Top Gear’s ‘most controversial episode ever’ resurges ahead of England vs Argentina

It's what everyone's talking about...

Title holders Argentina will try to prevent football from coming home while The Three Lions will have to find a way to stop Messi and his men.

But fans this time around aren’t actually arguing about the infamous “Hand of God” goal scored by Maradona, or their run-in at the 1998 World Cup in France.

Now they’re discussing arguably the most controversial episode of Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson’s license plate.

That’s because it allegedly referenced the Falklands War, so it’s quite the issue as you can imagine.

The name of episode and how the incident occurred

Patagonia Special is the 2014 episode in which Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May drive across Chile and Argentina.

On its release, this episode garnered widespread media attention after the Top Gear crew were targeted by protesters who believed the plate on Clarkson’s Porsche.

The plate was H982 FKL - a sly reference to the Falklands War and the year it took place.

The team however were forced to ultimately flee Argentina after they were pelted with stones as they drove towards the Chilean border.

The number plate was not a deliberate reference to the Falklands War and was a random license plate, as per Clarkson and the Top Gear crew.

Clarkson described it as “terrifying”

At the time, as he wrote in The Sun, Clarkson said that the incident was “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been involved in”, insisting it was “not just some kind of jolly Top Gear jape – this was deadly serious.”

And now, the Top Gear Falkland's controversy has resurfaced ahead of England vs Argentina match, as some user on X (formerly Twitter) shared a screenshot from the episode and captioned it “Locked in to some essential pre-match viewing”.

Since sharing the image, the post by @aggzzx has been liked over 13,000 times and sparked a lot of discussion online about whether Clarkson was deliberately trying to upset the Argentinians.

The BBC concluded an investigation into the number plate in 2015, which ruled that it had not been a deliberate reference to the Falklands War and no further action was taken.