Top Gear's original trio preps Amazon show as new team revamps original

The outspoken Clarkson, known for provocative statements, and colleagues Hammond and May posted images Monday of moving into new offices for their new series, which they are producingforstreaming service Amazon Prime.

The BBC fired Clarkson from Top Gear which set a record in 2012 as the world's most widely watched factual TV program in March 2015 after he punched a producer in an off-set altercation. Co-hosts May and Hammond left shortly thereafter, along with Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman.

• Top Gear's JeremyClarksonand ex-hosts sign on for Amazon car show

Top Gear team expands

• Motorsport commentator and former British Formula One driver David Coulthard.
• German BMW and Porsche race car driver Sabine Schmitz, who has previously participated in Top Gear driving challenges.
• British motoring journalist and popular YouTube video blogger Chris Harris, who has earned a devoted online following for his no-holds-barred reviewing.

It's very hard to be new and innovating when you're producing that many shows every year and the audience becomes wise to your tricks...There are very few formats that survive. It's usually three or four years max.Top Gearhad that format for about 12 or 13 years.- Ben Collins

Evans has vowed to shake up the Top Gear format and Ben Collins, who was the program's masked mystery stuntdriver The Stig for seven years, agrees the show needs to be reinvented.

"It was an absolute riot coming up with this off wall stuff,but it's very hard to be new and innovating when you're producing that many shows every year and the audience becomes wise to your tricks and they expect more with bigger and better all the time and it does become very hard," he told the Mirror in an interview published earlier this month.

"I think there are very few formats that survive. It's usually three or four years max. Top Gear had that format for about 12 or 13 years so it was a very long time and I think that definitely everyone gets to come back with something different."