Elon Musk responded to Top Gear lawsuit on Joe Rogan podcast following Jeremy Clarkson's comments

Elon Musk once spoke about his feud with Jeremy Clarkson on Joe Rogan's podcast, claiming the beloved presenter had faked a Tesla breaking down during a Top Gear review 17 years ago.

Apart from being the richest man on Earth, it hasn't been the best few weeks for Musk.

Since his venture into politics, which has seen him become an advisor to President Donald Trump, stock in the billionaire's car company has crashed to the extent where his Presidential pal made a very public purchase of the electric car in the hope that sales would bounce back.

And on this side of the pond, Musk has endured harsh words from Clarkson, with the pair's beef dating all the way back to 2008.

Electric cars were far less common back then and Tesla certainly wasn't the company it is today, so Musk was initially thrilled when Top Gear said they wanted to review the Tesla Roadster - but things soon turned sour.

To start with, Clarkson was pretty positive with his review and was impressed with the car's speed, torque and also the price you'd save by opting for electric fuel instead of petrol.

However, he was promised that the car would run for 200 miles between each charge, just one tenth the distance of the average Proclaimer, but he claimed on the test track it would only manage 55 miles - with footage showing the vehicle appearing to run out of power and being pushed into a building, with the presenter complaining it took 16 hours to charge.

The Roadster was also shown to have issues with its brakes and the engine overheating.

Musk went on to claim an engineer he sent to drop off the Tesla spotted a script for the BBC show which planned for the car to break down during a Jeremy Clarkson review, before they had even received it.

Tesla sued the BBC over Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear review of the Roadster, they lost (BBC)

This led Musk to try and sue the former BBC presenter for defamation, as they felt that Tesla's reputation had been seriously damaged in front of millions of viewers.

Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, after the host called the alleged 'pre-planned breakdown', or fakedown if you will, 'disgusting', Musk said: "That was messed up. Back in the day, Tesla was not a big company, we're the little kid on the block.

"We had a few cars and we gave them one and when we handed over the car they had a script on the table. How do you write the script when we only just gave you the car? It was crazy.

"The car never broke down, they just pretended that it did. Their objection was that 'this is just entertainment, it's not meant to be true'."

However, the court clearly disagreed and ruled in favour of the BBC, with a judge ruling among other things that the $800 billion company had obviously weathered the storm of one negative Top Gear review, calling the case for damages 'very thin'.

Tesla's lawsuit failed

In the aftermath of Tesla's recent market crash, Clarkson finally 'declared victory' in his column for The Times, 17 years on from the original defamation case.

He wrote: "I said it was unreliable, which it was; that it was ridiculously expensive, which it was; and that because it weighed more than most moons, it didn’t handle very well. Which it didn’t.

"Musk was very angry about this and sued us for defamation, claiming I had a problem with electrical cars and had written the piece before even setting foot in the car.

"He lost the case, and the appeal, and he’s never really got over it. He still claims I was biased and that we pretended his car had broken down when it hadn’t. Even though it had.

"I should really have sued him back, but I feared he’d call me a paedo, so instead I just waited on the river bank for his body to float past. And now it has."

Never change, Jeremy.