From Richard Porter's And On That Bombshell: Inside the Madness and Genius of Top Gear:

"The number plate of Jeremy’s Porsche 928 caused a storm of controversy we couldn’t have seen coming and inspired some extraordinary conspiracy theories. One said that we’d been planning to visit Argentina and had searched the country to find a car with a plate that could rile the locals. Yet the Porsche had been registered with that sequence of letters and numbers since it was new in 1991. To have found it we’d have needed to hack the DVLA computer system illegally and then hope that the car still existed, that it wasn’t a tractor or a lorry or something we didn’t want, and that it was for sale. Ah no, said another conspiracy theory, it’s the other way around. They found this Porsche for sale, realised the plate said something that could be offensive to Argentinians and decided to shoot their next special in South America, causing trouble wherever they went. This ignores the amount of long-term planning that goes into a Top Gear special, planning that had been ongoing for months before the Porsche was bought.

"As the newspapers and the websites turned themselves frothy with indignation at another stupid Top Gear stunt, our desperate attempts to provide the calm and logical proof that the plate was a pure coincidence sounded like a squeak drowned out by the roar of outrage. The trouble was, we were hoisted by our own petard. To an outsider, this sounded like exactly the sort of idiotic thing Top Gear would do. Personally, I thought it seemed too subtle to be one of our daft endeavours. We’d have daubed things down the sides of the cars, as we did in North America all those years ago. And there was no way we were going to do that or anything like it because we already had the extensive research and warnings from local fixers which told us that the Falklands situation was a hot topic in Argentina, it was being raised again by a sabre-rattling government and we should not make light of it if we wanted to come home alive. We had no idea that our best intentions would be betrayed by a horrible quirk of fate.

"We’d decided in early spring that South America was the destination for the next special after plans to follow the Silk Road across to China had dissolved due to concerns about the length of the journey [...] The presenters were asked to pick a V8-engined car they liked. We were sitting round in the office with Jeremy one day, looking at various cars online, when he announced that he wanted a Porsche 928. Someone starting tapping in a search. ‘No, wait,’ he interrupted. ‘928 GT. That was an epic car. Find me a 928 GT.’

"[...] Many years ago, Jeremy declared it his favourite 928 of all. The problem is, it wasn’t a massive success when new and a look round the internet turned up just two for sale. One of our researchers called the numbers in both ads and left messages asking to inspect the cars as soon as possible. Only one of the sellers called back. Since the star cars needed to be on a boat across the Atlantic as soon as possible or they wouldn’t make the scheduled start of shooting, a Porsche mechanic was dispatched to have a look at the car. He declared that it was good, and on that basis it was bought remotely, collected from the seller by a shipping company and crated up for its long trip to South America. No one from our team ever physically saw the car and when we checked back we discovered that the plates had been blanked out in the ad.

"The three V8s made it to the start point in Bariloche and were stashed at a local hotel. It’s here that an Argentinian website, tipped off that Top Gear was coming to town, papped the cars and put the pics online. This was slightly annoying for us and warranted a spoiler alert but there was nothing we could do. The presenters and the crew fetched up shortly afterwards and their road trip began. No one read anything into the plate on the 928. If you’re from Britain you don’t look too hard at British plates since they’re a functional fact of life and the start of a shoot is always fraught with many other concerns, leaving precious little time to see hidden messages where none exist. Back in London, however, a keen-eyed person in the office happened to read the comments section underneath the Argentinian car pap’s pics and noticed that someone had spotted what they thought was a sly reference to the Falklands War. It was a hell of a leap of logic, but we were concerned that it was getting attention. By the time we got hold of the crew on the ground they’d discovered the growing internet conspiracy too. There were alternative plates in the car, left over from its brief time on a private registration, but to stick them on now would be weird and it would knacker continuity. Instead, we had some ‘comedy’ plates bearing swear words made up in the UK and planned for Richard and James to affix them to Jeremy’s car as an on-camera prank, once they’d been delivered by a crew member joining the group later in the trip. Unfortunately, they got there too late.

"[...] The sad thing is, we could have had an upbeat and good-natured ending to this adventure. Our intended The End of the World Cup item could have been great, featuring our three plucky cars against a specially sourced squad of locally made Fiats decked out in national colours and driven by the finest car footballers the region could supply. When everything went to cock, a whole stadium made of shipping containers was almost complete down at the docks in Ushuaia. Better yet, Team Top Gear had a star substitute on his way in the form of England legend Gary Lineker. In fact, when things went sour and our plan went awry, the former footballer was moments away from getting on the plane at Heathrow and only a frantic phone call stopped him flying all the way to Argentina for nothing; except, we must presume, a pretty frosty reception. As an aside, Lineker was later booked to be our studio guest for the eighth show of series 22, just before everything went wrong. If you’re a car show hoping for smooth running, my advice is don’t book Gary Lineker."