Check out some of TG mag’s greatest ever images

Photographer: Lee Brimble

Perhaps Ferrari’s spikiest ever road car. A car that needs computers to keep it pointing in the right direction. It has that in common with fighter jets, so one memorably damp October we took the F12tdf to the Mach loop in Wales, where fast jet pilots go to test their mettle, to see if we could spot some fighters. The weather was dreadful, nothing was flying. But the sun popped out for five crucial minutes for Lee Brimble to capture this stunning tracking shot.

Words: Ollie Marriage
 

Photographer and words: Rowan Horncastle

This is 18 hours into a 16-day, 11,175-mile roadtrip attempting to traverse all 50 US states – easily the most ambitious roadtrip in Top Gear’s history. The plan was to shoot in Times Square relatively unnoticed. No chance. When you have the first Mustang off the line the whole of America wants to talk to you about it. Including the cops...
 

Photographer: Frank Herholdt

Genesis. The cover shot of Issue 001 of Top Gear magazine from October 1993. With very, very few exceptions (we’re looking at you, Ferrari) this is every single car that was on sale in Britain at the time. Photographer Frank Herholdt got the shot from a bridge above the banking at Brooklands, before a chopper brought in the TGTV presenters.

Words: Jack Rix

Photographer: Mark Fagelson

In Colombia, the coffee growers once loaded donkeys with their produce. Now they use US Army surplus Willys Jeeps. This prompted one of the strangest and most memorable stories in Top Gear’s history: a trip to this fabulously beautiful country to participate in the annual festival. Hundreds of Jeeps are honoured for the role they play in keeping the Quindio regional economy ticking over.

Words: Jason Barlow

Photographer: Richard Pardon

A picture that was sheer guesswork. We’d been shooting about an hour away from the Llanberis Pass when I muttered to Richard Pardon that at this time of year, the sun should be setting almost directly down the valley below Snowdon. And in an alignment of geography and nature that almost never happens, I was spot on. It was quite magical.

Words: Ollie Marriage
 

Photographer and words: Mark Riccioni

Smokey Nagata’s shop is quiet and unassuming. But its significance is still something I idolise today. The dyno cell responsible for tuning 1,000+ horsepower monsters. The tiny engine room. A workshop filled with iconic cars. Smokey’s never without a tab on the go, but ask him about driving fast and he’ll entertain you for hours.
 

Photographer and words: Lee Brimble

We were so lucky to get to shoot this massive scoop. We’d been told we would be given a Bugatti Veyron for a few hours, but when we got there, the owner had three. He said, “Which one do you want? Or you can have all three.” Of course we plumped for the latter, but there was a problem. We were about to start tracking and there were only two drivers. We had a closed road and the clock was ticking. I was shouting for the third car. Finally it pulled up alongside the other two. I asked, “Who’s driving?” The window slowly lowered and Owen, then Top Gear designer, popped his head out of the window and replied in a Partridge-type voice... “The keys were in it so I jumped in.” He saved the shoot and got to drive the most powerful supercar in the world... not a bad day.
 

Photographer: James Lipman

To truly experience the full potential of the P1 requires a lot of space, so having patiently driven it from Spa to the UK I rang Lydd Airport and asked if we could borrow their runway to deploy speed... lots of speed. They were delighted to be the first people to see the P1 in the wild and allowed us to fire it up and down the runway to take these pictures, which remain among the most iconic images ever taken of the P1.

Words: Charlie Turner
 

Photographer: Justin Leighton

Being among the most heavily militarised regions in the world, you can’t just rock up to the DMZ – the border between North and South Korea. On the south side there’s an additional buffer zone called the Civilian Control Line; you enter through checkpoints, where armed men inspect your paperwork. Thanks to a local fixer we had permission to drive in. But not to take photos. So we smuggled photographer Justin under a pile of coats in the support car, from where he took this pic – just days before Kim Jong-un waddled into power on the other side of the divide.

Words: Dan Read
 

Photographer: James Lipman

This shot involved wheelspinning a Caterham R500 on the shiny concrete of the (old) Top Gear underground car park, then backing off the throttle to get it to backfire. The flame is actually a blue cone when it first fires, but we couldn’t capture it – so the orangey burst is what we got. Later that night, I was the subject of interest from the police for the same reasons; wheelspinning and flames.

Words: Tom Ford

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