What I'd Do Differently: Richard Hammond

With Jeremy Clarkson and James May, Hammond, 42, hosts the BBC's Top Gear. We caught up with him recently while he was in the U.S. taping BBC America's Crash Course.


C/D: You’ve been in the States for six weeks. Are you homesick for England?

RH: No. One, I brought my wife and daughters over for the middle two weeks. And also, I’m really enjoying coming here. I travel a lot for work, obviously. But because of the shared language, as far as that sharing goes, America seems in some ways more foreign than many of the other places I go. And I’ve wondered why. I’m sure it’s because of that shared language that we can cut to the chase and get to the subtleties that make your life different. If I’m in Italy or Japan, I just want to work out how to say “beer” and “laundry” in the hotel. Whereas in the States, very quickly you’re actually sitting with guys and talking about what their lives are like. What they do. What matters to them. What their hopes, aspirations, and fears are.

C/D: Top Gear is being watched more and more here. Are you being recognized?

RH: Surprisingly, yes. We set out to make the best car show we could 10 years ago. That’s all we set out to do. That’s all we still do. There was no artifice, no cynicism about its creation. We didn’t sit down and think, “If we get three guys with these personalities . . . and then we do this . . .” We really didn’t. It’s luck, time, place, context, audience. Things lined up, and it’s found a global audience. We’re very lucky. You can have many careers before one of them involves a hit on that scale. I’ve done this job for 23 years, and I’m a very lucky boy.

C/D: It’s a hit on anyone’s scale.

RH: It boggles our minds. But it hasn’t changed it, really. After I come back from this, I’ll be in the office the following week and we’ll be sitting down having the usual meeting we have at the beginning of the season, saying, “Where are we going, and what are we doing?” We’re not thinking, “If  we do this, it will appeal to a big audience across South Africa or Australia or New Zealand or wherever.” We just do what we do.

C/D: Isn’t the problem with the American Top Gear that it is by its nature an artifice? It’s following your example.

RH: When we set out to do our show, nobody gave a crap. It was a pokey little car show on BBC Two. Nobody swiveled around to see us. In Australia, our Top Gear is huge. So the poor guys down there, when they got their own version, the whole nation swivels around and has a look. They were under massive pressure. We were afforded the opportunity to evolve—and I’m going to use a television buzzword—organically. They let us do that because the audience wasn’t there. From all the comments I’m getting from Americans watching the American Top Gear, it’s getting there. Given a little bit of time, they’ll find their own characters, their own way of doing things, and they won’t be emulating ours.


C/D: Is Top Gear still about cars?

RH: Central to the show—always has been and always will be—are the cars. It has to be. The moment you neglect the gearheads, two things happen: One, they turn away and never forgive you. And two, the credibility of the show, the believability of it, the thing upon which the whole thing pivots, is gone. There is no magic. Because, suddenly, we’d then be three guys saying, “Hey, we’re going to goof around and do silly stuff.”  You’ll never think of anything crazier to do than people can think of themselves. So it has to be rooted in something. It has to be in the pursuit of something.

C/D: How does Crash Course, which premieres this spring, relate to that Top Gear sense of authenticity?

RH: Oh, come on. It’s about big machines; machines that have a job to do. I love vehicles with a purpose. That’s why I prefer Porsches to Ferraris. I like things that have a job to do and do it, foremost. Which would you rather have? Do you want to talk about it in the bar, or do you want to drive it? I’ve just sold a Lamborghini that I loved, but thankfully I’ve kept my 911.

C/D: So will you keep your 997 Carrera S, or will you get the new 991?

RH: I haven’t driven it. And the drive is everything with that car. I simply don’t care about anything until I’ve driven it. If there’s that dynamic transfer of weight toward the back when you give it a boot full, and it goes fractionally light on the front wheels; if I can sit in the passenger’s seat blindfolded and be driven and know it’s a 911, then, yeah, I’ll probably change. If not, I’ve decided I’m going to wear mine out. I reckon that in one lifetime, you’ve only got time to take one 911 from new to the grave.

C/D: Is there anything you’d have done differently?

RH: It would be good to not work with a six-foot-five host who just hits me all the time for being short. But, no. Because if  you change one thing, you change a whole load of other Things.

I love vehicles with a purpose.