It is therefore imperative that the world turns its attention to an alternative for oil. Now. That - and there's no argument on this - means hydrogen. And it is equally important that the car makers drop their headlong rush for hybrids because if they don't, not one of them will still be around to capitalise on the bright new dawn when it comes.

After advising an Oxford-based friend to buy a Range Rover: “It is far more eco-friendly to buy a car built just 50 miles away, even if it is a massive off-roader with a turbocharged V8, than it is to buy a Toyota Prius, the components of which have covered half a million miles before they are nailed into the vague shape of a car and shipped to your front door. However, as eco people are not very bright, I fear my friend’s neighbours may not see it this way.” But of course, Clarkson was won over by the “slayer-of-worlds” 635 horsepower (“What a rush”), the motorsport cornering sophistication even on bumpy, potholed roads, the familiar carbon-fibre-clad interior and the understated exterior. Are these the 23 ugliest cars ever made? Gran Turismo movie review The 31 most ridiculous car names ever › More here... A BMW M4 should be rear-wheel-drive, according to Clarkson, and perhaps the styling “is a bit off”, but other than those two quibbles he really couldn’t find anything to fault this car and awarded it five stars – the only model to receive the full complement this year. Unfortunately, it's niche stuff, and Japan has never been very good at that. Japan was always about the bottom line, and the truth is, there's more money to be made selling a billion Areolas than there is to be made from selling half a dozen fire-breathing V10 LFAs.

Some of JC’s most biting car quips

While he didn’t really like the looks of the new model or the interior touchscreen that “baffles and annoys everyone over the age of twelve,” he found it powerful, good to drive and, as has always been a characteristic of the Golf GTI, just as comfortable on a hard B-road blast as it is for sedate, everyday driving. Noticing the proliferation of USB ports around the cabin, including in the sides of the front seats, he concluded: “This … is a car where everyone can be connected, so who cares that it takes about a year to get from 0 to 60?” Clarkson starts this review by wondering if anyone has ever really dreamt of owning a Vauxhall, even the fast ones; the implication being they’re among the least desirable cars on the road. And the new Astra he was given to test had a three-cylinder, 1.2-litre engine that, in his words, makes it just about able to beat a Citroen BX diesel away from the lights. Today the average [American] petrol pump attendant is capable, just, of turning on a pump when you prepay. But if you pay for two pumps to be turned on to fill two cars, you can, if you stare carefully, see wisps of smoke coming from her fat, useless, war-losing, acne-scarred, gormless turnip face.” If you liked reading Jeremy Clarkson’s best and worst cars of 2021, you might also be interested to read Clarkson on The Grand Tour Series 3’s globetrotting high jinks

Daihatsu used to make a car called the GTti. It was the first road car ever to generate 100 horsepower from one litre, and because it had three cylinders it sounded like it was demented. I loved it so much that, on the press launch in Japan, I did half a lap, crashed and flew home. Does Daihatsu make a car like that today? Something fun? Something for the enthusiast that lives in us all? No. It makes something called the Sirion, which sits in the world of cars like a bunch of wilting petrol station chrysanthemums would sit at the Chelsea Flower Show.

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Clarkson claims that he doesn’t usually like “cars that produce more than 700 horsepower because they make no sense on the road,” but “this one delivers its power so smoothly and so righteously it makes you grin, not soil yourself.”

Jeremy hated all the electronic interference in the Genesis GV80 particularly the predictive suspension, but coming a close second was the lane-keeping assistance that he said just didn’t work on the narrow roads of the Cotswolds, wrenching the wheel hither and tither. This is a car that made me laugh out loud. I took it into my fields one morning and made a terrible mess, but I didn’t care because it was a complete riot.” 2. BMW M550i xDrive This review was Clarkson at his most forlorn, seemingly resigned to the idea that speed and fun are no longer priorities in motoring, as people now prize comfort and efficiency above all else. He referred to the hybrid “Lexus ES Something or Other” saloon as “a Prius in a businessman’s suit”, describing its performance as “not even on nodding terms with the concept of speediness.” But Clarkson said there was a significant caveat: because the hybrid power is really there as a result of government policymakers, he said, “Ferrari didn’t build [the 296 GTB] to be the best it could be — but built it to be the best current political thinking says it can be.”The steering is vague, the engine is coarse, the gearbox is constantly confused, the wind noise is laughable and the interior looks like a Sanyo music centre from the late 1970s.” 3. Cupra Formentor Did you hear that Jeremy Clarkson is a ‘hero’ to farmers after showing how tough farming really is? Writing last week in The Guardian, the mad old eco-fool George Monbiot went even further, saying that the Lake District is a chemical desert, devoid of wildlife and that the tradition of hill farming — the very thing the people with titles and CBEs want to preserve — is responsible. Because the sheep are eating the trees and the mountains and causing floods. Earthquakes, too, I should imagine.”

Environmentalists make out that the planet is some kind of wondrous, self-sustaining entity and engineering has ruined it. They look at the gun, the car and the jet engine as instruments of Satan, but the mosquito has killed more than all three put together.” A man called Swampy had taken up residence in a tunnel just outside Newbury in Berkshire and started talking about something called “the environment”. Now there had been lots of anti-state, anti-system Swampies in the past, shouting about workers’ rights and peace and communism, but none had gained any traction with the middle classes. [Now] Leninism had a new face. It was the face of a drowning polar bear. And everyone seemed to like it.” For a book entitled "On Cars" there are oddly many sections with barely a mention of cars focusing on other concerns of JC who has a rant and an opinion on just about everything, like BBC Radio: Jeremy Clarkson gets under the bonnet in Clarkson on Cars - a collection of his motoring journalism.

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I once bought a Scirocco GLi because Car magazine said it could do the 0 to 60 sprint in 8.1 seconds, which meant it was better in every way than my mate’s Chevette HS, which took 8.2 seconds,” he wrote. “We’d argue about that tenth for hours because we knew that the faster your car accelerated, the better and more attractive you were as a person. I don’t have a clue what’s caused the change in attitude, but no one seems to want fun from their family cars anymore. They just want USB ports.” His opinionated but humorous tongue-in-cheek writing and presenting style has often generated much public reaction to his viewpoints. His actions both privately and as a Top Gear presenter have also sometimes resulted in criticism from the media, politicians, pressure groups and the public.