Jeremy Clarkson “Wound Up” By Chris Harris’ Tesla Track Test Comments

With his time on The Grand Tour coming to an end, Jeremy Clarkson might be settling into a new life as a farmer and pub landlord, but it appears he’s become involved in a different sort of beef to the stuff he’s rearing at Diddly Squat.

In a column for tabloid newspaper The Sun, Clarkson has spoken out about comments made by another former Top Gear presenter, Chris Harris, insinuating that Clarkson’s 2008 Top Gear track test of the original Tesla Roadster included fabricated elements.

The comments come from Harris’ appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, during which he also opened up about Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s filming accident that led to the show’s indefinite cancellation, as well as the online abuse he faced when he took up a Top Gear role in 2015.

During the film in question, the Tesla’s battery is shown running flat after less than 55 miles, and it’s claimed a full recharge would take 16 hours. Tesla responded by claiming that the cars provided never dipped below 20 per cent charge during the shoot. After several years of back and forth between Top Gear, the BBC and Tesla, the then-nascent electric car maker filed a lawsuit against the BBC in 2011, accusing it of libel.

Tesla’s suit was ultimately dismissed in 2013, although the fiasco led to Top Gear and anyone associated with the show being effectively blacklisted from driving a Tesla for a number of years.

Now, in Harris’ podcast appearance, host Joe Rogan doubled down on Tesla’s claim, saying that the show pretended that the Roadster ran out of charge and that “they did it for a sketch”. Harris went on to say that that iteration of Top Gear would occasionally “reverse engineer an outcome” for some segments of the show.

In his column, Clarkson responded, “There are lots of made-up stories about what happened when I hosted Top Gear”. He made reference to the Porsche number plate that saw the team chased out of Argentina after locals took it as a reference to the Falklands War, saying that “in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

“But it does wind me up something rotten when Joe and Chris perpetuate the myth that my Tesla road test was unfair. I know no one believes me… But it’s true. On Top Gear, we cocked about and upset a lot of people over the years. But our road tests were always scrupulously fair.”

Ultimately, both Harris’ iteration of Top Gear and Clarkson’s of The Grand Tour have now been put to rest, so hopefully, all this is water under the bridge. Maybe we’re looking at the next Kendrick versus Drake here, though. But probably not.

Jeremy Clarkson image: Petr Magera, CC BY 2.0