The producers of Top Gear, the U.K.’s long-running experiment in measuring the effect of vaguely racist Dad jokes on the nation’s car-obsessed attention span, have announced a somewhat surprising new co-host for the quintessentially British motoring show: Friends and Episodes star Matt LeBlanc. The BBC made the announcement on Thursday, with LeBlanc joining the already announced Chris Evans (not that one), who stepped into the hosting gig after the show’s former star, Jeremy Clarkson, yelled and punched his way into a plum new gig over on Amazon (taking co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond with him).
Although he doesn’t exactly have a reputation as an Anglophile or cultural ambassador—outside his efforts toward cross-species harmony in Ed, of course—LeBlanc does have a history with the series; he appeared on the show back in 2012 and 2013, posting a surprisingly excellent score on the show’s long-running “Star in the Reasonably Priced Car” segment. Now, he and Evans will be going up against the ultimate driving challenge: taking a 14-year-old clunker that’s been abandoned by its original owners, and attempting to retrofit and retool it for direct competition with a newer, sexier model—for a definition of “sexy” that includes Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Evans going head to head, in any case.
