A date has been set for Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s final The Grand Tour road trip. The trio will head to Zimbabwe in Africa before going their separate ways, following reports that the presenters approved the dissolution of W Chump and Sons, which produces the series, with government agency Companies House, thus bringing an end to the programme.

Prime Video has given fans an insight into what to expect from the one-off special, titled The Grand Tour: One for the Road, which will be released next month on 13 September. According to the synopsis, Clarkson, Hammond and May will take “three cars they’ve always wanted to own” to southern Africa.

Driving a Lancia Montecarlo, a Ford Capri 3-litre, and a Triumph Stag, the long-term friends will head off on “a stunning road trip through beautiful and sometimes challenging landscapes leading to an emotional ending on a strangely familiar island”.

The end of The Grand Tour comes amid Clarkson’s huge success with his solo programme Clarkson’s Farm, which sees the presenter attempt to run the 1000-acre farm he purchased in 2008. Clarkson and Hammond hosted Top Gear’s first series in 2002 alongside Jason Dawe, with May replacing the latter in series two. The trio’s chemistry is one of the main reasons that the show became such a success, and they remained as presenters until Clarkson was dropped in 2015 following a behind-the-scenes incident. Hammond and May followed suit and also exited the programme in a show of support for Clarkson. Together, they created The Grand Tour, which premiered in 2016.

The final episode of The Grand Tour will be “quite weepy” as Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and Richard May part ways after 22 years. Amazon Prime Video’s special, One for the Road, will be available to stream from September 13 and will feature the trio driving across Zimbabwe in cars they have always wanted to own: a Lancia Montecarlo, a three-litre Ford Capri and a Triumph Stag. The episode will conclude with an emotional farewell on Botswana’s Kubu Island, the location of the first Top Gear special, broadcast by the BBC in 2007. Clarkson deemed the island “just about the most astonishing place I’ve ever been”.

Andy Wilman, the executive producer responsible for both motoring shows, said the team wanted to “leave the dynamite at home” for their swansong. Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, he said: “It was quite a no-brainer in the office that this one was about the guys saying goodbye to each other. They wanted to go unplugged, take things back to 2005 or 2006 and leave the dynamite at home.

“Anybody who thinks they’re going to get Avengers Endgame is going to be disappointed because it is deliberately gentle, but their camaraderie is next level. You can see that they know it’s the last time they will do this together.”

Wilman warned that a teaser trailer “tugs on the heartstrings” by featuring silent shots of the presenters laughing and joking together during filming to the backdrop of The Hollies’ hit single He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.

“They say goodbye better than any presenters could. Because they are so close as people they can take the piss out of their own goodbye but then be emotional as well,” he said. “It is quite weepy. But they are an institution, part of the furniture, and it’s great that they are allowed a soppy goodbye.”

He added that they had chosen to drive older cars because they offered richer stories and “more laughs” than the latest models. Wilman claimed that after Clarkson was sacked from Top Gear for punching a producer in 2015, there was a “tussle” with the BBC. He said that Alan Yentob, the corporation’s creative director at the time, made a “big move” to hold on to Hammond and May to break up the trio.

Instead, Amazon’s chequebook helped to woo the trio to the US streamer, while spurning a rival bid from ITV. Wilman said: “Amazon asked us to make a show that was as legally close to Top Gear as possible that was oven-ready to be broadcast around the world without them getting sued.”

The Grand Tour has run for five series since 2016, with the trio wanting to leave “on their own terms”. Its end allows Clarkson and Wilman to focus on the documentary series Clarkson’s Farm, which will return to Amazon Prime Video for a fourth series next year. It is expected to follow the presenter’s exploits after he buys a pub near his farm, which is due to reopen as The Farmer’s Dog on Friday.

Wilman said that the pair were initially “petrified” that Clarkson’s Farm would fail after Amazon agreed to commission it as part of a wider deal with The Grand Tour presenters. He said: “We were so nervous when we first made the show that it could be really boring, because there was no jeopardy.

“But it has this very charming, innocent Darling Buds of May thing going on. It revolves around small stories, which suits Jeremy because we don’t have that Top Gear-like pressure to blow stuff up to get noticed.”

The Grand Tour: One for the Road will launch globally on Friday 13th September on Prime Video. Try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Plus, read our guides to the best Amazon Prime series and the best movies on Amazon Prime.

Clarkson previously explained why he decided to quit the show and bring it to an end, saying: “I’ve driven cars higher than anyone else and further north than anyone else. We’ve done everything you can do with a car.

“When we had meetings about what to do next, people just threw their arms in the air.”

After eight years together on Amazon Prime's “The Grand Tour,” Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are about to hit the road for one final time.

And for many fans, the time spent watching the trio goes back to the early 2000s, when they formerly hosted “Top Gear.” In total, Clarkson, Hammond, and May have hosted car shows together for a period spanning 22 years.

The final episode of the The Grand Tour starring the trio will be streamed on Sept. 13. It will be a one-off special, and from the looks of a teaser trailer released on Thursday, there will be a variety of locations.

Amazon hasn't said whether the show will continue with new hosts, like Top Gear has. However, a social media post by Clarkson last year indicated that the show will indeed end after 2024. He said at the time, “no more Grand Tour after [2024].”

The Grand Tour first appeared on Amazon Prime in 2016 but went on hiatus after 2021 due to difficulties in filming new episodes caused by pandemic-related travel restrictions, resulting in only five seasons being filmed over the eight years, with the final two seasons each containing only four episodes. Amazon Prime originally snagged Clarkson for the show, together with Hammond and May, after Clarkson was fired from the BBC due to his 2015 attack on a fellow Top Gear staff member.

The Grand Tour proved to be a hit on Amazon Prime, which led to all three hosts getting standalone shows on the streaming service. They include “Clarkson's Farm” which provides snippets of Clarkson's life on his farm in the Cotswolds. Hammond's show is called “The Great Escapists,” and features both him and Tory Belleci as as fictionalized versions of themselves, and May has the show “James May: Our Man in…,” a travel show where May focuses on adventures across a single country per season.

More than two decades ago a trio of car dorks appeared on “Top Gear” together for the first time, and on September 13th they’ll end that run with one last back-to-basics Amazon Prime travel-across-a-desert special film. The Clarkson/Hammond/May throuple has been through the wringer and come back out again, making the journey from middle-aged entertainers to elderly curmudgeons along the way, and we’ve been there to see the whole thing unfold. They’ve been a long, long way together, through the hard times and the good.

This whole experiment probably should have ended when Clarkson physically and verbally assaulted a BBC co-worker in 2016, but here we are. The final nail will finally be driven into the long-overdue coffin of this show, which the presenters have clearly not enjoyed doing for at least five years, next month. Belligerent millionaire potato man Jeremy Clarkson is 64 years old, for goodness sake, just let him rest. Maybe his anger will subside in retirement.

Top Gear was extremely important to me as a young car enthusiast, and I regularly downloaded torrents from Final Gear to my college computer. This trio instilled an enthusiasm for cars and travel that inspired millions, but the immaturity and vigor of their early days has been replaced with the deep seated ire. There’s no more impressive hatred in a heart than that reserved for colleagues of 22 years. It has been easy to see that they’ve been mentally done with this show for years, but the Amazon money was too good to walk away from.

At any rate, here is the trailer for the final episode. I’m sure that there will be enough nostalgia to push this one up to heights of their earlier travelogue installments on The Beeb. It looks like it could be a return to form, and I truly hope it is. To end the tenure of this trio on a high point would be as much as we could wish for. I’m certainly wishing for it.