Richard Hammond's Top Gear International Specials, One By One

Feature-length episodes, not studio segments

Alongside the regular studio-and-track format, Top Gear built a run of feature-length destination specials. Each one dropped Clarkson, Hammond and May somewhere far from Dunsfold Aerodrome with a budget car each and a route to complete. These are distinct from the single-route European special covered on the Perfect Road Trip page. The four covered here are the international, multi-day expedition format the show became almost as well known for.

Botswana Special (2007)

Broadcast on 4 November 2007 as part of Series 10, this special sent the trio roughly 1,000 miles across Botswana in cars each bought for under £1,500. The route ran from the Zimbabwean border to Namibia, by way of the Makgadikgadi Pan, the Kalahari and the Okavango Delta. Clarkson drove a 1981 Lancia Beta Coupé that gave him constant mechanical trouble. May’s 1985 Mercedes-Benz 230E turned out to be the most reliable of the three. Hammond’s car became the one that lasted: a 1963 Opel Kadett he nicknamed Oliver. He shipped it back to Britain afterwards, and it remains part of his personal car collection today.

Vietnam Special (2008)

The Series 12 finale, broadcast 28 December 2008, swapped cars for motorbikes. The route ran roughly 1,000 miles from Ho Chi Minh City to Ha Long Bay in eight days — a route the episode itself noted American forces had not managed in ten years of war. The format leaned harder into mechanical breakdown as entertainment than the car-based specials had. Hammond’s bike broke down repeatedly. The final challenge saw all three convert their motorbikes into makeshift watercraft to reach a floating bar in the bay, and May capsized twice along the way.

Bolivia Special (2009)

Series 14’s special, broadcast 27 December 2009, is one of the more highly regarded entries in the whole run. The three were dropped in the Bolivian rainforest with 4x4s bought for up to £3,500 each, tasked with reaching the Pacific coast. The route crossed genuinely difficult, high-altitude terrain along the way — conditions the earlier African and Vietnamese specials had only partly touched on.

Middle East Special (2010)

Broadcast 26 December 2010 as part of Series 16, this special covered a 1,200-mile road trip from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Bethlehem, loosely following the route of the biblical Three Wise Men. It ran through northern Iraq, southern Turkey and the Syrian desert. Hammond drove a Fiat Barchetta on the trip, Clarkson a Mazda MX-5 and May a BMW Z3 — three deliberately unglamorous budget cars for a route that passed through Raqqa, Palmyra and Damascus before finishing at the Mount of Olives.

Why the specials outlasted the studio format

The studio segments dated quickly once the presenting line-up changed. The destination specials have aged rather better, still turning up in clip compilations and streaming reruns years after their original broadcast. Part of that is simple production value: a feature-length film shot across a real, difficult route reads differently from a half-hour studio segment. Part of it is that these episodes gave Hammond’s TV career some of its most quoted moments outside the show’s regular format.