The Iced Coffee Hour - Buying a $3,000,000 Hyper Car | The Untold Story Of Shmee150

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

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It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch.

Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Tim, also known online as Schmee 150. Bought my first Ferrari and Porsche. McLaren 675 LT, all in a 12-day period. 12 days. Yeah, it was kind of full on. For all of you car enthusiasts, he needs no introduction, but for anybody unfamiliar, he has one of the most incredible car collections valued over $10 million.

His YouTube channel features some of the most insane automobiles on the planet, and he started all of this from the home of beginnings of working a normal 9-to-5 office job out of college. Today we're going to be breaking down the cost of owning an exotic car collection, how you could get an exotic car collection as well, and also how you could subscribe if you haven't done that already. But first, we've got to thank our sponsor, Epidemic Sound. Epidemic Sound is the best tool for creators to soundtrack their content. We've been using Epidemic Sound for years now, and even though I started pretty early on using some soundtracks in the background of my videos, I wish I had started sooner. The thing is, anytime you're using sounds or background music in any of your videos, you always have to fear getting copyright, rike or having your video demonetized.

The other struggle that I had is that most of the free copyright music is just absolutely terrible and it takes you forever to search through all the bad ones to find like the three that work. Not to mention, there's no guarantee that it's actually copyright-free. And when it comes to viewer retention, a good backtrack is crucial. And somehow Epidemic managed not to just have a few, but thousands of copyright-free sounds and songs, and most importantly, they're really good. Epidemics Library offers over 35,000 tracks and 90,000 sound effects, so you'll always

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You got to see this car, Jack. It's an AMG GT Black Series. See, you know what that means. That's a lot of abbreviations for me. That's like too, too many abbreviations. Could you explain to Jack the significance of this car? How many did they make? The AMGGGT is kind of their Super Grand Tora,

supercar you could say. The GT Black Series is like the flagship track version. So it's the one that set the record at the Nurebergring, which is often considered to be the most hardcore racetrack in the world. And it's not a car that most people, would take on a massive tour around the United States, but we're doing it. So what are you doing? Where is the starting? What prompted that? So I've always had fun. I actually brought my 4GT, my new 4GT over here to the US back in

2019 and I had plans to do another tour in 2020 and it was so much fun to explore, to go to so many places, to meet so many people, to shoot so many videos. The audience was loving it, I was loving it and I always wanted to do it again. But this time we've gone, we've gone kind of completely full on. So we started in New York, went up towards the northeast back when it was with all the foliage. It was unbelievably pretty. We crossed over to Toronto and Canada, drove all the way over here. We're actually here quite recently for the Seema show. And then this is kind of part two. We're now going to California and over towards that side. And then we'll make our way all the way back across down to Florida and then we'll go up the

East Coast at the end. So it's a big old tour. So what's the purpose of the tour? Are you just going around meeting a bunch of different YouTubers making content and whatnot? I mean, so the tagline behind my channel, Shmielon 50, is living the supercar dream. The idea is always, been to create content, which is sharing what I feel exceptionally lucky to do, but I think any car enthusiast would do if they can, you know, the dream journey, the dream road trip. So we go to racetracks, we go to car collections, we go for test drives, we go and meet people. And it's fun to just share that passion that so many people have that speaks through backgrounds, genres, whatever it is, everybody who loves cars, loves cars. You talk a language with that person. So it's

basically sharing that almost through daily updates, daily videos as we're on the road. It's you never nerve-wracking to put so many miles on a million-dollar car. I mean, driving the car is, the car's worth a million dollars? The Ford GT is absolutely. Probably, maybe, maybe more depending on the end. Why is your Ford GT worth a million in his is, do you have the new? So mine's a new four-geeting. Oh, it's a new one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the new, I've done about 8,000 miles of my Ford GT, which has been all around Europe everywhere. I've taken it, I think on 11 or 12 different racetracks now. I love to drive on track. Yeah. Um, but I believe these cars are made to be driven. They're made to be used. There are, there are two different prospects. He doesn't never,

I know, we have that conversation. But I think there are two completely different avenues, right? There's either the investment side and, you know, in recent years, cars as an investment asset have been astronomical, especially kind of limited edition, last of the old school, that kind of thing, or even first of the new school, first of the new era. I take completely the opposite idea, which is that, and I'm very lucky that I do this as my job, as my business, right? Making videos, it's what grows my channel, is to use them to the fullest. There's no point in kind of using a car just a little bit because you just touch on the surface of what it's like. If you go completely in the mindset of I'm not worrying, not in the sense that I want to destroy it, but I'm not worrying on what I'm going to sell this car for because I plan on keeping it.

You can then go into it and say, I'm going to drive it. I'm going to do this with it because you're not worrying in the same way. Yeah. Does some of that, though, have to do with the fact that you buy a lot of these cars at MSRP? It works very differently in Europe. So the MSRP system here, and especially in the United States at the moment, the premiums that dealer markups have been going for, we have the RRP and a dealer can't charge you over that. So in a normal world, rewind three years, if you walked into buy a fairly normal BMW model, you would be discussing a 5,000, 10,000 pound discount on the retail price rather than not adding the premium. if that makes sense. So an authorized dealer can't charge you over RRP.

It's still difficult to get an allocation, though. Sure. And it might be that they want you to buy more of the regular cars if you want to get the really special one, that kind of thing. Okay. But it's not that they can say, hey, if you want a GT Black Series, pay $250,000 over,

which I think they were running for here. Right. So to understand an allocation, because I hear this all the time in like the watch world, as well as the fancy car world, does that mean that you have to have basically a relationship with the dealer, right? Like if you want to go to get a nice watch,

you have to buy a bunch of other Rolexes and stuff like that and show them off and get to know the salesperson. Is it the same with fancy cars like that? It's exactly how it works. Every brand is different, though. Like if you take Ferrari, for example, they actually have behind the scenes this point system where they allocate points to you,

which you get for, let's say, how many cars you've bought, which of their events you've attended, their track events or their road trip events for going to their different gala dinners, for going on their internal Ferrari rallies or whatever it might be. So you get a point system. So if you want the latest and greatest, you need to have whatever X is for that particular car in your system.

Porsche, a little bit more, hard to read between the lines exactly what it is because they don't do it like that. It's more on a dealer level, but it's similar to what you just said. It's about having that relationship. So if you're a customer who wants to buy a new GD3RS that's just launched, you know, the latest hot Porsche. you probably need to have a Tycan, a KN, some regular 9-11s and have bought a few cars in the last year or two. That's interesting. So what about like the lower-level Porsches or like the lower-level Ferraris?

This is only for like the super fancy luxury cars that they produce? Or is this like, can you go in and just buy a 9-11, like a base model? Well, in the current world, not really. The order queue is so long that it's not realistic. The, an interesting one is the new Ferrari FUV, they call it, but the Ferrari SUV, the Pura-Sung, that they've recently launched because even for that, you need to have a certain other number of Ferraris in your history or in your current possession to be able to get one. How many Ferraris? It depends. I don't think they publicize what it is per se, but I believe it to be that you need to

effectively own one current vehicle along the lines of an SF90 Stradale, Ohio, so one of their kind of flagship cars, we could say, plus another car with a V-12, because the new car is a V-12. So you need to own those two and probably have some points from some other events and things. So that means you probably have to buy about a million dollars with the Ferraris. To then buy how much is that? Yeah, to then be able to spend four or five hundred thousand. Four or five hundred grand for that. How many Ferrari points do you have?

I don't know how it works exactly. I currently have two cars. I've previously owned two cars. I have more than one on order at the moment. So I'm working on it. Interesting. How did you get started in all of this? Have you always had a background in cars?

