Is Richard Hammond taking Oliver back to Botswana?!

[Music] one of the unforeseen outcomes of setting up and running a classic car restoration workshop is that i've never got anything to drive seriously and i should actually have foreseen it it's a phenomenon james and i have called car scatter and it can happen as soon as you've got more than one car maybe a couple of motorbikes you lend one to somebody one of them breaks down somewhere one of them you've left in somebody's house after a party basically no matter how many vehicles you've got at some point you leave your front door and there's nothing to drive to work in well if you add in a trailer a workshop clients cars show cars demo cars company cars your own cars for me it means i leave the house in regularly the land rover's gone i've got none of my classics all the company show cars are out working and well that's what's happened today long story short i mean oliver i'm not saying oliver is the last resort but neither am i saying that i drive in very often he is a little underpowered a bit underdeveloped in the engine department but if you want to cheer yourself up ever and all of us near lift the bonnet and have a look there's there's no engine in there it's like they've got to put it in it's sub 900cc and and my new unit on the plus side this precious ridiculous little yellow car that i've owned for 15 years now since i drove it across botswana still makes me smile makes other people smile too look she's smart that advents but she did smash she smiled could have been wind the honesty simplicity and practicality with which this little car was put together what 1962 a lot of years ago still delights me nothing pretentious in here i am a bit concerned though i mean it always starts this car most reliable starter i have or have ever had but i'm a bit worried about how tired it might be because we did a little sort of invited guests only launch event for the workshop you might have seen it on the show and you will also have seen that oliver was driven to it by neil and andrew who together they're sturdy units i did warn them not to crash because if they did it would just look like a tin of spam with faces in it they didn't crash it but i think they might have exhausted the poor creature i mean a sub 900cc engine they only had 46 horsepower when it was new trying to drag them up the hills of herefordshire i was a bit worried you made it i'll never tire of this car somebody said me the other day oh you could sell oliver for a fortune and i'm sorry yes it's romantic and froze tinted whatevers but no it's mine and i couldn't that would yes i'm i'm mad but it would feel like a betrayal i'm deeply and desperately fond of this little car and that's that but that's all right lots of people have a lucky stone or a favorite coat or their best old boots you know what i mean those things that you just become attached to i don't know there's anything wrong with that my other favorite game is mentioning things i want to do to change oliver it always provokes a reaction i'll turn them into a rally car don't you dare well actually when i was driving this car across botswana on a certain well-known car show i used to do i knew i wanted to take it out definitely that was a give he was coming over me but also i thought i really want to do is paint him metal flake purple and put a small block v8 in lift him at the back slightly and make him a sort of hot rod but in minuscule scale i haven't done that am i i can't promise i won't it's my car and whatever i do to it can be undone and now we're in a classic car restoration workshop so you know maybe what i should do is just repaint restore him myself a car magazine very kindly did painting for me many years ago they did it as a sort of fast restoration over a weekend and it was cool and they've put him actually in the original yellow this was the opal yellow that the car would have been in but when i bought the car it was a slightly more custody yellow which you can see if you ever dig out that old show and watch it i mean it's pretty much in black and white it's that old but you can see it's a custody yellow part of me thinks i'd quite like to return it to that and to do it myself right in the workshop send him down prep it the whole job the whole thing might be that might be what i do also put him back on steel wheels with hubcaps not on these little mini lights which look cute but then that's the other effect of having a classic car restoration workshop one i can never find anything to drive and two when i do i'll start wanting to change it now that's what i call transmission wide i think you can hear that but it's oh yeah i think he's doing more of that since he ground up the hills of herefordshire carrying a 10 and a half of neil and andrew no offense chaps i'm gonna put my elbow out the window i don't know what that was that noise it's worked there and i'm content slipping into fourth and settle into the cruise don't know what that rattle is that's a new rattle i shouldn't be surprised that oliver is always such a reliable starter because i mean he's only got eight moving parts in his engine and each of them is smaller than the parts in your watch so it's gonna work i'd drive it across botswana again quite happily quietly that could be fun i think oliver is like a french car after 10 years that french cars shed all the stuff you don't really need very quickly all falls off electric windows fail you don't need that you don't need all of that you just left with essence of car well oliver started that way they didn't even fit it decluttering that became very fashionable for a while it might still be well that again oliver came decluttered he's not cluttered with a fifth gear with air conditioning or a heater electric windows carpets none of those things i sold my tesla model x recently to prop up the restoration business and i regretted it in some ways because i love the car and it was doing my bit and for daily work i was not using up precious fuel that i'd rather use in my mustang but this is a green option 1962 so that's nearly 60 years old the carbon footprint generated by making this car is well and truly in the past he sips fuel on account of a minuscule engine requires minimal input of parts the creation of which generates carbon dioxide this is actually a green car incredibly green all over you the future mate save you're a bizarre i need to clean this headlining i've said this before on drivetrain but it's got little stars in it they sparkle it's like the rolls-royce headlining but about 30 000 pounds cheaper but it needs to clean honestly it still has that same effect this commute to the workshop just reminds me that you know it has a live film the tv show that we're making about it it's great that's about setting up the workshop and we're nearly there but the workshop itself has a life that goes on beyond and i am absolutely determined at some point in the next few months i'm going to take this little car in and restore it myself it's great when a car is this limited every hill climbed is an achievement every mile completed is something to be celebrated special i'm gonna bowl them into this round about our high speed [Music] yeah still got it [Music] nearly here this is starting to feel like home now this place it really is one workshop oh lads are in uh and busy by the looks of it well there will be there'll be work to be done today and if you want to see what we do get up to click the link in description see you in there [Music] you

Channel: DRIVETRIBE

Views: 705,144

Keywords: jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, cars, top gear, the grand tour

Id: fdslpsud4-s

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021