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Amazon CEO: Former Top Gear Hosts ‘Very, Very, Very Expensive’

All three former hosts of the BBC’s Top Gear program have been poached by Amazon Prime for a new car show, following the dismissal of Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC for a “fracas” with one of the show’s Producers. While we don’t know the specifics – neither regarding the new program, nor how lucrative the deal was – we do at least know that the former Top Gear hosts were “very, very, very expensive.”

So reports Autoblog, citing remarks made by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during an interview with the UK’s Telegraph. He went on to say that Clarkson, Hammond and May “[are] worth a lot and they know it.” Some claims allege that Amazon even paid as much as $250 million to secure all three former Top Gear hosts for three seasons of 12 episodes.

But whatever the new car series ends up looking like, the former Top Gear hosts’ new venture won’t be the only thing driving Amazon Prime’s streaming service. Bezos went on to tell the Telegraph that “It can’t just be one show, it has to be a number of things. We have a lot of things in the pipeline, which I think viewers in the UK and around the world are going to love. And I think Clarkson’s new show is going to be one of those.”

So far, the US has been far-and-away the most profitable market for the Seattle-based online marketplace. But the gap between America and the rest of the world may very well decline as soon as the international Top Gear stars launch their new series on Prime.

Aaron Birch is an automotive enthusiast and writer/filmmaker from Detroit, MI. As a rule, he only buys cars older than himself.

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