Top Gear: Series 25, Episode 3

• Chris Harris pits the Honda Civic Type R against the Lexus LC500 in Japan
• Matt LeBlanc and Chris Harris purchase two used Japanese cars to resell in the UK
• Rory Reid goes to Japan to attend a BŌsŌzoku tuner car meet

Watch this episode on BBC iPlayer. For those outside of the UK, we recommend using Pure VPN.

Episode Guide

First off, Chris sets out to discover the two most Japanesely styled cars on sale today, comparing the thuggish Honda Civic Type R with the manga-esque Lexus LC500, through the time-honoured medium of driving really fast around a circuit.

Elsewhere in Japan, Rory attempts to cram as much weird Japanese car culture as possible into a single night, meeting up with the mad BŌsŌzoku car tuners and a bunch of very lurid Lamborghini owners, before sneaking a drive in a car that really, really shouldn’t be road-legal. Or driven by anyone taller than about five foot one.

Then Chris and Matt come up with a frankly genius plan to balance the severely imbalanced Top Gear books. Nineties Japanese sports cars: they’re amazing, but if you live in the United Kingdom and you want one that’s neither been substantially modified or substantially crashed, you’ll pay silly money. Chris and Matt reckoned they’d figured the solution: buy a couple of mint Japanese sports cars at an auction, ship ’em back to the UK and sell them on for a tidy profit.

Power Laps

Honda Civic Type R
1:25.60

Lexus LC500
1:25.60

Screenshots