YouTube Success Car Guys Stupid Crap They Pull

This crap is getting old.  The guys that make a ton of YouTube money do stupid stuff as they are running out of ideas?

streetspeed 717 just trashed a $100,000 Ram truck.  Is this guy over the top or is it just me?

You're talking about it, and sharing their video.

Clicks = $$$

In reply to bigdaddylee82 :

You are correct.   I'm the old man now, get off my lawn.

Yeah, the whole YT car-channel scene has gone nuclear chain-reaction with stupidity. Cleetus bought a whole racetrack and trashes dozens of Crown Vics with every video, Hoovie now has a collection of Lamborghinis that he complains about, and Tavarish is rebuilding a McLaren. The dumb stunt guys are completely unbearable at this point, constantly trying to one-up each other with increasingly stupid vehicles and stunts. 

The algorithm has spoken and these idiots are going to trash the whole scene. It's sad.

I don't understand how these guys make their money.  Clearly they're making a lot of it based on the cars/houses/shops they own (looking at you Tyler Hoover, Tavarish, WatchJRGo).  But tavarish doesn't put out that much content.  WatchJRGo has very few views of his videos.   Hoovie has been doing the same schtick now, buy an old, cheap car that's a mess, have a mechanic inspect it, fix it, then drive/complain about them, then sell them for a loss...

I've watched a few YouTube videos where they discuss the economics of it and basically it sounded like you make no money unless you put out several videos a week that get 1 million views or more...

Its like none of you remember how big Jack-ass was as a series of movies.

This is the moral equivalent of that with cars.  Top Gear UK started it, but with their understated British way and actual humor.

Dumbassery sells, next to sex, it's one of the higher paying performing arts for the common person without any real skills.

I'm currently fixing the mess this guy left on this car: https://youtu.be/1blRetqp6vU

Streetspeed717 Mike is a useless tool who figured out the whistlindeisel technique of destroying vehicles for the sake of entertainment. 

I've watched his videos for years, and used to like him. The past year the only thing he does is spend 5 minutes every video promoting his t-shirt business giveaway scam, and buys new cars for the giveaway. He off roads occasionally, but other than that you watch him drive to his t-shirt shop. His recent success with this scam makes me wish it would stop working. 

Hoovie is about the most likeable car guy on youtube. He doesn't claim to be an expert, but with the team of him and the wizard, his mechanic, I watch every video. 

Tavarish. Why does youtube make me so bitter? I like tavarish. Met him in person at sema. He rebuilt his first lambo himself, and it was awesome. He still has great videos, when he makes them. The last video he had was beginning December when he started his mclaren. The hell are you doing if youtube is the full-time job and you make a video every 6 weeks? The man will take sponsorship money to anyone that pays, and will make entire videos of his sponsors. Yawn. 

In reply to ShawnG :

I watched most of the video you linked to, and had never heard of this kid before, so sample size being what it is and all... I don't understand how there's 258k people subscribed to the channel of a person who doesn't seem to understand what they're doing.  I'll admit to being a bit confused by the fuel pump issue he had with the mechanical pump (is there a missing fuel pump pushrod causing the no-pump issue?) but putting washers under the pump mount to move the pump further away from the camshaft, or his describing "an operating signal or valve or something" to control fuel flow into the carb float bowl... he seems optimistic based on no experience.  Why would people want to watch a shop class dropout not fix a car right?  I would imagine you're having a great time putting that Manta right.

Tavarish just seems weird and also very optimistic.  How many projects has that guy started and the abandoned?  Hoovie I sort of get but I honestly wouldn't want to deal with him in real life much.  That's really where I'm at with most all of these channels; sometimes entertaining but glad I don't have to deal with these folks directly.  I do like Soup Classic Motoring; that channel is way different.  The ones where the channel "content producer" is actually doing the work and learning or sharing knowledge, that's the stuff I like.

I don't watch any of these channels. Project farm is more my speed. 

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

The hole in the floor for the manual transmission swap looks like it was made with a can opener.

The no pump issue is probably because he expected it to suck fuel from the tank right away despite being dry forever.

I haven't even gotten that far yet, right now I've been fixing the hacked up wiring harness and installing a new fuse panel. I'm going to have to go through pretty much everything on the car since it has to pass an inspection when we're done.

He's not done anything malicious, just got in way over his head and didn't know how much he didn't know.

I'm sure he's great at installing bumper covers on G35s.

I think sponsors and merch are the way to big dollars more than views, but prolific publishers with big Subscriber counts definitely can't hurt. 

