The wait for Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond’s new motoring series The Grand Tour will soon be over as it debuts on Amazon Prime Video today.

The three car enthusiasts’ new endeavour follows their run fronting the BBC’s Top Gear, which came to an end in 2015 when Clarkson was fired over a “fracas” with a producer.

The Grand Tour sees Clarkson, May and Hammond travelling the globe with a tent and entertaining audiences in locations such as Los Angeles, Whitby, Johannesburg and Lapland.

There will also be high-quality films, filled with their trademark banter as they embark on challenges and stunts in an array of vehicles across the world.

The stakes are high for The Grand Tour as the world logs in to watch

But fans of the trio who might be expecting some Top Gear favourites – such as the star in a reasonably priced car segment and The Stig – will be disappointed as they form part of the BBC show, which was taken over earlierthis year by Matt LeBlanc and the now-departed Chris Evans.

The stakes are high for The Grand Tour as the world logs in to watch, partly because of the show’s bigger-than-Top Gear budget and the predicted instant reaction from fans and critics on social media. Clarkson said the first episode, which includes the holy trinity of hybrid hypercars – the McLaren P1, the Porsche 918 Spyder and the Ferrari LaFerrari – is likely to be popular at the very least.

He said: “I think programme one will be all right. I’d be extremely surprised if that was poorly reviewed.”

The first series of The Grand Tour will have 12 hour-long episodes streamed weekly on Amazon Prime. A total of 36 episodes across three years have been commissioned.

Only fans in the UK, the US, Germany and Japan will be able to watch the series when it arrives today but Amazon has announced it will be launching the show globally in December in over 200 countries.