The series has never been one to toe the line of political correctness.
But as the BBC’s Top Gear has proved itself more disaster-prone than usual as its latest season approaches.
Despite ditching the controversial Jeremy Clarkson for Matt LeBlanc, the far more anodyne former Friends star, criticism has continued to mount.
Its most hapless stunt – which prompted incensed front-page stories in the British press – saw LeBlanc speed past the sacred Cenotaph war memorial in central London.
The filming left distasteful black tire marks just yards from the marble plinth after LeBlanc pulled off a series of rubber-screeching ‘donut’ maneuvers usually reserved for supermarket parking lots.
Photographs soon emerged of LeBlanc, in his same souped-up Ford Mustang, sending plumes of smoke into the sky in front of a wedding party gathered outside St Paul’s Cathedral.
The party was fake, gathered especially to amp up the appearance of outrage in the footage – but struck a bum note nonetheless by lowering the tone of a further national monument.
The show also entered embarrassing territory overseas when TV personality and co-host Chris Evans was caught in an embarrassing situation in California.
According to the Daily Mail, Evans was suffering from travel sickness – an unlucky affliction for the host of a car show.
Sources have suggested Evans also has trouble addressing the camera at the same time as driving, which could make filming tricky.
It comes as a series of former steady hands have fled from the Top Gear production team, forcing a reinvention behind the scenes as well as in front of the cameras.
When BBC bosses insisted that Clarkson step down from the show after punching a member of his production team, they must have hoped to detoxify the brand. They may have achieved the opposite.