The Man in the White Suit_ The Stig, Le Mans, The Fast Lane and Me - Ben Collins [143]
Jeremy did some quality driving between out-takes of him scurrying about on a minefield rigged with pyrotechnics, sneaking up behind the tank and being ‘shot at’. He placed the Evo with absolute precision on the edge of a cliff and tore around the place with abandon.
We then waited a Top Gear hour (fifteen of our Earth minutes) for a deployable bridge to extend over a ravine, the gag being that Jeremy would make use of it whilst his pursuers lost sight of him.
‘Stay on me, Phil. Keep cameras on me, OK?’
‘Oh shit,’ Casper muttered, spinning his camera in JC’s direction.
I skipped over to Phil. ‘If he hits that bridge at more than 15mph the engineers reckon it might shake him off.’
Phil kiboshed any Dukes of Hazard aspirations Jeremy might have been harbouring and we filmed him grudgingly executing a model crossing.
The Evo had the measure of the military until the live firing range. The soldiers locked and loaded with live 1:1 tracer and lubed up their respective working parts.
In spite of much lobbying from environmentalists and his fellow presenters, we decided against Jeremy continuing to drive the Evo in person. Steve fitted it with a remote control unit and Jeremy ran off some in-car footage to marry up with the external shots.
A lot was being made of the precise direction the Evo would follow. The rules of the range required cameras to film from a long way back, so the operators were keen to fix visual references of the proposed route in order to pull focus on their lenses. My experience of remote-controlled vehicles suggested it would travel in every direction but the planned one.
Andy had the soldiers line their vehicles broadside to the range along a raised concrete platform. They gripped the butts of their guns against clenched jaws and racked the working parts. Interspersed between them, our film crews loaded fresh batteries and aimed their weaponry with similar anticipation. A few seconds later, the Evo set off.
The machinegunners let rip. One of the Gimpies jammed within a few seconds. ‘Stoppage …’ He cleared it, but without adjusting the gas, so it jammed again.
Sure enough, the Evo soon developed a mind of its own. Under heavy fire it veered off the dirt track and took cover in the undulating heather. The car dived up and down the network of gullies, wildly out of control, giving the gunners a serious run for their money.
A sustained burst of .50cal finally tore holes the size of a fist through the engine block, steering wheel, seat and boot lid. The editors combined the footage so brilliantly in post-production that it looked like the rounds were licking Jeremy’s heels. More’s the pity.
Chapter 34
The White Bubble
Three million visitors descended on Blackpool in September 2008 to witness a million lights coming to life. They clutched dribbly ice creams, squeezed into tight swimming costumes, queued for musicals, looked for thrills and got the beers in. Meanwhile, in Basel, Switzerland, three middle-aged men were preparing to run out of fuel trying to join them.
Our heroes were aiming to make the 750-mile journey on one tankful, in a real-time assessment of fuel economy. The first to arrive would join the ranks of other luminaries – such as Kermit the Frog and Ken Dodd– to light the coastal resort’s Big Candle. If none of them made it, The Stig would step into the breach.
The logistics of tracking all the way across Europe with three crews was not to be underestimated. I brought in pro drivers to pedal the crews aboard three supercharged Range Rovers. It was still a colossal workload because the whole race was effectively filmed live. There would be no pick-ups.
Clarkson set off aboard a twin turbo Jaguar XJ6 TDVI, which had a range of 655 miles on a light foot. He didn’t have a light foot. May drove a Subaru Legacy Diesel with a range of 706 miles, while Hammond went for a puny three-cylinder VW