In case you missed it, a few weeks ago the final episode, rather the final adventure of The Grand Tour, was released on Amazon Prime. This was the last motoring show done by the British trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. Over the previous quarter century, these three presenters, first on BBC’s Top Gear and later on Amazon Prime Video have entertained audiences across the world and have been an inspiration to many of us who love automobiles and travel with their crazy adventures across the world.
It made for a great segment when they went to the (magnetic) North Pole, or the time they came to India and had to abandon their cars in the Spiti Valley. And when they drove through the immense Makgadikgadi salt plains in Botswana. The last show, and sorry for any spoilers here, was a sort of ‘Best Of’: modified car-boats across a lake filled with crocodiles, cars pretending to be trains on tracks, and a final trip in Botswana along with a reunion with their old motors. If you haven’t seen the show(s), I’d highly recommend it for the evolving bond between the hosts, a mix of cars, camaraderie, and a lot of middle-aged male bonding.
All three of them have moved on to other pursuits. May, for example, has his own cooking and travel shows on Prime Video. Earlier this year, he traveled to India, and while that show was a bit cliched, he made a cameo in a Bengali television serial about the early years of Narendranath Dutta, the man we know as Swami Vivekananda. Hammond has specials on National Geographic and Clarkson—the most brash (and most popular) of the three—has the immensely popular Clarkson’s Farm on Prime Video as well. The show is so heart-rending that even The Guardian, once a fortress against Clarkson’s antics, seems to have fallen for it (and him).
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End of an era and BMW i5 M60
But why quit motoring television? These three were still immensely popular globally, and the BBC still mints money from licensing older episodes of Top Gear. I guess age does catch up with everyone. Let me assure you, driving for days on end through remote, rough paths is a physical and mental struggle for anyone. Clarkson had something to say in his column in The Sun, where he argued that modern cars, especially electric ones, have lost their soul. They’re not ‘fun’ anymore.
And you know what? I agree with him for the large part. Just like you don’t get any truly atrocious cars anymore, you don’t see standout vehicles in the mass market either. Yes, electric cars are practical, cost-effective, and definitely less guilt-inducing, especially if you live in North India, where a pall of smog surrounds us every winter, quietly sapping away days—maybe even years—from our lives. Not polluting from the tailpipe is certainly welcome.
However, every once in a while there is a car, even an electric one, that makes you change your mind. The new BMW i5 M60 is a Rs 1.2 crore car and for that kind of money, it’s expected to be fun, but I really did not expect it to be this kind of manic fun.
Then again, when a car has 600 horsepower—four times what you would get from your top-spec Cretas and Seltos, heck—that is more than double of what you get on a standard petrol BMW 5-series. Sure, electric cars have this ‘on-off’ vibe, where pressing the accelerator makes you go boom, there is no moderation. In this car, it feels like someone has found an extra speed setting on your ceiling fan.
You don’t forget what Clarkson said, and you feel it too when you drive this car. You can select a mode on the infotainment system that plays ‘Iconic Sounds’ through the excellent Bowers&Wilkins audio system, but I’d switched it off. And while this BMW went fast like a BMW M car should, went around turns with the precision you would expect, it’s worth noting that the BMW M division is where the German carmaker assigns its top engineers to extract the best performance from a vehicle.
Thanks to the superior weight balance of an electric vehicle and its all-wheel drive system, the BMW i5 M60 handled better than any M car I’ve driven in the past. There was no risk of the tail sliding out and the need for counter-steering. But then again, that is what makes a M car fun, that and the noise. The sheer violence of the big lump of metal under the hood churning thousands of times a minute and the sound it makes as it converts dinosaur juice to forward motion.
I know that for the next generation of drivers, this will feel natural. And for automotive content creators, rattling off numbers from a press release rather than experiencing the real thing will be normal. There will be a crazy electric vehicle like the i5 M60 every once in a while but most will be boring toaster-shaped and silent ‘mobility solutions’. I enjoyed this new BMW, but I had to play good old 1980’s heavy metal music to really enjoy the drive, because that elusive term ‘feel’? I didn’t really get that here.
Things are changing in the motoring world and they’re changing fast. And the end of the road for the world’s most beloved automotive show and this new BMW are both emblematic of that.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)