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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
Jeremy Clarkson has been left “wound up rotten” by formerTop Gear host Chris Harris’s claim about Teslas.
Harris, who recently said he warned the BBC “someone is going to die’ months before Freddie Flintoff’s near-fatal crash, suggested that a review of Elon Musk’s electric car was staged.
Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience, Harris said “Oh, they were naughty with that” when Rogan accused the show of doing “Elon dirtier than anybody ever did” when Clarkson was presenter alongside Richard Hammond and James May, with whom he has officially ended his TV partnership.
Rogan told Harris: “They did a terrible thing. I talked to him [Musk] about it and he was furious. They pretended that his car died and they did it for a sketch. And this was the early days of Tesla.”
Harris, who joined the show after Clarkson’s departure in 2016, appeared to corroborate Rogan’s claim, stating that Top Gear producers would “reverse engineer an outcome,” which the presenters would then carry out.
The Grand Tour star Clarkson denied faking the Tesla review, writing in his column in The Sun: “But then talk turned to the story that I wrote a road test of the first ever Tesla before I’d driven it. And that the breakdown we showed on television was fabricated.
“Joe and Chris perpetuate the myth that my Tesla road test was unfair. On Top Gear we cocked about and upset a lot of people over the years. But our road tests were always scrupulously fair.”
Musk sued the BBC over its review of the Tesla Roadster after scenes, which aired in 2008, saw Clarkson claim the vehicle’s brakes failed, the engine overheated, the battery died after reaching 88m, and that the car took more than half a day to charge.
However, Musk lost the case, with a UK appeal court throwing out his complaint that Clarkson’s review had damaged Tesla’s reputation in 2013. Executive producer Andy Wilman said in response to the rejection of Musk’s case: “I am pleased that the appeal court has upheld the previous ruling and the case has been struck out.
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“I’d also like to apologise to the judges for making them have to watch so much Top Gear.”
Harris, who went on to describe Clarkson as “the best”, joined the presenting line-up alongside cricketer Flintoff and comedian Paddy McGuinness in 2016.
Reflecting on Flintoff’s near-fatal crash, he recalled how his co-host had not been wearing a helmet and alleged that he had not been briefed properly on the day before driving the vehicle at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome – home to theTop Gear test track.
The motoring journalist also claimed that the shoot had been “rushed”, stating that he did not have time to consult Flintoff about the vehicle he would be driving.
