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Richard Hammond’s Mid-Life Crisis Involves Selling Off His Cars

We’re all too familiar with the mid-life crisis in men cliché, if only from movies. Richard Hammond is putting his own spin on it.
Richard Hammond admits he's sold off most of his cars 6 photos
Photo: YouTube / DriveTribe
This is the car Richard Hammond drives every day!This is the car Richard Hammond drives every day!This is the car Richard Hammond drives every day!This is the car Richard Hammond drives every day!This is the car Richard Hammond drives every day!
The mid-life crisis, for reference, is when the man dumps his long-suffering or loving wife, gets a girlfriend that bouncers have to card before letting her in to clubs, and one or several flashy cars – preferably Ferrari, preferably red. Respected auto journalist and passionate car collector Richard Hammond is the exception to this unwritten rule.

Hammond is now promoting Richard Hammond’s Crazy Contraptions on Channel 4, a gameshow in which engineers team up against each other in the design and construction of ingenious machines out of everyday materials. Speaking with The Mirror to promote the show, Hammond says he believes he’s going through a mid-life crisis, too, but it manifests differently in him than in other men.

Instead of buying flashy cars, he’s selling them. Instead of choosing the fanciest rides, he’s sticking with old-timers that double as workhorses.

“Am I having a mid-life crisis?” Hammond asks with typical humor. “The archetypal, stereotypical thing is buying a sports car and I’ve got rid of most of mine. I mostly drive a pick-up truck or Land Rover now. So I think, yeah, maybe I am. Men do – we evaluate things.”

That Hammond has sold most of his car collection is not new: he’s been selling items from it for years now, and the latest batch to go helped fund this Channel 4 project. Neither is it surprising to hear him say he drives a pickup truck and a Land Rover; he’s probably talking about his daily Defender, the one he bought new and had been using on an everyday basis in October last year, when he showed just how much apparently useless stuff takes up space in it.

Hammond is putting these changes into context: men change at a certain age, and they especially do that when they’ve been at death’s door twice, like he has. In the same interview, Hammond speaks of his two very serious crashes, but only to say that they put a new perspective on the kind of gigs he takes. His wife and daughters never asked him to stop taking part in dangerous stunts, but he did it either way, out of consideration for them.

Mid-life crisis or not, Hammond has sold most of his cars, for a variety of reasons. That’s not to say that he doesn’t miss them, though.
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Editor's note: Photos in the gallery show Richard Hammond's daily Land Rover Defender.

About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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