For more than 20 years, Richard Hammond has made a fine career as one of the best presenters of automotive entertainment. Part of a made up trio Upper Equipment and Grand Tour Very entertaining to watch, he embarks on an epic journey and drives a collection of rare, exotic and sometimes strange machines. He also crashes a lot of the same rare, exotic, and weird machines, regardless of whether they have two wheels, four wheels, or no wheels.
To be fair, don’t crash if you work out like he did early on in the Toyota Aygo. It also doesn’t count if you’re tethered to another car or if someone else is operating your vehicle remotely. That said, there are many examples of Hammond crashing, rolling, or obliterating objects in a wide variety of cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, boats, buses, and trench diggers.
Briefly, we see the famous hill climb in which Hammond over-drives the Rimac Concept One, sending the multi-million dollar prototype backwards, where it lands upside down and catches fire. He was quick to praise Rimac for the car’s safety cell before quipping, “I think he still owes me a test driver. That was a big test.”
Watching Hammond’s hoopla, you have to wonder how anyone could trust him behind the wheel of everything motorized. It might have been safer for him to still ride the bike, but he crashed into it too. It’s a wonder his wife let him go outside without a helmet.
It wasn’t all fun and games, however, as Hammond notes, he suffered multiple injuries, including a broken leg and brain injury in the crash of the Vampire dragster jet. He admits he still suffers from neck and back pain before adding, “You don’t want to hear about my medical issues, do you?”
Even so, the video highlights two things about Richard Hammond. First, he likes a good sport about his unscripted accidents, some of which look downright scary. But he also comes across as a genuinely interesting person. As Grand Tour reportedly coming to an end soon, hopefully, we will see more highlights in his career as well as his current endeavors.
