has declared "victory is mine" over business mogul almost two decades after the Tesla boss sued him for defamation after a bad review. Things haven't been going well for the businessman after he was appointed by to deal with government waste and overspending.

Since he took on a governmental role, Tesla's sales of electronic cars have taken a nosedive in both the US and across the globe. Since the CEO became embedded within the Trump administration, a lot of customers have decided to distance themselves from the company. But one person who isn't disappointed by his financial struggles is the former presenter.

On Sunday (March 23), the motoring journalist revealed that he'd been sued by Musk back in 2008 after he gave the Tesla Roadster a bad review on the BBC evening show. In his latest column for , Clarkson explained that he found the car "unreliable".

The first model he reviewed broke down after just 55 miles when the brakes failed and the second overheated. Musk was deeply embarrassed by the verdict and swiftly launched a lawsuit over it.

Reflecting on their long-running feud, 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 riverbank for his body to float past. And now it has."

Clarkson said he was "always scrupulously fair with his car reviews" and was delighting in seeing the businessman being "pecked to death by the very people who put him on the pedestal in the first place."

Musk's lawsuit against the BBC for negative publicity was ultimately dismissed in 2013. When he spoke about the matter on Newsnight months later, he suggested that the presenter was not the right person to be reviewing an American electric car.

He said at the time: "I was surprised to learn Top Gear was even on the BBC. Clarkson's show is more about entertainment that it is about truth. And I think most people realise that, but not everyone.

"I've actually enjoyed a lot of his shows so it's not as though I just hate Top Gear or anything. He can be very funny and irreverent, but he does have a strong bias against electric cars and particularly he seems to hate American.

"Like, his two pet peeves are American cars and electric cars. And we're an American electric car so we're in the worst possible situation for someone like Clarkson." Clarkson's Roadster review was revived a few years later when Joe Rogan had Top Gear presenter Chris Harris on his podcast.

He accused Clarkson of doing Musk "diertier than anybody ever did", adding that the show mocked up the Tesla Roadster's unreliability for comedic effect - something Clarkson strenuously refuted.

The presenter wrote in a column at the time: "Talk turned to the story that I wrote a road test for the first ever Tesla before I'd driven it. And that the breakdown we showed on television was fabricated.

"Joe and Chris perpetuate the myth that my Tesla road test was unfair. On Top Gear we c***ed about and upset a lot pf people over the years. But our road tets were always scrupulously fair."