Jeremy Clarkson is parting with three cars that have rather more history than the average auction entry.
All three appeared with him on The Grand Tour.
All three were subsequently kept by Clarkson in his own collection.
And all three are now heading to auction with no reserve.
Iconic Auctioneers will offer the cars at its Iconic Sale during the NEC Classic Motor Show on Saturday 14 November 2026.
The trio consists of a 1982 Lancia Montecarlo Spider, a 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6 and a rather enormous 1978 Lincoln Continental Mark V.
And if you’re wondering why Clarkson has decided to sell them now, apparently we’ll have to wait.
Iconic Auctioneers says the reason will become clear in a forthcoming series of Clarkson’s Farm.
Of the three, the 1982 Lancia Montecarlo Spider probably carries the most significant television history.
Finished in Lotus Blue, it was Clarkson’s chosen car for The Grand Tour: One for the Road, the final special featuring Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May together as the programme’s lead trio.
That journey took them through Zimbabwe and into Botswana, bringing their long-running motoring partnership full circle.
The Montecarlo itself was subjected to the usual Grand Tour treatment.
It gained Ferrari 308 rear lights, quad tailpipes, Lancia Delta Integrale wheels, modified headlights and grille, cloth seats and a simple Alcantara-covered racing-style steering wheel.
Rather than walking away from it once filming finished, Clarkson bought the car and kept it.
It has since been tidied by Lancia specialist Max500 Ltd and is said to start, run and drive well.
The second car is the 1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6 Clarkson drove in the 2019 Grand Tour episode Well Aged Scotch.
Finished in Rosso Alfa, it joined Richard Hammond’s Fiat X1/9 and James May’s Lancia Gamma Coupé on a trip around Scotland’s North Coast 500.
Anyone who remembers the episode may also remember that things didn’t go completely smoothly.
The Alfa’s gear change became part of the story before the car eventually suffered a propshaft failure.
That evidently didn’t put Clarkson off it.
He kept the GTV6 after filming and it subsequently joined his personal collection.
At the time of cataloguing it had covered just 28,315 miles, with Iconic Auctioneers stating that maintenance has been carried out in-house.
And, television history aside, it’s hardly an undesirable thing to own.
The Busso V6, rear transaxle layout and Giugiaro-influenced styling already give a GTV6 plenty of enthusiast appeal without Jeremy Clarkson’s name anywhere near it.
If subtlety isn’t particularly important, there is always the third car.
Clarkson’s 1978 Lincoln Continental Mark V appeared in The Grand Tour Presents: Lochdown, the Covid-era special filmed in Scotland.
It’s difficult to imagine a less suitable car for some Scottish roads.
The Lincoln is enormous, powered by a 6.6-litre engine and was modified during filming with nitrous injection after Clarkson apparently decided its standard power output wasn’t quite sufficient.
The nitrous equipment remains fitted.
So do some rather more unusual reminders of its television career.
There’s still a set of bagpipes in the boot, while the Cartier clock that caught Clarkson’s eye during the programme remains with the car too.
Clarkson said during filming that he wanted the Lincoln in his life.
Again, he actually followed through and bought it.
That’s probably what makes this trio particularly interesting.
Television cars come to auction fairly regularly.
Sometimes they’ve been used briefly for filming, returned to a supplier and eventually emerge with a story attached.
These are different.
Clarkson chose each of them for The Grand Tour, spent considerable time driving them on screen and then decided that he actually wanted to keep them.
Iconic Auctioneers’ Harry Whale describes them as pieces of modern motoring television history, and that’s difficult to argue with.
The Lancia in particular represents the end of an era.
Clarkson driving away in that car forms part of the final chapter in a television partnership with Hammond and May that began with Top Gear more than two decades earlier.
For fans of those programmes, provenance like that is difficult to replicate.
That remains the slightly curious part.
Clarkson’s explanation so far is fairly straightforward: he simply doesn’t get enough opportunities to drive and enjoy the cars and thinks they should go to people who will.
But there’s clearly another part to the story.
Iconic Auctioneers has specifically said that the reason for the sale will become clear in the forthcoming season of Clarkson’s Farm.
Quite what three Grand Tour cars have to do with events at Diddly Squat remains to be seen.
Perhaps the most interesting detail for auction watchers is that none of the three has a reserve.
That means there is no minimum sale price protecting them once bidding begins.
Celebrity provenance can do strange things to auction values, particularly when the connection is as direct and recognisable as this.
But how much extra value does a Clarkson connection actually add?
The Lancia has obvious significance as his final Grand Tour car.
The Alfa is arguably the most conventionally desirable enthusiast car of the three.
And the Lincoln is possibly the most unmistakably Clarkson of the lot.
We suspect trying to predict which attracts the most attention could be almost as entertaining as watching them cross the block.
The three cars will be offered by Iconic Auctioneers at The Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show in Birmingham on Saturday 14 November 2026.
That puts them in front of exactly the sort of audience likely to appreciate both the cars themselves and the television history attached to them.
And because they’re being sold directly from Clarkson’s own collection rather than merely being cars that once appeared on screen, there should be little difficulty explaining the provenance.
Three very different classics.
Three memorable Grand Tour appearances.
And three cars their presenter liked enough to keep.
It will be fascinating to see what the bidders make of them.
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