The new Top Gear hosts reveal their first car horror stories

Top Gear hosts are lucky enough to drive some of the coolest cars in the world, but even the presenters had to start somewhere.

The brand new Top Gear team have revealed their first ever cars to Newsbeat - and it isn't pretty.

One host gaffer-taped a spare exhaust onto his Yugo. Another's pride and joy was stolen and burned out in a field in Bristol.

Chris Evans' first car taught him both rules of the road and managing money.

"My first ever car was a Mini 1000, bought for me by my mum," says Chris.

"I was 17 and it was the first and last time she went into debt, because she hated debt.

"It cost her £500 and I'll never forget it.

"I tried to buy it back last year but they found out it was me who wanted it and they tripled the price.

"My mum would really disapprove if I overpaid."

Eddie Jordan repulsed his boss as a teenager with the mods he made on his first runaround.

"It was a Morris Minor four-door, a grey one," he says.

"I was working for a bank at the time and I knew I had something different when my manager refused me permission to park my car in the bank car park because of the yellow hub caps."

Chris Harris' tragic tale still haunts him to this day.

"This is painful for me," he tells us. "My first car was a Mini, a little red Mini.

"I cherished it and I stripped the seats out of it and 'boy-racered' it.

"It got nicked and left, burnt out in some playing fields in the centre of Bristol. I was 18 years old and I cried."

"I think I got dumped by my girlfriend a month later and I didn't care about that. But the fact that the Mini had gone broke me."

Sabine Schmitz was given her first car by her mum out of sheer frustration.

"It was a little Polo, too slow, front-wheel drive - it was horrible" she says.

"I didn't hate it but front-wheel drive was never my thing.

"My mum bought it for me because I used her BMW all the time and her tires were gone, her petrol was gone."

Rory Reid went from one shocker to another.

"I was given a 1978 Ford Fiesta, which was some sort of blue colour," he says.

"It was affected by the number of bumps and dents on it and the amount of rust on it, so you couldn't really tell what colour it was or what shape it was meant to be.

"Then I moved up - or down - to a Yugo, which was an idiots car. It was a truly disgusting car.

"I did some modifications to it. It made a great noise, it had this air-filter on it and a great big exhaust off a Beetle which I gaffer-taped on.

"It sounded brilliant and you could hear it from a mile off, but when you saw it you thought: 'That's disgusting'.

Rory's Yugo confession was a real head-turner for his new colleagues, who may now be having second thoughts about his taste in cars.

"I'm about to present a show with a man who had a modified Yugo?" says a shocked Chris Harris.

"I'm off."

The new series of Top Gear starts on Sunday 29 May at 8pm on BBC2.

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