Winners of the series finals for the last two years – and now lifetime holders of the treasured Scrapheap trophy – the Megalomaniacs consist of Nosh, Daz and Kev. Team captain is tattoo-covered Nosher, who's into scorpions and making his own jewellery. By day, he's a sheet-metal worker – a panel-beater to you and me – and by night, he's a Royal Arch Druid of the Ancient Order of Druids. He's ably abetted by security officer Darren Cross. Darren is into motorcycle drag-racing, and prefers tattoos to jewellery and so has his wedding ring tattooed on his finger. Third member of the Megs is mechanic Kevin Chaplin. When he's not under the bonnet of his HGV lorry, he spends his time medieval sword fighting.

In their last encounter with Scrapheap, the Megs concentrated on speed and movement in their totally bodged trike. This time, they have the opposite challenge: making sure a vehicle remains in one place and shrinks!

Watch time-lapse videos of the Megalomaniacs in action.

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The last trio to challenge the Megs were the Brothers in Arms, and now they face the 'Brothers in Farms': Greg, Brian and Terry Long (in descending order of age), winners of Junkyard Wars, the American version of Scrapheap Challenge.

Greg and Terry live and work on the family farm in Tyrone, Pennsylvania with their mother Sarah. Greg also has a full-time job as a manufacturing manager for an agricultural engineering firm, and Terry works in construction. But the team is not completely foreign to these shores: captain Brian has lived in Warwickshire for the last four years, employed by Massey Ferguson as a manager of strategic development.

As Greg puts it, 'Brian’s the thinker, I’m the builder and Terry’s the driver.' The brothers’ favourite pastimes are car racing and tractor-pulling – they’ve built and run some dozen tractor-pullers together. All three excel at the basic skills necessary to compete in Scrapheap Challenge. Welding and cutting will probably fall to Terry, but the other two could do them just as easily. The trio have built high-performance engines and tooled parts for their machines.

Watch time-lapse videos of the Long Brothers in action.

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Young gun James Aduskevich (Long Brothers), a former expert on Junkyard and an excellent fabricator, will bend over backwards to make a machine that gives the home team a run for its money. He’s been building his own vehicles since before junior school, and has constructed more than 15 from the ground up. He received his engineering degree with the highest honours, and has been awarded several patents, with a few still pending.

Pint-sized but mega-brained Steve Garfirth (Megalomaniacs) has proved on Scrapheap that he is the king of hydraulics, having – with Chaos Crew in the series just past – nearly achieved victory in the Demolition challenge with the hydraulic excavator. But this is hardly surprising, as he is a product specialist in hydraulic excavators, working for Liebherr-GB Ltd.

Neal Davis, retro-inventor, madcap mechanical creator and judge of the Scrapheap series final, is one of Britain's finest hands-on engineers. He gained his experience in the RAF, in a career that saw him service fighter planes, defuse bombs and eventually teach engineering. He has since turned his hand to many things: jet-powered tractors, remote-controlled steam engines, and shoe-horning big engines (and we mean really big – from planes!) into tiny cars. He has even built a machine that parks his car for him! He's modest, though, and will always claim not to know much when he quite obviously knows loads.

Jon Kneen and his partner Allen Sharp founded Al-jon Inc. in Ottumwa, Iowa (best known as the hometown of M*A*S*H's Radar O'Reilly and Tom Arnold from Roseanne) in 1962. Production of their car crusher became the foundation for Al-jon, and over the years, the company became recognised as a leader in and innovator of scrap-processing equipment – Al-jon has built enough car crushers to see to Detroit's entire annual production!

However, Jon isn't just a pretty face. He has served as chairman, president and director for many trade associations and corporations. He holds a BA from Iowa Wesleyan College, did graduate work at the University of Denver, and received an honorary doctorate from Iowa Wesleyan University. In addition, he has received several governmental appointments.