The Grand Tour's James May opens up on 'separation anxiety' behind the wheel: 'Get a bit!'
JAMES MAY has revealed what he thinks makes up a good car and why he avoids cars without advanced technology.
The Grand Tour: Official trailer for Carnage A Trois
The Grand Tour co-host James May is no stranger to testing out the newest and latest cars and their gadgets. Now a massive fan of technology, he mentioned in a radio interview about avoiding cars that don't have specific features for fear of having "separation anxiety".
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James May joins Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond as a host of the popular show The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime.
The 59-year-old presenter has a long love of automobiles and previously hosted Top Gear with Jeremy and Richard for many years.
Joining radio hosts Jenny Kleeman and Luke Jones, the TV star opened up about relying on the latest gadgets when driving.
Luke kicked off the car segment of their Times Radio breakfast show and asked listeners: "Do you ever look out the window at your drive and at your car, and think it's just too clever for me?
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"There's too many features and modes, and it's just totally beyond me?"
He told listeners that they aren't alone if they do. A recent study by the AA in the Sunday Times showed that most drivers were not "fussed" by features such as adaptive cruise control and remote control parking.
Posing the same question to James, he replied: "To some extent. I have become a great fan of connective cards to the extent that I get a bit of separation anxiety if I'm in one that isn't connected."
He continued: "And I love tech features and reconfigurable dashboards and all the rest of it, but I would admit there are bits of this stuff that I don't use.
"I don't think I have ever used the auto park on one of my cars apart from on the day I got it to see if it worked."
Luke seemed amazed at how many "space-age features" modern cars have.
Despite saying how much he values tech features, James clarified that users should not be "dependent" on them as that can be dangerous.
Recounting when he worked with "Car Magazine in the mid-90s" and attended cutting edge events, he did tell the radio hosts that some of the modern-day car features you "wouldn't have (been) conceived of 10 or 15 years ago".
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Admitting he used cruise control, he said: "I've got that on a couple of cars, and I do use it occasionally, but I'm not dependent on it, and I don't think you should be. And I think that warning is in the owner's handbook."
James made a jibe at software engines while discussing how cars sometimes have more features than everyday drivers need.
He added: "Some things that are on cars, I think, are there because they can be, and we have a lot of software engineers, and they need something to do.
"And that's not just true of cars. You get that with features on computers and tablets and washing machines."
Luke asked the car expert what his views on future cars would be, and "as a bit of a trend" did he expect cars to get "stripped back" to a more basic model?
"I think what is happening is that cars are being fitted with the building blocks of, I'm not going to say autonomous cars because that's a very far fetched idea, but cars with an auto-pilot," he said.
The most recent instalment in The Grand Tour series was The Grand Tour Present Carnage a Trois, which was a lockdown special.
The Grand Tour Presents: Carnage A Trois is available on Amazon Prime.