I mean, I've always loved cars. My YouTube car journey, you could say, began back in January 2010, and I've uploaded a video on YouTube on average more than once per day since for 13 years, which is kind of crazy. And I used to just run around the center of London, filming cars that went by, or I used to go to big events like the Geneva Motor Show, which was where lots of new products would be launched, the Gumbull 3,000, which is one of the world's most famous car rallies.

And I would just film a video and upload it. And you remember those days of YouTube. it wasn't ever really with any plan. It certainly wasn't, hey, one day this could be a business where I employ a whole load of people to do really cool stuff. It was, I'm just having fun filming cars. And that's kind of evolved from there. What were you doing for work back then?

I used to work in an investment consultancy, actually. Really? Very analytical based, which I would say is always where my YouTube side came from. It was like, how do I understand what's happening, what's working, publishing content, how do you reach your audiences, metadata, tags, analytics? you know, the drill. It's kind of, it's really a thing to try and understand it beyond just being creative and making a nice video. How do you find the time to do both? That takes a lot of time, especially unless you're just going like, you know, on the street, here's a 30 second video to

throw up whatever. I was super, super lucky actually back at the start because within the team I worked in, we were effectively creating a social media platform within our niche of the consulting world. and my boss therefore was super into the social media world and also very into cars had owned an early Audi R8 back when they were new this was the same kind of time and effectively saw what I was doing and I'd started at the company as one of the first employees

that was within single digits and the company had grown to just over 100 by this point and he basically allowed me which sounds bizarre to say to lower from working five days a week to working four days a week as my things were taking up to lower to three days a week eventually before I went full-time in the social media world. So it's kind of can't really repeat that.

Wow. But I got super lucky. Great guys. We still talk. The co-CEOs still see them both. So it's really, really nice, actually. So did you get a pay cut?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Got it. But it was, it kind of gave me the opportunity to take that leap of faith into it. Because I think one of the hardest things, when you're growing a channel,

you start getting an audience, is that you can earn something. Maybe you're earning a couple hundred dollars a month, but that's not enough to live on. certainly not in the supercar world where you've got to travel to events and create content around cars. You know, it's not cheap, whatever you want to do. So it gave me that opportunity to kind of build it up over a 12, 18 month period, rather than going kind of full in, which was amazing.

Like, without that, it couldn't be possible. How much were you making back then on the YouTube channel? Do you remember? Not a lot. I think probably, I think at the point I went full time, it was probably in the region of $10,000 to $15,000 a year. That's when you went full time. Yes.

10 to 15 grand a year. How did you justify it? No, no, no, that's when I, that's when I started. Let's say, started lowering the days. Yes, when I started cutting back from a five-day job. Apologies, I shouldn't have used the phrase full-time. But at the time, also, I was financing an expensive car, big monthly outgoings, lived in London, right?

But as any probably not-so-sensible young male does, it was what you had to do, right? What was the car? My Audi R-8 at the time. All right, V-10. Okay. Yeah, so I guess I'd have been 25 financing the R-R-8. probably all my spare outgoings each month were going to that. So I couldn't go straight from

work into the YouTube world, but it was that, I think, draw to the channel that I was sharing the experiences of that car. You know, the living in the supercar dream tag, I think we were already using back then. And it was very much taking the audience on road trips, sharing what it's like, sharing ups and downs when things work, when they don't work. So it's kind of one of those gambles that somehow managed to pay off. Hold that thought to me, because first we want to thank our sponsor, AtlasVPN. traveling a ton recently, and I don't expect it to slow down anytime soon. And with all that traveling comes sketchy and unsecured airport Wi-Fi. Well, thankfully, Jack, you user-sponsor AtlasVPN. A VPN stands for a virtual private network. So essentially, whenever you connect

to Wi-Fi, you're not connecting from your computer, the one with all your personal data, but from one of Atlas VPN servers that are spread out across the world. Which brings me to my favorite part about Atlas VPN, which is being able to stream exclusive movies to certain countries being outside of that country. It's really cool. You see, most websites, including Netflix and YouTube, will check to see what country you're in and blacklist certain videos from other countries. Thankfully, though, all I have to do is connect to an Atlas VPN server in the U.S. and I can start watching all my favorite content again. Yo, what are you watching? Nothing. They even have special servers that could support 4K streaming. It's also really easy to use.

All it takes is one click and you're connected. So I have a safe new year with Atlas VPN Premium. You can protect all your devices in 2023 for just $1.70 a month, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee, and six free months upon sign-up. Click the link in the description to get the New Year's deal today. And now, if that said, let's get back to the podcast. So how are you able to expand from the R-8? I take it. You put your job when full-time.

What's your schedule look like back then? Because now you have to just create content around the R-8 and just the car industry in general. Yeah, so the McLaren happened while I was at three days a week. So at this point, obviously, I'd spent a year, but growing the channel, trying to expand it. And I mean, it wasn't something that was earning certainly not $100,000 a year or anything like that. But it had reached a point at which that was possible. So I could put the deposit in. I financed the car.

To be honest, I spent pretty much everything I had at the time on my McLaren 12. How much was the McLaren? So I bought a car in the UK for 125,000 pounds, which at the time would have been something like $180,000. Is that the 12C? Yes, the 12c. It was really cheap. You have to think... Right, but 180.

It was still 180. Sure. But what you have to remember as well is it's funny because you wouldn't realize it now. New McLarence, when they launched and the first 12Cs were delivered at the end of, I want to say, 2012. When they started, or maybe it was early 2012, when they started, the cars had a lot of problems. They weren't ready. They didn't have an entertainment system inside that was working full stop, didn't turn on, just black screen. And it created a serious depreciation.

curve for early cars. So my car had a list price of 225,000 pounds, and it was less than a year old. So the previous owner to me had lost a six-figure sum in 12 months. Just not much fun. Wow. So I got an absolute bargain. I went on to sell the car for more than I bought it for

as it happens a year later, because the brand had had a bit of resurgence. There was a lot more, you know, people believing in their products, and they had fixed some of the problems. So they were all running properly. But it was definitely a big commitment. And there was certainly a period shortly thereafter where I was kind of like, is this a good idea?

Have I just done something? Do you remember what your payment was? Yeah, it was roughly a thousand pounds a month. Okay. Which was fine, like I say, but it was certainly, I really need this to work. I need this to go somewhere. I need this to grow into something. Yeah, it seems like a common theme from James doing that with his Lamborghini and Doug

Dumuro doing that with his Ferrari 360. Yes. They all were like, I went all in on a car, I bought something I couldn't afford, but it worked out. Yeah, it's, it's crazy to think about it. I look back and I'm like, why did I decide that was a good idea? But I think if you've got petrol running through your veins, it's kind of, it's what you want to do. It's what you work for. But what I certainly felt like I was working for was to have the opportunity to drive these kind of cars. And that drove me every day to get up and go and do what I could, you know, to go and work towards that goal. Yeah, I've always dreamt as a

teenager. I was completely kind of one day, I'll own a supercar. That's my goal. One day, one day. So how old were you when you got the McLaren? So early 2014, I would have been 26. So you're 26. Was that like your daily driver? It was my only car. That was your daily driver. How do you deal?

I lived in central London. So like even just like driving to work, like what? Well, we, you didn't really drive to work. Oh. Well, London has good public transport. So you have, we have an underground network. We have good buses. You can walk everywhere because the city's so small.

