Our Top 5 Picks For The Vacant Top Gear Seat

The dust isn’t even close to settling yet after Matt LeBlanc’s shock announcement that he’ll be leaving Top Gear after the end of the next series, but talk is already turning to who might fill his shoes.

We’d like to claim we’re above such petty speculation, but we’d be lying. Of course we’re curious about who might end up fronting the world’s best-known car show! Any car guy or girl who says otherwise is telling big, fat porkies. Here are the top options that we’d pick for the job.

The charismatic actor has been linked with the job before, after the original ‘New Top Gear’ trio left. He expected to get it, too, and was reportedly a bit miffed that he didn’t. We reckon he’d be a brilliant fit now. His smooth, engaging presenting style used to great effect in this Grand Basel short film would lift Top Gear’s sagging studio segments – the last couple of series’ weakest link.

He’s also a proper car nut. He knows his metal and feels the passion for great cars the way we’d want him to. Finally, his expertise as a presenter and enthusiast theoretically mesh well with Chris Harris’ driving skill and Rory Reid’s warmth. We’d say Elba is in pole position if he still wants the job, but he’s been overlooked before…

No, not the international name behind elaborately-named perfumes and expensive suits. The other one; the bearded English bloke who’s a presenter on Top Gear America, a well-established motor journalist and a regular scribbler at Top Gear Magazine. He’s more in the vein of Chris Harris and we get the feeling that they could strike up an interesting rivalry in Top Gear challenges.

Bringing Ford in from TG America, in what could effectively be a job swap if Matt LeBlanc were to go the other way (we actually asked for exactly that, once), would create a very different dynamic to the one with Idris Elba, with less Hollywood glamour, perhaps, but maybe bringing a more easily-relatable, down-to-earth kind of fun to the party. Not unlikely, this one.

To us, Elba and Ford seem the most obvious and, right now, the likeliest choices, but Jodie Kidd’s name is never far away in debates like these. She was another hot favourite to take a co-presenting seat alongside Chris Evans after Clarkson & co left. Not without good reason, either: we know she’s a very handy driver.

Since the Clarkson era ended, the BBC’s senior suit-wearers have become much more involved to make sure the show is more inclusive and representative. Could that now push them towards bringing an exciting ‘car girl’ to the front for the first time? Old Top Gear had female presenters, naturally, but they weren’t exactly thrilling by modern standards. Maybe the time has come to bring Kidd on board.

Hear us out on this. You weren’t expecting us to stick with the obvious, were you? Cavill is the suave, chiselled English actor who is the latest to play Superman. He’s also into stuff with engines, if not perhaps as outwardly as the options above. The 35-year-old is a good age for all generations to relate to, he’s famous enough to turn heads and attract attention, he conducts himself with class and his face certainly fits if you’re trying to raise the female audience. We think he’d be a positive surprise.

The Top Gear job would be a left-field move for the Hollywood star, but as William Fichtner has seemingly proved in the USA, it’s a move that can work. After all, Top Gear UK has a global audience of millions and if you can win fans it’s not the worst way to forward your career – as Matt LeBlanc has discovered.

Our own Head of Video, Alex Kersten, is no stranger to standing in front of the camera and entertaining you lot. Whether it’s nearly running out of fuel in a Ferrari 488, falling so hard for a Lamborghini he actually cried a bit, or building an off-road-capable Jaguar saloon and having a really weird paintball fight in it (above), he’s your guy.

We’re only kidding, really. Alex simply couldn’t do it. Outside of filming days Adnan keeps him locked in a dark room with nothing but a multi-gym, a TV that only gets the Dave channel and a selection of Haynes manuals.

Who do you reckon is most likely to get the job? Which obvious options have we overlooked, and who would work best with Harris and Reid?