The Grand Tour Guide to the World. Коллектив авторов

them with new stresses, such as the kind brought on by realising that your flight home leaves in 20 minutes and you are still on a coach driven by a shaggy-haired gentleman who believes this is the correct direction despite the exhortations of the other passengers and the local man we ran over a few miles back.

      But that’s all to come. A GO AWAY MAY holiday starts from the moment you leave your house and have to stand outside it for 47 minutes because your taxi driver is James May and he’s had to go back to get your tickets, which he forgot when he left his office.

      Once aboard your aeroplane you really can relax, knowing that up in the cockpit the controls are being smoothly operated by James May, who is a fully qualified pilot AND knows the names of two other airports, though neither is where you’re supposed to be going.

      Finally, you reach your destination hotel, usually within two or three days of the stated arrival time. As you wait for news of the other people in your party, you can sit back in a brown corduroy chair, sip on a pint of bitter and reflect on how the relevant authorities will probably find them soon.

      Then it’s time to check in to your room, personally organised by James May and containing everything he himself would look for in a hotel, by which we mean two bottles of warm ginger beer and a massive switch that turns all the lights off at once.

      As evening falls it’s time to visit the restaurant, where you can peruse a high-quality menu knowing that James May has curated the selection personally and that, as a result, it’s just a single piece of cardboard with two kinds of pie written on it.

      Your holiday starts here. Where it ends, no one knows. James has lost the bit of paper with your details on it.

      SAMPLE ACTIVITIES ON YOUR GO AWAY MAY HOLIDAY

      The Lazenby-Ruddock transmission overdrive system. A brief guide.

      (Running time: 9 hours)

      Stripping, inspecting, cleaning and rebuilding a Thrubson 8J-80 carburettor.

      (Running time: 14 hours)

      Radial-engined aircraft of the inter-war years. A brief history.

      (Running time: 19 hours and 2 days)

THE GREATEST CAR-MAKING COUNTRIES ON EARTH

      USA

      Current annual production: 12 million

      Epicentre: Detroit

      Most famous cars: Ford Model T, Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Thunderbird, and lots of others

      Best current model: Ford GT

      The USA has two solid claims to being the greatest car-making nation in history, the first being that mass production of cars was perfected here. The second is that, from the Model T to the Mustang, it’s made so much memorable stuff. Detroit’s best days might be behind it, but the old town rose from the dead after the financial crash and isn’t done for yet, even if a lot of the assembly of stuff in the USA now happens under foreign ownership in un-car-y places like Tennessee and Alabama. Even so, the fact remains that America still builds and buys a lot of cars. And some of them are even quite good.

      GREAT BRITAIN

      Current annual production: 1.8 million

      Epicentre: Birmingham

      Most famous cars: Mini, Jaguar E-Type, Range Rover, Morris Minor, Jaguar XJ6, and so on.

      Best current model: Range Rover

      Great Britain was once the world’s second-largest car-making nation after the USA and once boasted the world’s largest factory, the Austin plant at Longbridge in Birmingham. Britain came up with ground-breaking new models like the Mini, which showed that front-wheel-drive was the way to make a small car, and the Range Rover, which showed that 4x4s weren’t just for farmers. But that was all a long time ago. What does Britain have now? Well, it’s got over 30 factories, from the vast mass production of Nissan in Sunderland to the gentler pace of tiny companies like Ariel in Somerset, and they’re making more cars now than they have in two decades, from the Mini and Honda Civic to the Morgan Three-wheeler and McLaren 720S. When it comes to designing, developing and building cars, Britain is still officially ‘quite busy’. And ‘quite good’. Any more would lack British understatement.