It's very different to the US. I can imagine you probably got some pretty funny looks and stuff like that. driving the car around like there's always been a big London car community even though it makes absolutely no sense to drive on the tiny city streets and it's where a big chunk of my channel began was car spotting it was filming cars in the city center um and going to Sunday morning meetups which again make no sense why you do them in central London but you've got to think of the dense concentration of wealth and you know property values and therefore the number of nice cars that reside in underground garages in the center of the city. I guess it was more about only driving the car if I was going out of London

somewhere, you know, off on a trip. I drove the car around Europe multiple times in that year. Plenty of kind of adventures and videos and things, but not so much, like not for commuting. See, that surprises me because even back then when that was way bigger of a risk for you to be daily driving, a McLaren, right, daily driving. Like now, obviously if you daily drive like a million dollar car it's probably not that scary for you but like back in the day being 26 having all of your assets and one thing that you could be hurtling at like 90 miles an hour down a freeway it's like for me i could not even fathom that i think i was very conscious that it was also the source of revenue so it was right okay i've always looked at you know i still have to pinch myself now big

time about the cars that i'm lucky to own because sometimes it feels like they're just the means to the business and then it's the wait a second moment like how's that possible um and certainly back then i just enjoyed it i enjoyed the engagement with people whether that was going to events and meeting people or whether that was uploading videos and interacting with comments you know how cars the sound of cars the feel of cars just bring out that passion from people um and you instantly like i said talk the same language you're instantly talking to them about something you both love and when did you fully decide to quit that job and go into YouTube full-time? It was a period where I had a couple of big videos in a row, so it gave me something to fall back on, or at least to be able to take the

leap of faith to go into it. So I think summer 2014. What were those videos? A couple of, a couple of things all kind of at the same time, but mostly around the video on my channel that's got the most views, actually, which I'm generally about positivity, so I'm not particularly pleased about this video. I think I know which video you're talking about. But it's what hyperviral, it's a Lamborghini crashing in London. Everyone has seen this video. Everyone. Everybody.

It's that black evented door, right? Yes. Yeah. And it's going down the side street and it hits like a minivan and then it flips over. It jumps up in the air. You filmed that. You saw that. I didn't actually film it, but there's quite a story behind this as well.

But it is the biggest video on my channel. And it's on, on YouTube, it's done 30-something million views. But it's if you add up everything on Facebook and Instagram, I'm sure, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of hundreds. I remember seeing this on the cover of like Yahoo. Yes. It went everywhere. The cover of yaw.

Covered, like the front page, but cover. I mean front page. All the newspapers, everything everywhere. But the interesting story behind it was at that time, I was actually trying to approach YouTube a bit more like a publishing platform as opposed to exclusively videos that I would make. So I would try and buy rights from people to use their videos, as a lot of people now do on Facebook and other things, if they're not stealing them, that is, because obviously that's

pretty rife. But back then, I was trying to see if I could buy rights to cool interesting videos. And this actually happened on Mother's Day. So I was out of London with my family who don't live in the center of London. So I was out for Mother's Day lunch. And I heard heard heard there's been a Lamborghini crash. And it's right outside where I used to live like half a mile away. So I knew it was there.

And I asked a friend of mine if they could go along and see what's up. You know, the side idea was, can you get a video of something? And he messaged me back later saying, oh, somebody I met there had a video of it. So I was like, Do you have their contact info? Anyway, he didn't. So I put out a post online saying, I've heard there's a video.

If anybody knows about that, let me know. And somebody sent me a message. And ultimately, I bought the video from him for a couple of thousand, uploaded it. No idea at the time that it would be anything. I mean, my biggest video to that date had probably not earned me

the amount of money that I paid him for that video. So it was, it was risky. No idea. No idea. But I kind of believed in the idea of this or licensing the content out because I did a lot of licensing of the videos

I had shot. because I just had a stock library of this point of so many different cars that people would buy if they wanted you know the different TV shows that put together mash-up clips and things that would want videos of whatever I might have so I was doing quite a lot of that

and yeah I didn't expect the video to go so far but it did I remember seeing that everywhere how do you protect the rights of your video do people just rip it all like something like Yahoo can't they just link it back to you or I guess then that they would credit you pretty much everybody commersion has a department that deals with this.

And if you go to them and say, hey, you've taken my video, they'll offer you something. Okay. Certainly more in the past than now. At that point, it wasn't so much videos of myself, you know,

presenting everything. Now it really is. So if anybody steals one of my videos now, it's still got my face in it. So it's kind of, it's not really worth going after. It depends what it is. But at the end of the day,

I believe in focusing on doing the next positive thing, rather than starting some dispute with somebody over, sure even a couple of thousand dollars or it sounds silly to say but life is better if you're more positive about it yeah rather than getting caught up in silly fights um at that point there was certainly a lot more but i guess i felt super lucky and excited that i was able to do something that i enjoyed so much and turn it into something that was generating me you know an income that was the the craziest thing about it so i didn't really feel oh this is a problem yeah just you just let it happen

Yeah. I'm curious what some of the other videos were that happened around that same time. I think just basically a few things on the channel. Geneva Motor Show was always a big one for new car reveals, and I was always trying to be the first to upload videos. I would stand at the side of a car reveal, you know, holding my camera up over my head with a crowd of journalists in front of me to just try and get that first clip before I run to a corner at the Motor Show hall where my laptop is sat on the floor with a sequence ready

so I can just dump in the files and get them straight on the internet. That was something I would always try and do. So if you search YouTube for La Ferrari and you reverse the search, I don't think you can anymore, but you could for a time and find the oldest upload. My video of the La Ferrari reveal at the Geneva Motor Show was live before Ferrari's own pre-filmed video had even gone live, like within 45 minutes of the reveal. So at the time, it was kind of, I was going full on to do whatever I could to get this content out because 2014, 2015 was before the major magazines and traditional media publications

had really certainly in the automotive space had really tried to do, social. They weren't. They didn't really know what to do. Nobody had taken point on it. So it was like this kind of cheeky opportunity to get in there before everybody else did with anything. So to share the first content. So I think having time as well was a big one because it meant I could shoot more. And I started having manufacturers, dealers, private car collectors reaching out saying, hey, would you like to come and film this? Would you like to come and do this? So a bit more traveling, a bit more access to things I can only have dreamt about before. No. What were you going to ask, Jack. I was going to ask you, so you bought the video for about two grand, right?

Something like that. Can you say how much that specific video you think generated in revenue? It's very hard to say. And like, so this is the thing that I said or felt so reluctant about in terms of it being the largest viewed video on my channel because it's what it's brought in over the years in terms of audience. And you can't really put a value on that. You can't put a metric on that. You can say directly what that video has earned in revenue. And I can tell you, it was actually a lot lower than people would think for 35 million views. It's a short video, right? The average retention is 15 seconds.

Yeah. So there's 15 second video with clicks from around the world. It's not clicks just from, you know, premium markets like the US or Europe. It's clicks from everywhere. So it's certainly a much smaller figure. I can tell you I have videos with 2 million views that have earned more than that video has with 35 million, which I find fascinating. There's so much understanding of how YouTube works beyond.

I mean, I'm preaching to the experts here. There's so much more understanding of how this works than just stick a video online and get out of many views. So it's what it's really done in terms of like you instantly know the video. Yes. So many people know that video. I've had a few videos that have done 10 million plus on more positive things. Like the first time filming the Dubai police cars. Have you seen the Dubai police supercar fleet?

I filmed that similar kind of time. Audi R-Aids and they have like crazy. Bugatti Veyron. Yeah. Aston-Marton-177. Bugatti Veyra. Yeah, so they did. I'm just curious because like, do they, do the cops actually get in the Veyrons and like chase down some dude in like a 98 Civic?

