Season 16
Featuring the incredible Pagani Zonda R, one of the loudest objects known to man, and the most powerful road going Ferrari ever, the 599 GTO, the new season is packed full of serious cars and serious power.
There's also Jeremy racing against time in the new Jag XJ as he tries to beat the sun to Land's End, Richard attempting to beat gravity in a Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet and James taking the Ariel Atom V8, the new more powerful version of the car which tried to rip Jeremy's face off, around the Top Gear track.
The trio also has some special visitors from down under, meeting their Australian counterparts to take part in their very own car-based version of the Ashes.
It's an all-out grudge match with disciplines including rallying, drifting and double-decker car racing – but which Top Gear team will come out on top?
All this plus the usual line-up of star guests driving the Reasonably Priced Car, including tennis star Boris Becker, presenter Jonathan Ross and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, it's another cracking high-octane season from the world's biggest car show.
Format
The show often features the following segments, amongst others:
Races
The show has featured a number of races where Jeremy Clarkson races a car against other forms of transport, usually involving Richard Hammond and James May taking the same journey by any combinations of plane, train, ferry or bus.
Reviews
Top Gear normally reviews one new car, or group of cars, each week. It's became hugely influential with motor manufacturers, since a critical word from the Top Gear team could have a severely negative effect on sales.
The Top Gear reports are not based on facts or figures, but the opinions of the presenters. Group tests normally involve the three presenters debating the merits and weaknesses of each car.
Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car
In each programme, a celebrity is interviewed by Jeremy Clarkson, and focuses usually on car-related topics and often on cars owned by the celebs themselves.
The guest is whisked off to the Top Gear race track where he/she tries to get the fastest lap time in a Chevrolet.
The fastest lap time is held by The Stig, and guests who have attempted to beat his time have included Simon Cowell, Jamie Oliver and Sanjeev Bhaskar.
Power Laps
In the Power Laps segment, The Stig completes a lap around the Top Gear test track to determine the performance of various cars. The car tested is usually the car that's been reviewed in that episode, but occasionally it can be a car from a previous episode.
The Cool Wall
The Cool Wall is a board where Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond decide which cars are cool, and which aren't, and has nothing to do with how good or bad a car is. The categories are Sub Zero, Cool, Uncool and Seriously Uncool.
Initially, part of that "coolness" factor rested on the extent to which the presenters believed each car would impress English actress Kristin Scott Thomas.
BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce replaced Kristin as their notional judge, after Kristin stated in an interview that she owned a Honda, which was deemed to be "Uncool".