Of course, Top Gear's music cues add to the scene and its comedy. So playing incidental from "You Only Live Twice" while James May flies a Caravan airship out of a hangar adds to its James Bondesque design. Sometimes the music gets pretty overt, other times it is subtle. The most subtle one I recall was a few years ago when Clarkson was racing a Bugatti Veyron against James and Richard in a Cessna 182 from northern Italy to London. As Clarkson drove through Switzerland, the music being played was the theme from the 1960s TV series "The Champions" (probably because the organization the characters were part of was based in Geneva, Switzerland).
As such, whomever acts as the sound and music engineer for Top Gear certainly has a good ear for music that came before and knows when to use it.