Top Gear

Jeremy, Richard and James drive three lightweight supercars across Europe in search of the best roads in the world. Jeremy finds out what happens when you put a Bentley engine into a Volkswagen Golf and Oscar-winning actress Dame Helen Mirren is the Star In a Reasonably Priced Car.

Jeremy, Richard and James revisit their attempt to build amphibious cars, and face up to one of their biggest and choppiest challenges to date. Plus the Audi R8 attacks the Top Gear track and jazz/pop pianist, bandleader and television presenter Jools Holland (Later With Jools Holland) is the Star In a Reasonably Priced Car.

James test-drives the new Rolls Royce Drophead, Jeremy test drives the Ferrari 599 and Richard races the Bugatti Veyron against the European fighter plane! In the studio are the new Lamborghini Reventon and the self-parking Lexus. Jeremy also drives the Peel car to work! Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood is the Star In a Reasonably Priced Car.

In a Top Gear special, the team travel to Africa where they are challenged to buy a second hand car costing no more than £1,500 and in no way designed to go off road and drive across the wilds of Botswana. Along the way they must negotiate salt pans, rivers and reserves full of animals while facing sweltering heat and suffocating dust.

Richard tests the Aston Martin's V8 Vantage against a jet-pack man. Who will win the Top Gear race from congested West London to London City Airport – James in the new Mercedes GL500, Richard on the latest, state-of-the-art bicycle, Stig on public transport, or Jeremy in a racing speedboat? Jeremy drives the new Caparo T1. The X Factor judge Simon Cowell is the Star In a Reasonably Priced Car.

The new Honda Civic Type-R is put to its paces on the test track. James races the new Alfa Romeo 159 around the Humber estuary – and is beaten by the man in a rubber suit. Jeremy hurtles around in estate cars on Manchester Airport's main runway. Richard and James enter some ageing camper vans in Top Gear's inaugural Motorhome Grand Prix.

Jeremy, Richard and James look back at the heyday of British car-making in the 1970s and check out three British Leyland cars from the era.

Richard drives a Formula 1 Renault. James and Jeremy rampage through the National Motor Museum attempting to find the first car with the control layout we know today, and the Vauxhall VXR8 grunts around the test track. Plus, a BMW that can drive itself, singer James Blunt in a Reasonably Priced Car, and Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton is a very special guest in the studio.

Jeremy, Richard and James enter a 24-hour endurance race in what turns out to be one of their toughest challenges to date. James tries the new Fiat 500 on the mean streets of Budapest, and in a somewhat unfair challenge the Daihatsu Materia takes on the Ascari A10.

Jeremy, James and Richard take the new BMW M3, Mercedes C63 AMG and Audi RS4 down to Spain for a thorough test of performance, handling and which makes you look least like a hair-gelled weasel. Back on home turf, James tests the brand-new Jaguar XF and Richard asks whatever happened to that ultimate symbol of 1960s grooviness, the beach buggy. Doctor Who star David Tennant swaps driving the TARDIS for a Reasonably Priced Car, and Top Gear makes the ultimate Christmas present by turning a G-Wiz into a high-performance radio-controlled car.