New York, 6.30pm (video clip)
Right now I'm wishing we'd thought about this a little bit more.

Today we've bought some stopwatches and some walkie-talkies and some Red Bull. Lots of Red Bull to be honest. But frankly that's it.

I think, back when the American Magazine Car & Driver organised regular Cannonball Runs from East 31st Street here in Manhattan - 300 miles across America to the Portofino Restaurant in Redondo Beach, Los Angeles - they took it a little more seriously. Stuff like plumbing-in extra long-range fuel tanks and bothering to sleep the night before. And buying maps.

By the time the last legal Cannonball was run the bar was set at 32 hours 51 minutes by two blokes called Dave in an XJS. We gotta be able to beat that, yes? Especially as we have a brand new Jaguar XKR sitting here, kerbside in front of the Soho Grand and a roster of drivers (Emma, Tom, Pat and me) none of whose names is Dave.

The real reason for the confidence (the XKR's killing combination of 420bhp, 1,665kg and superb satnav aside) is that last week our Charlie Turner ('creative' director at Top Gear magazine) strapped himself and our snapper into an identical XKR and - when he wasn't stopping to take pictures - regularly hit the high 80mph average we need to beat if we are going to make it to LA before dawn Friday.

So this is the plan: Emma Parker Bowles (who, worryingly, has just appeared looking lush in heels but not exactly ideally dressed for 700 plus miles at the wheel) will take us to Indianapolis; then TV's Tom Ford (who's spent the afternoon making his laptop talk to his mobile so he can update you on our progress) takes the wheel across the middle of nowhere to Oklahoma; then Patrick Devereux, our man in LA, has drawn Oklahoma to Flagstaff Arizona; and then me anchoring us into LA.

We have a support car, an S-Type R, and an agreement to stop the clock only if Alex our photographer sees something sensational (it would be pretty dull without pictures - a truth you can confirm if you look at the old copies of Car & Driver featuring the Cannonball).

But the clock stays on for fuel stops, food stops, comfort breaks and should we need to speak to any officers of the law along the way.

OK. Everyone's getting edgy here and I need to go and act like the boss and not an overexcited child. The next voice you'll hear - on the next page - will be that of Tom Ford...

After the blog's finished, you'll be able to read the full TransAm story in next month's Top Gear magazine