Remembering why James May was sacked by Autocar – do we need to spell it out for you?

John Plunkett. Updated November 13th, 2017

Before The Grand Tour, before Top Gear, James May was sacked by Autocar magazine after he got fed up putting together the motoring mag’s annual review of the year.

Here is the 1992 feature that ended up getting May the boot. But can you work out why?

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Answer: the clues are in the big red letters that begin every review.

Put them together and what have you got? An acrostic that spells out “So you think it’s really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it’s a real pain in the arse.”

The magazine’s editors didn’t notice at first until it was spotted by a handful of readers who thought they had won a prize. The big winner, a quarter of a century later, turned out to be May.

And on that bombshell…