Do they actually do that, you know? It's really interesting actually. It started completely as a marketing thing. I believe the cars were like the personal collection of somebody close to the general of the Dubai police or however exactly it worked. And they used them at, you know, for patrols at big public events or venues or that kind of thing. But it kind of went a bit further and effective. the most senior officers can drive and patrol with them. Of course, they're not going to be arresting people because they don't have the right set up for that, but they do use them as

police cars. Like they are, they are there. But you don't think anyone's ever been detained and thrown in the back in the back of like a Veyron. Because at that point, there's no back of the passenger seat. At that point, I'd probably break lost. There is, there is a Brabos G-wagon. They could throw somebody in the back of a Brabass G-wagon. But it's, it's, it was a huge marketing thing as so much of the content or things you see from the UAE have been. Um, um, But my videos of that from the beginning were obviously really big because people hadn't seen it before. I've had some big videos of a first look at a brand new car that I've managed to push out from the Geneva Motor Show, like I just said, for example. And things that I'm much more proud of as videos we could say.

Wow. So why didn't you decide to license more content or did you? And that was just the one video that happened to do really well. No, I did. I did. You know, a couple of friends from the car spotter world. Actually, back then I came up with agreements that, you know, they would, we would split the revenue that a video would generate, that kind of thing. With the idea of, you know, one day, maybe that could be the way the channel runs, sharing the content being that side of the business, which maybe would have worked quite well.

It's hard to say looking back. But what I figured happened was that the audience were more keen on content that made them feel like they're related with you. So more personal, more talking to them directly through the video rather than just throwing out a video. of a car, you know, with music over the top or something. Yeah. It's not quite the same. Whereas that personal journey is the way I think so many people in certainly my space, but pretty much across the board with YouTube, have evolved, right?

Because they've created that connection to their viewers and the viewers follow the whole journey. The crazy thing I think for my channel is at the beginning, I had a BMW one series, a diesel one series coupé, lovely car, but people can see that progression from that all the way through. So I now have a garage of about 20 cars. And it's all there. The whole story is there, which is really quite fun. Let's talk about that a little bit. The journey from the McLaren, what happened after the McLaren?

I promptly bought a more practical car. That did happen. I upgraded from that McLaren to another one. I actually had four McLarens in a row. What I was saying about creating the content around the brand, that there wasn't really much out there. So I had the 12C, I upgraded it to a 650S spider, and then to a 675 LT.

and that's the point after the third one that I started buying other cars. And I actually had a crazy period back in September 2015. And I remember it so well because in July of that year was a major algorithm change. Major change, they introduced effectively the mid-roll ads that you could add in on longer videos. So a massive shift towards creating longer form content. And I was like, I had my light bulb moment, my eureka moment of right, I've got to do this. Started doing that straight from the off. And for many years, that was actually my most successful month because I took delivery of the McLaren 675 LT, but also bought my first Ferrari and Porsche all in a 12-day period.

12 days. It was kind of full-on at the time. I was just kind of what is happening. How is this? The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full. leather seats and wood accents.

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to be able to afford all of these cars? Because I remember watching your channel from back in the early days. This was like when you did the gumball rally videos. Yeah, I still do. Yeah. but the early ones. This must have been like 2012 or like 2013. And I kind of wondered going through that.

Like how do you afford all of these cars? Yeah, I mean, I'm the first to admit around it. This is, I've used a lot of car finance over the years. You know, I very carefully tried to weigh up what's the right path in terms of deposits, payment plans and outgoings. And certainly at that period, it was like that. The 675 LT, I think I had bought that probably 50-50. something like that as a deposit. The 9-81 came in Gt4, my Porsche, they were actually an almost

guaranteed overs straight from the off. So I took that on, I think, a 50% deposit interest only type deal. So tiny payments relative, but every limited edition Porsche at that time was trading for crazy money over. So I suppose my original idea was if I keep it for six months or 12 months, I'm probably not going to lose money on it. Perhaps a little bit confident, but it did go in that direction. So it was fine. And the Ferrari, Ferrari finance actually do an amazing deal. Ferrari prop up their own cars in a way that no other brand can match. In terms of residual values. So they'll give you a four-year agreement where the, it's probably slightly different from region to region, but they'll give you, you know, you'll put in your deposit, you'll have your monthlies, but they'll give you a value at

the end, you know, the guaranteed buyback value at the end or the kind of hand it back value, I should say, the balloon payment, which will be very, very high. But what happens as a result of that is because pretty much every Ferrari is financed with Ferrari finance, is that they have such a good control over the used market and the values stay so high. So you see this now with newer cars, say the new Ferrari 296 GTB, which is their V6 hybrid, is a direct rival to the McLaren Archera. Very similar cars on paper. The Ferrari is probably 70 or 80,000 pounds, $100,000 more. But the likelihood is it will probably be worth more than $100,000 more in two or three years' time. So even though it costs more on paper, it probably costs you less to own for three years.

It's really quite interesting. So what does it like to finance a Ferrari? What do they look in terms of how much money down, what a credit score needs to be, what an income requirement? I'm so curious about this. So I'm smirking a bit because when you say to a finance company back in 2015, what's your job?

I earn money from making videos on the internet. They definitely look at you like, no. No, you don't. Nobody understood that. And certainly it was quite a, I think, a hard thing to do from the outset. But you obviously, like anything, this, you show, you demonstrate your income. You give an explanation of what you do and how you use the cars. And let's be real, I'm using the cars for videos.

The cars are part of my business activities, if you will, as well. So parts of the expense can be written off. Obviously, that's different in every country, and it works very differently. So I think at the time, I just submitted the application. You know, it's been very easy. It still is very easy for lots of people. to get credit on cars. Obviously, maybe not Ferraris, of course,

but submitted the application. It was approved and job done. Put in my deposit, I guess probably 20, 25%, something like that. Okay. And go from there. Are they hesitant, though, about you making content with the car.

I heard Ferrari's very particular about the image. Because I remember the thing with David Lee wanting an allocation. I think it was the, what was it, the Ferrari ends or the convertible? The Ferrari,

yeah. Yeah, and he didn't get the allocation. And I think he posted something on Twitter or he posted on Instagram, calling them out on it and then coming out publicly and saying we don't like the image or like the flashy aspect of it.

I don't think it was so much that and without wanting to go too specifically into David's situation, it's the point system. The majority of, I believe, his collection of cars had come from third-party sources. Cars, he had bought you, amazing cars. Like absolutely amazing cars, but to buy a

Ferrari perter, you need to have your 20 cars that you've bought direct from Ferrari. It's a very different system. They are, incredibly protective of the brand vastly more than anybody else. I have a close relationship with them and I love working with Ferrari. They make amazing cars, but they can be sometimes you have you have to be very like play by their rules if you want to, you know, be able to work with them. It's one I think that if you are, you know, in that Ferrari world, you kind of know that kind of respect that, you know, the history that they have

and the people who are buying Ferraris, they are the, you know, the ultra VIPs of the world kind of thing, you know, to be building and buying La Ferrari a Purtas, a car they only made 200 of them, right? It was $2 million each. And that's six years ago. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it would be double that, if not more. Right. Now, I heard also that now with the newer Ferraris, they have some sort of system where they could tell if you've changed the exhaust or if you modify the engine in such a way where it like flags, it avoids the warranty. Is that true? It's pretty much true with every company. I see it a lot. Like when the new Corvette came out, the C-8 generation Corvette.

A lot of buyers were quite unhappy that Chevrolet had completely locked it out. So you couldn't modify. You had to put kind of piggyback ECUs if you want to change anything. BMW do a big job of it. If you've changed anything on a BMW, it's logged in the system on any new car. And that will be there forever. You know, even if you revert your changes to sell it, the dealer will scan it. And it will say, yeah, this happened.

