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The Grand Tour Advertising Top Gear

Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond crash their cars in Amazon's The Grand Tour stunt

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

November 15, 2016 | 3 min read

Will the Grand Tour be absolute car crash TV? Recent stunts from Amazon suggest that its upcoming flagship show featuring former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will be.

The Grand Tour stunt

The Grand Tour stunts

Three synchronized car crashes, one in London’s Kings Cross , another in Berlin, and the final one in Los Angeles saw badly damaged cars abandoned in the middle street clearly emblazoned with the show’s branding.

A badly-damaged Toyota Prius with the registration plate M4Y provided Londoners the chance to take selfies next to the crash as a means of publicizing the new TV series airing 18 November.

In Germany, a red Toyota Prius looks to have been dropped from a great height – it carries the H4MMOND registration.

Similarly, later in the day, Jeremy Clarkson's Prius hit Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, featuring the plate ‘CL4RK50N’.

The show, available only on Amazon Video (available to Prime users), looks to establish a global audience, with the crew having visited Johannesburg, California, Whitby, Rotterdam, Lapland and Stuttgart, with Nashville, Loch Ness and Dubai to come.

The stunt also aligns with Amazon’s announcement that for a limited time, Amazon customers can pay £59, down from £79, for their first year of Prime.

When the show gets released on Friday producers will be able to breathe a sigh of relief as its unlikely to be under as heavy scrutiny as the BBC's Top Gear. THe reason for this, Amazon will not release viewing figures, making it almost to compare the popularity of it with any degree of accuracy.

The show's producer claimed he will have to use Twitter to gauge whether audiences like it.

The Grand Tour Advertising Top Gear

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