Petrolheads may revere the Top Gear team as gods on all things engine-related, but when it comes to personal finance one thing is clear: they are not to be trusted.

In Sunday’s episode they raised the problems faced by young drivers, teenage males in particular, when trying to buy car insurance. We have no issue with that: it’s a estimable cause to take up. Even if they can persuade an insurer to cover them, the cost of a policy for box-fresh drivers is likely to be in the thousands of pounds.

But one of the methods the team suggested for getting round this problem could land young drivers and their parents in very hot water: fronting. This is the illegal practice of a parent taking out a policy in their name for their child’s car and adding their child (the real main driver) as a named driver in order to keep the cost down.

In the programme presenter James May said: “It soon dawned on us that the only realistic way of getting covered when you are 17 is by going on your parents’ insurance. So we got back on the phones pretending to be dad.”

The advice has caused insurance companies and brokers to blow a gasket. According to Hayley Parsons, chief executive of Gocompare.com: “While few people would take Clarkson’s suggestion that a sex change could help 17 year old boys halve their premiums seriously, fronting is a common fraud and we would urge parents to avoid the practice as, if found out, the consequences could be severe.”

Luckily Richard Hammond is more up to speed than May when it comes to insurance. He pointed out that drivers who do put themselves on their parent’s insurance and then crash will find themselves without cover if the insurance company discovers the truth.

In fact, the insurer has the right to cancel the policy, making it even more difficult and expensive to buy a policy in the future. And if it declines a claim in these circumstances, the young driver could be treated as uninsured and could be fined hundreds of pounds and receive six penalty points (an automatic ban for new drivers).

It’s not the first time one of the Top Gear team has veered off track into the world of personal finance. Last year Jeremy Clarkson admitted he was wrong to brand the scandal of lost CDs containing the personal data of millions of Britons a “storm in a teacup” after falling victim to an internet scam.

After printing his bank details in a newspaper to make the point that his money would be safe and the idea of identity theft was a sham, he discovered they had been used to set up a £500 direct debit to a charity.

For those who find Clarkson and his views a tad irritating, he then came out with what must be among the most refreshing words ever to be read in the Sunday Times: “The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again. I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”