As the BBC announces its flagship motoring show Top Gear will not return to our screens for “the foreseeable future”, we take a look at the time the programme came to Sussex.
It was confirmed on Monday that the show will take a break after presenter Freddie Flintoff was seriously injured during filming last year.
As years of motoring mayhem come to a close, join us as we look back at when Top Gear visited Sussex.
Episode one of Top Gear’s 17th series featured a segment celebrating the 50th birthday of the E-type Jaguar.
Former host Jeremy Clarkson sets off from Kent in a black E-type and is reduced to a childish mess at how beautiful it is to drive as he thunders through the leafy countryside.
Soon, though, Clarkson introduces us to a car perched atop the rolling South Downs.
The Eagle Speedster is built by a company in Uckfield and designed to look exactly like the E-type but uses modern components.
Clarkson says: “I think this, by a long way, is the most beautiful car I have ever seen. It might actually be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
The host then spends the next few minutes of the segment surrounded by bright red leather, blasting past our county’s pastures beneath a brilliant blue sky.
We rejoin Clarkson at the top of Beachy Head as he complains that the E-type’s 50th birthday was only marked by a short piece of writing on page 16 of The Daily Telegraph.
And, in typical fashion, Clarkson decides this is not good enough so plans a huge birthday bash for his beloved Jag.
“I’ve organised something a little more substantial,” he says as a marching band appears behind him.
“I’ve organised something that recognises this is the soul, the spirit, the beating heart of all that we can be.
“The E-type is not a plucky Brit that’s happy to come home second. Every country has an icon, while this, I put it to you, is ours.”
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The film then cuts to a shot of two Royal Marines abseiling down the cliff face leaving a huge Union Flag draped down the surface, a flypast from two bi-wing aeroplanes out of which a member of the Royal Navy parachute, another flypast from a pair of Spitfires while another Union Flag is flown past emblazoned with the number 50.
Clarkson left the show in 2015 after punching a producer. Co-stars Richard Hammond and James May left with him.
They went on to form rival show The Grand Tour. The trio were spotted filming for their new venture on Beachy Head in 2021.
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