First Look At The Penultimate Grand Tour Special, Out On 16 February

We’ve known for a while that the second-to-last episode of the Grand Tour would be set in the West African nation of Mauritania, and now, finally, we have more details and a release date – 16 February.

Subtitled Sand Job (nice), the feature-length special will see Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May cross the Sahara desert, retracing the original route of the Dakar Rally. That’s an infamously tough journey even in specialised desert racing machinery, but it wouldn’t be The Grand Tour without some extra peril, so the team will be undertaking the journey in some of the most inappropriate vehicles possible: big, front-engined, open-top sports cars, more suited to cruising the south of France than tackling the biggest sand desert in the world.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in The Grand Tour: Sand Job

Jeremy has chosen a V6 Jaguar F-Type, Richard an Aston Martin DB9 Volante, and James a Maserati GranCabrio, all of which will be modified to take on the challenging terrain. Clearly, we’re a long way from the days of the three-figure budgets seen in early Top Gear cheap car challenges.

The journey will begin in northern Mauritania, with their cars arriving on the world’s longest train, a 1.2-mile-long beast that transports iron ore. From there, they’ll plunge through the country, dealing with sand storms, vertiginous ravines, and actual minefields, all the while protecting their vital fuel bowser that will keep the cars going in this remote part of the world. They’ll be modifying and botching their cars along the way to keep them going in these brutal conditions.

Finally, to cross into Senegal and head to the original Dakar Rally’s famous beachfront finish, the trio will have to cross a wide river – with no bridge. By the looks of it, this will involve homemade raft contraptions of some sort, which should end well.

The Grand Tour presenters take a van across a river

It was the filming of this special that Clarkson said made him realise how “unfit and fat and old” he was, leading in part to his decision to step back from the show. Sand Job will premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime on Friday 16 February.

We know there’s still one more special to come after this, filmed in Zimbabwe, which Amazon says is coming “later this year.” Interestingly, Amazon refers to that as the “final special of the Grand Tour with the trio,” reinforcing the suggestion that the show could continue in one form or another after the departure of Clarkson, Hammond and May.