Like a lot of these new cars are completely locked down. That's crazy. Yeah, it makes it really difficult. So, for example, the two Ferraris I currently own are completely bonestock, unchanged because I don't want to get into any warranty battles if something goes wrong. They're very happy for you to use the cars. It's not like they don't want you to go and track them and drive them and do some miles with them, but they don't want you to stick aftermarket parts on them because it's not the image.

It's not the right look. Now, what do you think it is that Lamborghini doesn't go after modifications as much as other companies do? I think it's the brand image of Lamborghini. they are rebellious, right? Sure. If you buy a Lamborghini, you are a flamboyant character, you want to be out there, you're that kind of person. You know, if you look at cars that are driving down in South Beach, Miami,

or, you know, through Dubai or something, the things you see the most of a Lambo's. If you go and rent a supercar, you rent a Lambo, right? It's that kind of thing because there's nothing that says, yeah, this is a crazy experience more. Like, there's no alternative. So I think Lamborghini embrace that, and they know their customers are these kind of people.

Like, if you go to a Lamborghini, event. If you go to a Ferrari event, people will be very formal in their suits. Yeah. Dressed up. You go to a Lamborghini event. People are just in shorts and t-shirts, right? Yeah. It's a completely different type of buyer. And you actually see that. Big Ferrari collectors tend not to own a Lamborghini and big Lamborghini collectors will not own a Ferrari. And it's amazing that you have that complete divide between the two brands. Whereas like a McLaren collector will probably have some Porsches because those two cars are very track focused and kind of line up with one another.

Right. So you see, I see these kind of trends all over the place. But people who have have multiple Lamborghini, cereal Lamborghini buyers, they're not Ferrari guys. What car make do you think is liked too much, is overhyped? Interesting. We'll put you on the spot here. Yeah, I'm very on the spot with that one. What's hyped too much. Ferrari is listening.

Do you know what? If we talked about, let's say, the multi-million dollar cars, you know, this world of Bugatti, Carnegie, what's really interesting in that space, is how all of these cars are beyond what any of us need in terms of performance, what they can do, art pieces even, but they all do this quite differently. Like it's really hard to compare even those kind of cars because they're not the same thing. If you then come down to a supercar field, Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, Porsche. Again, every car these companies produce now is way beyond what any normal driver can use.

can do. You know, if you buy a 7, 8, 900,000 horsepower car, we're normal humans. The rate of acceleration and cornering ability, you can't do on the road. Like, these cars make absolutely no sense. So again, it comes much more down to a person's emotional connection with a particular car. And while one person might be much more in the camp of a Porsche, because they're bulletproof and they can do endless track miles, for example, I prefer a little bit more emotion out of a car. I prefer the flair of an Italian engine more than that, for example. So I don't necessarily think

what I couldn't, I couldn't really point one brand and say, you know, they're overhyped per se. But I think different cars will appeal to different people. Like, I'm more of a McLaren and a Ferrari guy than I am a Porsche guy. So for you personally, Porsche, I'm not, I'm not the biggest Porsche guy. I've owned a couple.

I've had a GT3, two Gt4s, recently had a TICAN, their electric car. But like I'm not the one lining up at the door for a new GD3RS or whatnot, because I find the brand quite difficult as well. They're quite like what we're talking about with the allocations, it's impossible to know what you need to do. Like if somebody said to me, you can have a GT3RS, if you buy, these three cars will sign the contract now done. Then you can think about it.

But I don't like having to buy this, this, this, this, to maybe get that. I think some of that spoils the mystery, though, because if Ferrari did that, let's just say and said, okay, you need to buy these four cars and you'll get this. Then it's like any rich guy can say, all right, now I'm going to buy those four. I shove them off to the set, I'll buy that. But keeping some of the mystery and having someone at Ferrari hands select those people, I think, as part of what makes people want to go the extra mile. Like maybe I should buy that fifth Ferrari, just to get on their good side.

Maybe I should shake these hands over here. Go to that event. It's not required, but let me do it anyway because it really, proves that you want it that badly. No, it's true. And you know, a lot of the brands are keen to keep their biggest supporters close. I think that's the same with any industry, not exclusive to cars. You know, people who genuinely buy the cars, use the cars and sing the praises of those cars to their social circle, to their, you know, audience online or whatever it might be. Those are people that the brand want to keep a hold of. And, you know, some brands actually do a pretty good job of that.

I think it's quite a hard thing because as soon as somebody gets too close to the brand, then you've got a difficult relationship that grows. And I've, I've been there with the stuff I've done over the years, obviously, because I've made videos that have had a whole lot of views about all of these different things and very aware that sometimes the manufacturers are watching over my back. And, you know, you want to keep that relationship as well. So swings some roundabouts. How do you balance the two between making content and being honest about your experience of the car versus not upsetting the dealership or the brand? It's actually really difficult. It's really, really difficult. because, you know, as soon as something goes wrong with a car, obviously the brand don't want you to talk about it, obviously.

But then if you don't talk about it and all of a sudden, like a car's not in my garage for some reason, or I'm not driving a car for some reason, my audience are like, where is it? Why is it? Why are you not telling us? What's the secret? You know? So you're then not being honest with your audience. And that's the most important thing you have as a content creator is your honesty to your audience, because they are what makes it possible to do what you're doing. Yeah. I try and give the brand a very fair opportunity to help with whatever it is. Not like trying to pull strings of,

if you don't do this, I'm going to go and shout and make a video about it, but in a kind of, you know, please help me. My car's got an issue. You know, I need to use it for an event next week. Is there anything you can do?

That kind of thing. And to be fair, most genuinely are. But you've got to remember you've built a relationship at this point with your sales team and your service team. So you're not kind of calling up somebody you've never spoken to before saying, fix my car type thing. I mean, I've just had a recent bit that's been really frustrating,

to be honest. My McLaren Senna needed two new dampers, parts almost impossible to get across the board right now. And it took probably six months to get them in. So for six months, I couldn't drive the car. What was the part? Dampers, suspension. parts of the suspension.

Crazy expensive parts as it happens, but just unobtainium. And so there was a lot of back and forth, as you can imagine. But ultimately, you know, they helped. They tried to get them. The dealership had been great, good communication about it all. So, you know, I'm not about to go make a video of screaming and shouting and saying the service is awful because I understand the global situation.

You know, this is the fact that I can't get parts for my silly unnecessary car. is a very small concern considering everything else, you know, around the world. Sure. Now, how much of that, though, is you having a channel and a large presence that they put you at the priority? Do you think you would get the same experience to someone else who has no following whatsoever, calls in, my scent is broken. I'm like, I will put you behind, uh, shmee.

I'm a hundred percent sure. I'm a hundred percent sure that it helps. Um, I don't try to use it like that, though. that's true um i know that when various cars i own whether it's ferraris my four gt or lambos or whatever go for a service they probably have an extra look over them beyond what they might otherwise do because at the end of the day it's not good for anyone if the car goes wrong on a video it's not good well maybe it'll get more views it's not good in theory um if something goes wrong um so i'm 100% sure that brands have done that along the way one interesting thing people often ask me about though is

does having a social media platform mean you can get cars that you wouldn't otherwise get allocations for. And generally, I believe the answer to that is no. And the reason because, the reason I say that is because they need to be showing the example of what you need to do. So Ferrari can't just give me a new 812 Competitioni, their new limited edition V12 GT car, because I don't have five Ferraris in my garage. So the next person who has the same two cars I have goes along and says, hey, why didn't I get one? So I think that kind of, of is a swings and roundabouts thing as well. It's sometimes in your favour, sometimes against your favour. Like I say, I don't, I've never, you know, gone in saying, you've got to do this for me,

because otherwise I'm going to do that or whatever, because I don't, I don't believe in that. I think if you do the right thing for people, they'll do the right thing for you in this respect, in life in general. And it's the same with, you know, upgrades or services or things. I don't reach out to everywhere I go saying, hey, can I have this for free? I know there, there are plenty of people that do. that if you want the service, book in, do what, you know, purchase, book whatever you need. And, hey, if they appreciate what you do for them, they might give you a kickback from it or give you something off. So I've always worked with that.

