Jeremy Clarkson Quotes

I have never really understood the attraction of MPVs. To me they are the first sign that the driver has given up on life.

Driving this thing (Citroën C8 2.0HDi) is simply terrible. It’s too big, too wobbly and it’s gutless. Honestly, I’d rather walk.

This is without doubt the worst car, not just in its category but in the world. It has a top speed of 88mph but takes so long to reach it that no one has ever lived long enough to verify the claim, the inside is tackier than Anthea Turner’s wedding and you don’t want to think what would happen if it bumped into a lamppost.

Also its name sounds like a disease!

On the Alfa Romeo Brera

I only have to imagine this in black, with tan
leather and I’m nursing a semi!

Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It’s like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You’d just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke’s sweaty face.

They (darts players) should all be called the fat bastard who hates his wife and kids so much he’d rather spend his evenings throwing arrows into a bit of bristle with his fat and disgusting friends.

A general rule of thumb. If a car has less than 100 horsepower, it is never safe to pull into the outside lane if there is a car in sight…even if it’s three miles away. If a car has less than 60 horsepower, it is never safe to pull into the outside lane at all.

A turbo: Exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens and you go faster.

To be born Italian and male is to win the first prize in the lottery of life

Speed has never killed anyone, suddenly becoming stationary… That’s what gets you.

We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging.

We start tonight with the highlight of my childhood. It’s the Ladybird Book of Motorcars from 1963, and as you would imagine it’s full of rubbish really. Just endless boring grey shapes, until you get to page 40, where you find the Maserati 3500 GT. Now this for me, when I was little, was like kind of Jordan and Cameron Diaz. In a bath together. With a Lightning jet fighter. And lots of jelly.

Biathletes need to eat 6.000 calories a day: six thousand! That’s the equivalent of 2 pounds of butter, 70 slices of bread, 112 eggs, 86 tabs of yogurts, 28 potatoes, 117 biscuits and 21 TWIX bars. On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete!

I don’t often agree with the RSPCA as I believe it is an animals duty to be on my plate at supper time.

… the last time someone was as wrong as you, was when a politician stepped off an aeroplane in 1939 waving a piece of paper in the air saying there will be no war with Germany.

The only person to ever look good in the back of a 4-seater convertible was Adolf Hitler.

Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It’s like making a hard core adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You’d just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke’s sweaty face.

Clarkson shouting at a Volvo 340 seconds before it is put through a crusher:

This is for every time I’ve caught you dawdling at junctions, this is for every time I’ve caught you doing 4 miles per hour in a motorway. This is PAYBACK TIME!

I’m gonna have to explain all this to my nine years old boy… Who’s ten I’ve just remembered!

On Global Warming

It’s the coldest march for twenty years because of global warming.

Clarkson on Fog

It is very foggy out there today, but you’ll note The Stig doesn’t have his rear fog lights on, because of course he’s not a blithering idiot.

It’s, um, a mobile phone holder, or as Richard Hammond calls it, a seat!

On nuclear submarines

Britain’s nuclear submarines have been deemed unsafe…probably because they don’t have wheel-chair access.

On the RSPCA

I don’t often agree with the RSPCA as I believe it is an animal’s duty to be on my plate at supper time.

…this car can be vicious. But in a funny way, like a shark in a funny hat

(On the evolution of the Golf GTI between MkI and MkV) I voted for this as the greatest car of the 20th century. Over the years, however, the Golf GTI got bigger, and fatter, and slower. Think of it as Elvis Presley. It started off all athletic and full of vigour, and wound up on the lavatory, an enormous, dribbling hulk.

(To Lewis Hamilton at the NTA Awards) …And if you see Fernando Alonso again, tell him his eyebrows are too big…

You may have seen The Fly II, in which a scientist attempts to teleport a dog. In one of the most gruesome scenes I’ve seen in a film it arrives at its destination completely inside out. Well the Rio is uglier than that. Inside, things get worse.

Small wonder Kia’s importer in Britain is sponsoring the Pedestrian Association’s Walking Bus scheme. The idea is that parents take it in turns to walk a group, or “bus”, of children to their school in a morning. After three days of being transported in the Rio, my kids thought it was a brilliant idea to walk instead. Even though their school is 18 miles away and it was blowing a gale directly from the Canadian tundra.

This car is more fun than the entire French air force crashing into a firework factory.