Richard Hammond, as you might be aware, is not simply a famous TV presenter, he’s also the owner of a classic car repair shop called The Smallest Cog. He may also soon be the owner of a racing team known as Team Smallest Cog.
That is the revelation from the latest video on DriveTribe, in which Hammond gives viewers a tour of his personal vehicle storage barn. A humbly decorated storehouse, albeit one with plenty in it, The Grand Tour host runs through his collection of cars and his plans for them.
At the end of the video, he explains his “really big plans” for a blue 1972 MGB GT. Not only that, but he also explains how he came to own the car, which was apparently meant to appear on one of his very last episodes as host of Top Gear.
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“It is the last car I drove on Top Gear. Before everything changed,” he explains. “I drove it because we did an item, and we said let’s address classic cars – the other two don’t really like classic cars, I do – I bought this because I thought, well, it’s the archetypal every man classic.”
Hammond confesses, though, that he had never driven one before getting this very car for the production. He says that he couldn’t believe how nice the car was, despite not being a particularly rare nor expensive classic.
“I thought it was the most spectacular little car. It’s got a feeling of completeness to it,” he says. “Actually it’s a crisp, lovely beautifully balanced, Pininfarina-styled, lovely little British coupe and I have a plan for it. A big plan.”
So, he explains, the car will be a way to advertise his garage to passionate owners who want their classics fixed. And there is no one more passionate, nor more in need of repairs, than people who go vintage car racing.
“So I am going to take that racing as Team Smallest Cog, and we are going to race alongside people with other classic cars, and they are going to learn to know us,” Hammond says. “And when we watch them smear their car down a wall and into the tires, we’ll be racing alongside them. I shall give them a business card, and hopefully they’ll give the car to us to straighten.”
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