And now I have some great partners and things that I work with as well. So it's, you know, it's worked out all right. So what do you have in your garage right now? Oh, gosh. There's going to be a long list. Yeah, I want the full list. I'm not even sure if I can do the full list. From craziest down, shall we say.

My craziest car is a Zenvo, a Zenvo TSRS, and most people don't know what a Zenvo is. I don't even know what that is, and I love cars. Yeah, so Zenvo is a Danish company. The car has 1,360 horsepower, in-house engine, full carbon, everything, as you can imagine. Brutal thing to drive. I kind of describe it as an event a door on steroids. It's really aggressive. I'm going to pick it up a couple of months ago.

How much did that cost? That's fairly expensive. Wow. Crazy machine. This is real? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That actually kind of reminds me of Mamiaata.

2000. Very similar. Oh, my gosh. It's a wild, wild thing. Very small company. How many cars have they made? They make a couple a year. A couple a year.

How did you get one? So I've known the company for a long time. I've worked with them. I think I made my first video with them back in 2000. There you are. You typed in the car and, oh my gosh. Mine is the purple one. If you've seen any pictures of that popping up.

Wow. If you look up Zenvo and see a purple one, it's yours. Yeah, it will come up because it's all over the internet. But now, like I say, I've known the founder of the company. Okay. For nearly a decade now. I filmed so many videos with them. And they recently hired a few, they've done a big hiring drive.

And they've hired a lot of people that I've worked with before from other automotive OEMs. So they kind of assembled this dream team and they have some really exciting stuff in the future. So we chatted for a long time, as you can imagine, because you don't just buy a car like that on a whim. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea and milk. Habaniero? More like Habinier, yes.

Save the Everyday with Amazon. For me, there was a lot of, am I really going to do this? That's a big commitment. How is their financing, though? Yeah, that's a big part. Is you a good financing team? They helped introduce me to somebody who can help me with that. I mean, don't get me wrong, the deposit.

Yeah. You have to put in, like, a sizable double-digit deposit of a multi-million dollar car. It's a scary number, whatever you do. But I believe in what they're doing in the future. And it's really exciting. Like they gave me opportunities to come and be at the factory and lay some of the pre-Preg carbon fiber. So before it's hardened to make the wheels on my car, full carbon wheels. They're way lighter than any metal wheel or anything.

And I got to be part of that. Like I signed some parts of it that are now on the car that I drive around. Same with the interior. And just I went back to the factory probably six, seven, eight times through the build process to go and see it. And then obviously we're now taking it to some really cool events. It might well be over here next year. That's the plan. I would love to see it.

Now, I'm curious. We'll pause there. How is that car as an ROI for the channel? Because I remember James Stradman talking about his Bugatti saying it's a loss leader. Like that will lose money in the channel, but it gets more people in. And maybe I can make it up on the back end. So it is exactly that mixed with the personal excitement. Okay.

There is no bottom line that can possibly make sense purchasing a car like that. Because the amount of views you would need or, or whatnot is just not feasible. And obviously, it's also very unknown. You know, when I sell that car, whether it's in three years or ten years, I couldn't tell you now, I have no idea what it's going to be worth. I don't know if it'll have lost 50% or gained 300%. You know, I've got no idea.

How long's a piece of string? Because it's such a small boutique brand. There's nothing to look at. There are no like sales figures for cars being sold because the only people who have bought them still have them. It's exactly what James said, a bit of a loss leader into the channel in the sense of, how crazy is this content. And, you know, the views on the car

in some ways aren't as big as if I had bought a more well-known car of that price point. If I had bought a Bugatti, the views would be bigger, for sure, because more people are looking for Bugatti content and more people instantly know what a Bugatti is. You know, Zembo, we're talking about.

You've not heard of them before. I believe in their future, though. And I find that really interesting. I think when in five, six, seven, 10 years' time, people are looking for Zembo content, they'll end up looking at my videos and it will keep everything very current. So I think I'm playing a much longer game with it

but then I'm a car guy at the end of the day. How cool is it to have built parts of my own hypercar that I'm not going to travel around the world with? Is that what put you over the edge there versus like a Pagani or a Konexag? Price is relevant. Price is relevant. The Zemvo is a cheaper entry point.

The TsRS, my particular model here in the US, a spec car would be about $2 million. Whereas a Pagani or a Konexag you'd be looking at three or four. So that is relevant. I'm not going to lie. I'm sure if you know, if you have billions in the bank, it makes no difference. But I'm certainly at the point where an extra million dollars is something that I can't just go and go and go and drop. So that's certainly a point, but also the closeness with the company and the excitement of feeling that I can do something really cool, getting the name out there, getting the brand name out there. You know,

I know multiple people who are now buying the cars who have seen my videos. Like how cool is it? As nonsensical as it sounds, how cool is it that I can upload videos of a $2 million car and people will see those videos and go and buy it. You know, it's like you think of, you've got a wild audience. Yeah, you think of, you think of influencing for selling accessories or selling like, you know, easily attainable things, but it is genuinely true even with hypercars. You know, you're bringing to attention something that a product that people didn't know about. And one of the coolest things I always find is the number of people.

who have that, you know, who have that opportunity in life to buy these kind of cars of following some of the content I create. Kind of like, is this real? That's how I, yeah, it's really, really cool. But it showcases what it's all about. And, you know, there are some amazing engineers and technicians and designers and people behind the brand at Zemvo. And that's what I love going there and just talking to people, the people who are working on the wheels, on the engine, in the paint shop, talking to them about what they do and their passion for the brand. And at the end of the day, it's kind of supporting also this whole, well, the economy of it, right? You're buying the car.

You're keeping, you're giving the opportunity for these people to be able to go on and make even better products, which at the end of the day is amazing. Yeah, really, isn't it? So click the link in the description to get you to Zenvo today. Yeah, these are affiliate. The first five people who buy a Zenvo get a free autographed. A t-shirt. I've actually influenced people to buy Lexar cards, you know, because they sponsor me on the

channel, but I can't imagine getting somebody to buy a $2 million car. I don't think, you know, it's not that simple. Somebody doesn't watch a video. Right. No, no, no. But that's where it starts. Honey, look at this. It's fine now. Yeah. We joke. Yeah. But I assure you it's happened. Yeah. I have filmed cars on my channel before or even walked around a showroom with cars in the background. I'll upload the video and I'll get a call the next day from the salesman being like, thanks for the video. Somebody just saw that car on your video and has bought it. About expensive cars. You know, we're talking six-figure cars. It's crazy to me that that happens, but it does happen. You know what's neat? I haven't talked about this in a long time. When I posted my $78 Tesla video,

I put my Tesla referral link is the first link in the description. Guess how many Teslas I sold? I can imagine it's a lot. Just guess. How many views does the video have? Probably $8,000. 15,000? I'm going to guess. No. 280. Oh, you're really close. About 240. I was going way over because it's...

