeces present.
I'm sorry, did you say the word faeces?
What certainly appeared to faecal matter, yes.
-That's poo, isn't it? -That's poo.
-Your car's got poo in it. -Is that normal that...?
Well, it's like driving around in a Moroccan prison, isn't it, really?
In the front of his car.
After the forensic tests, my colleagues were very distressed.
Oh, God.
So, we decided to pull over
and see which of our cars was the most thief proof.
This meant finding some thieves who insisted that we pixelate their faces.
Unfortunately the pixelating was done by a man who'd just had his car nicked.
Our thieves with the pixelated... chests
will now see how quickly they can break into the cars and drive them away.
Are you ready, chaps? Here we go. Three, two, one, go!
I felt sure at this point that thanks to the double locks and the immobiliser,
my car would finally start to come good.
I think you'll find they'll be a while getting in.
-He's into mine. -Oh, he's in yours!
Yeah, but even though... Okay, he's in, but I think you'll find...
That's ridiculous! That was honestly...
That was just no time.
Your car is now on a cross-Channel ferry on its way to Uzbekistan.
It really is quite tense now.
-Come on, Jeremy's thief. -Come on, James's thief.
Come on, Jeremy's thief.
However, after 20 minutes, both our cars were still where we'd left them.
So, we decided to call it a draw.
Unsurprisingly, the thief decided to return my car,
which meant he could explain the reason it was so easy to steal
is the ignition barrel is all worn smooth inside,
so you could start it with the handle of a teaspoon, or a lollipop stick.
I think it has done more than 94,000 miles.