Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond may have left The Grand Tour, but the Amazon Prime TV show will live on.
Last year, the former Top Gear trio announced their departure from the motoring series because they had grown ‘too old’ for the travel.
Since then, Amazon has reportedly been on the hunt for their replacement and has found the perfect candidate, albeit an unlikely one.
Stepping into Clarkson, May, and Hammond’s shoes is social media train enthusiast Francis Bourgeois, 24, it has been claimed.
A source told The Sun: ‘Francis is a big noise online and Amazon producers are hoping to bring him into the mainstream.
‘He is loved by everyone – from royals to rappers – and is sure to be a hit with Grand Tour viewers.
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‘Francis is not just a social media sensation but trained as a mechanical engineer so knows his stuff.’
In 2021, Bourgeois went viral on TikTok for his trainspotting videos filmed using a GoPro camera.
So popular are his videos, he has teamed up with the likes of Jonas Brother singer Joe Jonas and appeared in an advert for The North Face and Gucci.
In 2022,Bourgeois even landed his own Channel 4 series during which he takes celebrities, including comedian Aisling Bea and Love Island’s Chloe Burrows, on his trainspotting adventures.
He now has 2.4M followers on Instagram and 3.3M on TikTok.
Earlier this month, Amazon Prime revealed it will drop four retrospective episodes of The Grand Tour, which will reflect on the series’ best moments.
The first special will be The Not Very Grand Tour: The Power And The Glory, which will see Hammond and May ‘celebrate the glory of the internal combustion engine’ by looking back at the series.
‘These include the hyper car holy trinity, muscle cars in Detroit, a city sprint in a Bugatti, the world’s craziest tank, and a race between the past, present and future,’ the streaming service said.
Other instalments include The Grand-ish Tour: A Trip Down Memory Lane, The Grand-ish Tour: A Bit Further Down Memory Lane and The Grand-ish Tour: Completely Lost Down Memory Lane.
The specials will see them look back at moments in California, Morocco, Colorado, Scandinavia, and Mongolia.
Clarkson, May and Hammond began presenting The Grand Tour in 2016, the year after they departed the BBC when Clarkson was sacked for punching a Top Gear producer.
On Top Gear, they were replaced by Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc before Chris Harris, Freddie Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness became the presenters in a shake-up.
However, Top Gear has since been taken off air for the foreseeable future after Flintoff was airlifted to hospital after a horror crash and said to be ‘lucky to be alive’.
The pro cricket player suffered from life-changing severe facial injuries and broken ribs, and had been driving an open-topped car at a reportedly high speed of 130mph when it flipped and slid along the track.
Metro has contacted Francis’s rep and Amazon for comment.
The Grand Tour is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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