The Grand Tour returns to screens with new trio this week

When Oxfordshire farmer Jeremy Clarkson first joined Top Gear as a presenter in the late 1980s, the BBC motoring programme was a very different show.

But its 2002 relaunch, fronted by Mr Clarkson and Richard Hammond, with James May joining the following year, transformed it into a global entertainment phenomenon.

First launched on BBC Two in 1977, Top Gear has gone through numerous revivals and featured a long line-up of presenters.

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Following Mr Clarkson, Mr Hammond and Mr May’s departure from the BBC, the trio reunited for The Grand Tour, which launched on Amazon Prime Video in 2016.

Now, almost a decade after The Grand Tour first launched, a new generation of hosts has taken the reins, with Francis Bourgeois, James Engelsman and Thomas Holland stepping into the spotlight.

The new presenters, who come from backgrounds in social media and YouTube, aim to bring the motoring show to a whole new generation.

Social media star and train enthusiast Mr Bourgeois, whose real name is Luke Nicolson, says he feels both nervous and excited to take on the show following in the footsteps of its original hosts.

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“It’s a tremendous honour, but also a tremendous sense of responsibility, like how have we done it?” says the 26-year-old presenter.

Mr Bourgeois, a qualified mechanical engineer with experience at Rolls-Royce, says his love of trains and cars is equal.

“They are both on the top. And trains and cars came into my life kind of at the same point,” he explains.

“So living in Northwest London, next to Willesden Junction, a hive of railway activity, and then simultaneously around Harlesden, there was quite the plethora of kinds of large sort of exhaust-piped cars that I enjoyed looking at, so that kind of kickstarted it for me.”

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YouTubers Mr Holland and Mr Engelsman, best known for their motoring content, say it was daunting stepping into such big shoes, but the trio quickly felt at home.

Mr Holland, 39, from Canada, says: “Is there a word that’s more terrified than terrified?

“It is scary, but when you’re doing it and when you’re doing it, it feels right. Like the three of us together felt right.

“James and I’ve been doing a lot of car content for a while, so it felt like we were at home making the show.

“But you’ve got in the back of your mind the whole time the kind of legacy of it is something we were very conscious about when we were deciding what to do.”

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Mr Engelsman, 34, adds: “I also think we all have our own separate coping mechanisms. Like Francis’s knees wobble, and for me, I just started believing that the world is a simulation.”

The six-part series sees the trio tackle motoring’s most absurd questions across some of the world’s most challenging terrains.

They will take on daring car stunts and embark on road trips to spectacular locations in the US, Malaysia and Angola.

The new series of The Grand Tour launches on Prime Video on Friday (September 4).