No, no. People click the link and paste the deposit there, right? No, this is actually... Oh, to buy the car. So, if someone places a deposit, it shows us pending until they actually take delivery of the car. So think about that.

240 people have genuinely watched the video and click the link. That doesn't mean... I reckon probably 15,000 people have bought cars who have watched your video. And maybe, used another link. Yes, or just gone direct to the website. Yeah. Rather, or already had one on order or was just aware of it, you know, actually probably way more than that Tesla owners have watched

your video. That's the crazy thing. I mean, I've watched a video. I'm not a Tesla owner, but I've watched the video. A lot of people watch that video. Yeah. It's amazing to think, isn't it? Yeah. Because that's the deposit, well, the car isn't cheap. It's $40,000, $70,000. Yeah. And the cool part now is that I have basically unlimited supercharging miles just because of people signing up through that link. So they, unfortunately, they changed it. I got the car right after they expired the referral program where, I think if you referred 100 people, you got a free Tesla Roadster.

So I would have gotten two free Tesla Roadsters from that one video. But they expired it. So now it was like every person that signs up, I think you get 5,000 free miles of supercharging per sign up. It's not even that many. It is, but you get, but you get, you. 204, I mean, I'll never be able to drive the car as many miles as they have, but the downside is that they ended up putting a limit on it. So I had basically almost a million miles of free

supercharging. And then now they say it expires in 2024, all of it. Oh, no. Yeah. So they put a cap on it. So if Elon's listening right now, we need a change on that. They've been dialing it back. They also used to do a giveaway. So every time you referred somebody, you would be entered for a monthly giveaway to win, a Model Y or a Tesla Roadster. To my knowledge, I don't know, anybody that's won or the, I don't think they ever did it. I think they just set it. And I, because I tried doing a lot of research on this, could not find one verified winner. Interesting.

But it's there. I mean, I've got the emails, I've screenshots of like, hey, this is their new plan. Nothing. It's silence. Interesting. So I think they figured they could just get away with not doing it and no one's going to say anything. I mean, who's going to say like the YouTubers that give away like PlayStation 4s and stuff like that. like the kids, YouTubers.

The iPhones is like, yeah. We'll give away. It's actually really hard to give away stuff online because you end up getting a winner. You reach out to them and they don't reply. You have to go down the list until you get somebody who does. But it's also doing that legally. Yeah. Because, oh gosh, there was something that I looked into a while back because I wanted to give away free stocks.

Yeah. But to do that, there had to be a way to enter without any commitment through like a sweepstakes. Oh, this is a US thing. Yeah, well, it's got to be no purchase necessary. Yeah. But it's also got to be. be like there's all these limits if you want to do it to the book so no purchase necessary it's got to be one there's got to be a free place to end it's like it became such a big hassle

that it was easier just not to give away stocks like unfortunately kind of but you you want to make sure it's done correctly but yeah makes sense yeah there's an entire theory oh my gosh i know what's happening with my voice there's an entire theory maybe age difference here's a little you know maybe you guys won't get this but it's huge on youtube uh there was a show that jack and i probably watched called A Sweet Life of Zach and Cody that was on Disney Channel. And they ran this sweepstakes that you bought this yogurt, like Danyl's yogurt, and they were giving away like a vacation or something with the stars. And there's so many people who have made YouTube videos like saying, well, who won?

Because nobody won. And then this guy came out and said he won, but then they linked it to like another sweepstakes. So really it's been this mystery for like over whatever 10 years now. Can't trust them. No. But when you were doing the referral links to the testers and same with many other creators on the platform, I was watching that. I think, I want to get involved at this because I was thinking I could do that.

But Tesla hadn't yet reached Europe in the same way. So I had to watch on in jealousy. Because I was thinking if I bought an early one and made videos, that could be a business avenue, right? Yeah, you know what was crazy in the beginning? Tesla videos were similar to the videos that you'd make on an iPhone. People would love them. And I'm still, I'm sure to this day, they would if I were to make more Tesla videos.

But some of my most viewed videos now on the channel are Tesla, like Model 3 reviews of like my favorite things about the Tesla, the worst thing about the Tesla. Here's how it is after a year. I think it's twofold, right? There's so much intrigue in the electric car world, positive and negative. The products themselves. And Tesla's such a talking point. Controversy overload, right? with every possible thing.

I bought my Tican, well probably two years ago now, as an experiment because I thought, Porsche, electric car, let's try this online.

And the videos I shot with that were huge as well. Not Tesla level huge, but relatively, let's say, buying a Panamara, the combustion engine equivalent. They all flew,

ad rates were super high, loads of interest in how the charging network works and that kind of stuff. And that kind of series, you could say, return on investment of that car was very positive.

At the end of the, the day that worked really well. That's good. I got a couple of more questions for the Zenvo. How long did it take to make the car? So from start of construction to delivery, probably 15 months, that kind of thing. To make it. I mean, you gotta think it's a small company. So then they make everything in house. Everything. That's not that bad. Engine, gearbox. Every carbon part. Everything. That just sounds like, buying one. Yeah, that's like, can you use my refereeing?

Yeah, I can only do 12. And I'm guessing they don't just like sell that to anybody, right? Like do you have to have connections with it? Because you said they only sell what a couple of years? No, I mean, like let's say you called them up and said, can I buy one? And they don't know who you are. They're going to be like come and meet us and you know, come along to an event where we are with the car, that kind of thing. Because obviously they want to know that you're a real person really buying the car beyond just putting in a big deposit.

I think a lot of people in that world are connected to somebody. very few people who buy a seven-figure car wouldn't be known by the company already or by one of the employees or one of their customers. For example, if somebody reached out to them, it might, it's probable that somebody who works there knows who that person is. It's a very small world at that end of the hypercar game, shall we say. Do you know if the company's profitable?

I know that they're putting a lot of money into investment at the moment for future product, which is one of the reasons. I got involved because they're developing some really cool stuff. I think you should just straight up take ownership in some of the company. I'm not sure I could afford it. Still, they could give you 5%. I'm going to say, you deserve 5%. Selling it really well here.

Yeah, you never know. You never know. Hey, I think at the end of the day, this is one of the things we were talking about, right? My goal is to help promote the company. I've bought the car. It's not like they've given me the car or something. They are looking after me with the car. so they'll send a flying doctor to me if the car needs some help or something.

They'll take it to a few events around the world, which is super cool because I get to turn up on my car's there, right? So this is one of the really exciting parts of the whole process. But what I love is, you know, if I can bring them actual business and be part of the company growing, and I'm sitting here hoping that they'll let me be part of that as it happens. You know, future product, future opportunities. Because at the end of the day, you know, when they release the new car, one of the perks for me is if I'm the person who's able to film it first is at the end of the day.

That will get loads of traffic on my channel, help grow some extra audience, bring in the revenue associated with the video. There's more to it that in the normal world wouldn't be relevant. You know what I mean? Just from the extra business avenues that come off that. So you got the Zenvo. What's next?

Oh yeah. It took a long time to get through the Zenvo, didn't we? Go through these cars, yeah. So Zenvo TSRS, McLaren, Senna, and Ford GT, we mentioned. All right. Let's stop at the center. How did you get that allocation for a center? That was really difficult, actually.

That was hard. So I'd had the 12C, the 650, 675 coupe, and then the spider. But basically, McLaren wanted you to have owned either a sports series car, which was the 570s, basically, or the new super series car, which was the 720s. Now, new 720s were riddled with problems. early cars were really difficult for their customers, right, without going too much into it, just problem after problem after problem. So I had said, you know, I don't really want one yet.

