'The American' Has Been Dropped By The Grand Tour

After we got our first – and excellent – trailer for the second series of The Grand Tour last week, we can bring you a second piece of news: The American will not be in it.

Mike Skinner, the NASCAR driver whose impossible task was to follow on from the silent Stig, who is officially the property of the BBC and couldn’t migrate to Amazon with the three stooges Clarkson, Hammond and May, has Tweeted that he won’t be involved in the new series.

His was a divisive character right from the get-go, with a lot of people finding him either not funny, deeply awkward or out of balance with the rest of the show. In some cases, all three.

But Skinner himself says that his character ‘wasn’t developed the way he was told.’ Either way, it didn’t work for us, didn’t work for Americans who didn’t appreciate his stereotyping, and hasn’t worked out for the unfortunate Skinner.

It remains to be seen whether there’s going to be a fast lap section of the show at all, because the Eboladrome, the trio’s test track near Swindon, England, doesn’t feature in the show’s first trailer. We’ll have to wait and see.