Funny, I was having a coffee with this fellow in his shop last week, discussing this sort of thing.

Paul is an innovator in the MTB industry, designed and built some of the best bikes from brands like Rocky Mountain, Kona and Brodie Research. He teaches a framebuilding course, has a great shop, knows what he's doing and shares it freely on youtube.

He has only thousands of views.

Another youtuber is a total hack, chops up junk bicycle frames and modifies them using a hacksaw, mig welder and galvanised tubing.

The hack has tens of thousands of views.

I suggested that it might be because the skill level and quality of a proper shop may be intimidating to some people and it might be easier for the to relate to the hack job because that's where their skill level was at.

Shameless plug for Paul's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZjb4tzi9ECiOhVDgoocC3Q

The first step is to not watch. 

I'm watching things like Vice Grip Garage, Junkyard Digs, Skid Factory, Bad Obsession Motorsports,  Tahetian Rider (fantastic non-typical cafe racer builds out of France, to name a few Even my perennial favorite, Mighty Car Mods has taken a bit of a backseat with a Lotus and a new ((er)ish) Audi RS3. Not relevant to my interests. So, I simply move on to a different video. Simple. 

The only two I keep up with are Cold war motors and Bad obsession. Most of the rest seem to concentrate on completely unaffordable super cars or doing really dumb things with ordinary cars.

I'm happy for Cletus.  That guy is living the dream owning his own racetrack. Which by the way could've easily been bought by someone else and turned into another strip mall or Mc mansion farm. I didn't get into his channel until he got the track but now I'm in... He's always got something interesting going on

I used to watch three or four including Streetspeed and Evan Shanks, but it's probably been two years since I last saw either of them. Evan was annoyingly good: young guy who was trying to make a drift car work along with a couple other projects. Moved from Texas to San Diego trying to latch on with another Youtuber whose name escapes me, but that didn't work and he went back to Texas. He must be doing OK since his Twitter shows a huge shop filled with JDM stuff; when I dropped out he was still working in a two-car garage in an apartment complex.

I hate-watched Streetspeed because he did a lot of stupid stuff, namely roll racing on I-83 and I-81, but got tired of his content being just (as mentioned earlier) him going to his shirt/wrap company or his tuner. It was obvious that he was generating ten minutes of content per day just to generate ten minutes of content per day.

The only car-related content I watch regularly is Bad Obsession.

yall think that e63m3 is bad, go check out mr beast. or don't, you might throw up a little.

I've dropped a bunch of stuff I used to watch, the only garage stuff left for me is vice grip garage, finnegans and the occasional cleetus vid. Thankfully the racing stuff and rc fun is still there 

I've been watching a feller on Vice Grip Garage. Not tired of his schtick yet. I find myself saying, "I don't know" in his voice using his hand gestures. That's bad right?

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

The only two I keep up with are Cold war motors and Bad obsession. Most of the rest seem to concentrate on completely unaffordable super cars or doing really dumb things with ordinary cars.

Cold War Motors is excellent and vastly underviewed.

In reply to docwyte :

Hoovie  apparently has a few other businesses- he mentioned that in the show a while back. He clearly makes money of his channel but I doubt it's the only source of income. Given that he occasionally looks like he's learned his car buying skills from yours truly, that's probably a good thing. Tavarish also mentioned in the past that he has other sources of income. The one I can't quite figure out is WatchJRGo as I don't think there can be that much money in flipping cheap cars.

If you use YouTube income as the only income stream then I think you're right, you need a lot of views of a lot of videos while you're the flavor of the month. A lot of car YouTubers specifically seem to have sponsorship deals as well, which is probably more useful income wise.

I tried to get into the YouTube game and thought I was producing good content with good info and sharing my mistakes but it just never took off, and I wasn't willing to do something crazy to get followers. I know my stuff is better than some of the silly stuff on there now but the algorithm disagrees.

I think one important way of looking at "success" on the toobz is the original motivation as to why you're making those videos. For all the channels that are doing the equivalent of listicles "ten reasons why you need to do burnouts with buggy wheels, you'll be amazed by no 4", there are people out there who use it as the new age equivalent of a build thread, or to teach things.

Those channels probably aren't a monetary success like the more daft ones, but people build enjoyable communities around them and maybe make some hobby money on the side. Or advertise for their business - I doubt that the Carwizard (Hoovies main mechanic) is hurting for business from the free advertising on both Hoovie's and his own channel, but a lot of the times I learn stuff when I watch his channel.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like racing, easy to make a small pile of money if you start with a large pile.

My suspicion is that most of these guys are not hurting for money to begin with.