There comes a point in every man’s life when he looks into the garage and realises he owns too many cars.
Admittedly, most of us reach this conclusion while staring at an elderly Honda with a flat battery and wondering why we’re still paying to insure it. Jeremy Clarkson’s version of the problem involves a Lancia Montecarlo, an Alfa Romeo GTV6 and a Lincoln Continental roughly the size of a small bungalow.
And now all three are for sale.
The cars, each used by Clarkson in The Grand Tour and subsequently bought by him because he apparently hadn’t spent quite enough money on them already, will be offered by Iconic Auctioneers at the NEC Classic Motor Show on Saturday, 14 November.
All three are being sold without reserve, which makes things potentially interesting.
Perhaps the most significant is the 1982 Lancia Montecarlo Spider, because this was the very last car Clarkson drove on The Grand Tour.
Finished in Lotus Blue, it appeared in One for the Road, the final programme featuring Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May together as the lead trio. The journey took them across Zimbabwe and into Botswana, where Clarkson was reunited with the Lancia Beta Coupé he’d driven in the famous 2007 Top Gear Botswana Special.
The Montecarlo isn’t exactly standard. For filming it acquired Ferrari 308 rear lights, four exhaust pipes, Lancia Delta Integrale wheels, headlights and grille, cloth seats and an Alcantara-covered racing steering wheel.
In other words, somebody looked at a perfectly attractive Italian sports car and decided it wasn’t quite Italian enough.
After filming, Clarkson bought it. It has subsequently been tidied by Max500 Ltd and is said to start, run and drive well, which is always a reassuring thing to read in the description of an old Italian car.
Next comes a 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6.
This appeared in the 2019 Grand Tour episode Well Aged Scotch, in which Clarkson drove it around Scotland’s North Coast 500 while Hammond had a Fiat X1/9 and May a Lancia Gamma Coupé.
This was an unusually brave selection of machinery for anyone intending to arrive somewhere.
Predictably, the Alfa contributed to the entertainment with a troublesome gear change and eventual propshaft failure. Clarkson nevertheless liked it enough to keep it after filming.
Finished in Rosso Alfa, the GTV6 has covered just 28,315 miles and has apparently been maintained ‘in-house’.
Make of that what you will.
And then we come to the Lincoln.
The 1978 Continental Mark V appeared in The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown, filmed in Scotland during the Covid period when international travel restrictions meant the presenters had to find adventures rather closer to home.
The idea was to investigate why enormous 1970s American cars had never really caught on in Europe.
Clarkson chose a 6.6-litre Lincoln Continental Mark V.
It is 19 feet long.
This may provide part of the answer.
Driving a 19-foot Lincoln around Scotland, where some roads appear to have been designed around the width of a sheep, was inevitably problematic. Clarkson negotiated Edinburgh’s narrow streets before taking the Lincoln to Knockhill for a deeply scientific comparison with a Hillman Avenger.
The car was also fitted with nitrous injection for the programme, and remarkably the NOS equipment remains installed. There are also bagpipes in the boot and a Cartier clock, the latter being something Clarkson became particularly taken with during filming.
He subsequently bought the Lincoln because, as he admitted in the programme, he wanted it in his life.
This is entirely understandable. Nobody actually needs a 6.6-litre, 19-foot-long Lincoln Continental with nitrous oxide and bagpipes in the boot. But needing things has never been the point of interesting old cars.
A chance to own a part of motoring history!
Cannot believe Jeremy’s selling the Alfa, what a line up! Happy bidding to you all… pic.twitter.com/tYxaH8QslY
— ClarksonsFarm (@ClarksonsFarm1) September 18, 2026
So why is Clarkson selling them?
Apparently we’ll find out in the forthcoming season of Clarkson’s Farm.
For now, Clarkson simply says: “I rarely get a chance these days to drive or enjoy these very special and quite famous cars so it’s probably for the best if they end up with someone who can.”
There is something rather appealing about the three being sold together. They aren’t pristine museum exhibits carefully selected by a collector because the chassis numbers are correct. They’re cars that were bought to make television, subjected to indignities, modified, broken, repaired and then kept because Clarkson genuinely liked them.
The Lancia in particular has an unusual place in motoring television history. It wasn’t merely a car that appeared in The Grand Tour. It was the car Clarkson drove as the programme’s long journey finally came to an end.
And now somebody else gets to take it from there.
The three cars will be offered without reserve at Iconic Auctioneers’ Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show on Saturday, 14 November 2026.
