Amazon’s The Grand Tour approached the Original London Sightseeing Tour for help with its latest TV episode when a car needed to be placed on the top of an open-top bus.
The former Top Gear cast of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May now have their own car show on Amazon Prime TV, The Grand Tour, which is now in its third season. [wlm_nonmember][…]
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In an episode called ‘The Youth Vote’, which was first aired on 15 March, Clarkson, Hammond and May had to promote three hot hatchbacks to millennials. The vehicles involved were the Ford Fiesta ST, Volkswagen Polo GTI and the Toyota Yaris GRMN. The first test was to prove to the millennials which car was best by means of putting the cars through their paces on the track at Enstone Airfield in Oxfordshire, which was then followed by showing how environmentally-friendly the cars were.
The final test was to take the cars to London, and the presenter who got their car noticed the most on their own Instagram account, by way of picture likes, would be the winner of this test. James May, or Captain Slow as he is known by his fellow presenters, decided that the best way to get his Toyota Yaris GRMN noticed was to place it on the top of an Original London Sightseeing Tour (OLST) bus.
Sam Nicholls, Marketing Manager at RATP Group-owned OLST said: “The opportunity came about after we were contacted by Chump Productions who were looking to use a double-decker bus for one of their features on The Grand Tour. We were of course delighted to assist; it’s not every day you drive around central London with a car on the top deck of a sightseeing bus!
“The public response has been very positive with both The Grand Tour and our social media accounts getting plenty of likes.”
The episode shows James travelling around the capital whilst sat in the car placed on top of the Ayats Bravo City-bodied Volvo B7L open-top bus, much to the amusement of watching public on the streets below and the offices he passes.
James did not have an Instagram account prior to this episode. While creating his account he found out that someone had been pretending to be him so he reported this to Instagram. He posted the image of the Toyota Yaris on top of the open top bus, only to find a few hours later that Instagram had deleted his account and not the fake one. Needless to say he lost that particular challenge, but regained more points as he did a YouTube video of himself unboxing the Toyota Yaris. 