You know, I might get one down the line, but I'm not going to buy one until they work, because I didn't want to sell my 675, my previous car, which I still to this day own six and a half years on, I think is one of the greatest cars McLaren I've ever made. So I'd put my name in for the centre, and I'd put my name in two years before they revealed it, probably one of the first people.

As soon as I got wind of the code name of the project coming along and what it was going to be, a track focused. It's not as hyper hyper as the Zembo and other things, but it was the best part of a million dollars of car. So I was super keen on it. But my initial application got declined. So even though I'd been talking to them about it for ages prior to reveal, I actually got turned down for getting the car.

I was a bit like, you know, a bit disappointed. I was like I've owned four cars from a company. that's only seven years old. Is that like a, what is it? Like an email, like a college rejection letter? No, it was more just, I mean, I had a relationship with my salesperson at the dealership. It was more just casual conversation.

And they just said, hey, sorry, you can't. I think it was more we were chatting on a regular basis. So it wasn't, yeah, it was more like, I'm not sure if I can get you on kind of thing that came up gradually. And then it was like, I started hearing that other people who got them and I didn't have one yet. And I was like, you know, I'm down about it.

I was like, come on, I've been seeing this company's praises for years on YouTube. McLaren is my local manufacturer. They're like 20 miles away from where I live. So it was kind of like, what, you know, what did I do wrong type thing? And then as it happens, I actually was at, I used to go to, I still do, obviously go to the events they run, the customer track days, for example. And I was at the track day at spa. And a lot of the senior staff go to those kind of events because that's where they always have their VIP customers generally.

You know, you've paid a lot of money to go to these kind of days. So you get some exclusive track time. and a lot of the people who own P1s or McLaren race cars would go to that kind of day. And I was having a casual chat with a friend who's very well connected with McLaren. And he kind of went over to the CEO who was there and said, you know, is there any possibility? He's here and he came over and we had a chat and managed to make things work, which was something they did intentionally. The board and CEO level with the center allocations did have, I think, 100 and 500 cars themselves that they could choose who they go to. beyond the standard dealer network process.

And I think, you know, at the end of the day, I've done what McLaren would have wanted me to do with the car. I've had it on track probably four or five times. I've done 4,000 miles with my car. I still own it. You know, some people stick them for sale the day they take delivery. And I'm not going to sell mine anytime soon. So what could you do, like, hypothetically,

if you take delivery of the McLaren and then sell it immediately afterwards? So blacklisted, right? Yeah, I never give you a car again. Supply and demand with these things. You know, some cars values the day you can take, delivery will be massively over and some just simply won't. I think it comes down to the manufacturer. If you flipped a Ferrari, you are gone. Good luck. They will not talk to you ever again. If you get

this new 812 competition and you flip it overnight and they figure that you flipped it overnight, because obviously some people do and we'll buy it in a company name and try and disguise that. If you do flip it, you will not be buying another Ferrari. So hypothetical numbers, that's SENA, right? Yeah. Like immediately once you bought it, how much could you have flipped it for? In the U.S. market, they were much stronger than in the U.S. UK market. Initially a little bit. I think initially in the US maybe 300,000 over. So a spec car would have cost you around 1 to 1.1 million and you could sell it for 300,000 over, that kind of thing. They did soften. There was a period where they probably dropped down to,

I'm guessing here, but 800,000-ish. Whereas now, did they only go down to a million? They're back over a million again now. You know, you see these curves. Obviously, depending on availability of credit, what the markets are like, et cetera, et cetera, but also what the demand is like. And with the kind of in our face electric future that is being talked about nonstop, cars with combustion engines are in so much demand right now. Like people just want to enjoy them while they still can. So anything from recent years that's in limited numbers, values have just been flying. So I believe the center is one for the future because I believe it's one of the fastest cars

that will ever be made without electrical assistance. How fast is it? Lap record times. of anywhere it goes, basically. A new genre, genre of cars have arrived now, the hybrid, the hypercars, the likes of the Mercedes-AmG-1, the Aster Martin Valkyry,

cars that have even more power and will set even faster lap times. But that's what I mean about the lack of any electrical motors. Also makes it more fun to drive because you're not lugging so much weight around a track. Really hard to give any kind of meaningful numbers.

But if, say, if the Sena went to the Nürbergring in Germany, it would be like up there. It would be like record time fast. It's hard to put a specific on it because McLaren don't want that image. They don't actually do it. Interesting. Yeah.

Some customers have done it with their cars and gone to Silverstone and gone to Spar Frank O'Shawn, gone to big circuits and broken records. There's a video topic right there, Graham, how you can make $300,000 overnight. Well, speaking of that, we've got to talk about the Ford GT.

Oh, yeah. Because that is something I would, I would have loved an allocation to that. But I think they're all sold out. They've all been spoken for as far as I'm a moment. They're about to finish the build. It's been a long time.

I went to the introduction of the car at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2015. Wow. It's crazy to think about. The first customer car was delivered in the last few days of 2016, which may or may not have something to do with the homologation requirements for the Le Mans win that year, that you have to deliver a customer car in the same year, I believe. But ultimately, they've been in production since somewhere in 2017 through to early

2023, six years of production. So what was your application process like? Did you have the original Ford GT? No, so I never had an original Ford GT. And truth be told, I didn't own a Ford before the GT, before I got the allocation for the GT. I went to that launch event that I was going to all the motor shows. And pretty much from day one,

I was like trying to talk to everybody I could. I was like, I need one of these. We thought it would be a $300,000 car when it was released. It ended up being a lot more than that, especially in the UK. But even that day, I was like running around trying to speak to everybody. You know, all the heads of PR marketing. eventually like really senior people at Ford and Multimatic who were responsible for the car. So I was in Detroit for three days. So I was at the show stand the whole day, like all day,

every day around the Ford team. And then went back home. And I actually walked into a dealer when I got back home, a Ford dealer in London and just said, hey, can I order one of these? And they were like, I've never seen that before. That's got to be some kind of weird concept. Yeah, they had no idea what it was. But of course, why would there? It wasn't in any Ford system. And Ford, I don't know if you know this. They kind of developed it like a skunk works project in the basement in Detroit. It wasn't, it was, other than the 20 or 30 people working on it, nobody knew about it. It was completely secret until they did that Apple one more thing style reveal at the show. They'd been showing the new Shelby Gt 350, the new Raptor, and then boom, we've got one more thing to show you for GT rolls out.

And the whole crowd is just like, awe-struck. Because, I mean, I had heard a rumor, but I think only like a week before. It was really quiet. It's like massive kudos to them for achieving that. But fast forward, nothing really happened. And I went to a whole lot of events trying to figure, like, how do I get one of these? Like, how does this work? They'd said from day one, it was only going to be about, they said four and a half years of production,

250 cars a year. So roughly 1,100, 1,200 cars, which is about what it is, but just over a longer period, because it took longer to ramp up the production. So I was like, it's clearly going to be like diamond dust, you know, how does this work? So I went in June 2015 to Le Mans, the Le Mans 24 hours, where they introduced their race car and announced that they were going to race the next year. So I was like, you know, again, talking to everybody, trying to figure everything out. And I went to all the shows.

I went to so many events to try and understand it. And then fast forward to April 2016, and they announced that it was going to be this application process, this form you would fill in, where you would talk about what commercial types you have with Ford, you know, are you a part supplier or a big customer or something, what your racing experiences, what events you partake in, what different series, your car ownership. and they did ask about your social media presence. And that was widely documented at the time. Like, they're going to give all of these to influencers

and, you know, nobody else is going to get one. And I found this really, really, really interesting because obviously I submitted my application. I did it on day one. And you could add a 60 second video to your application. And this was only for the first 500 cars. Two or three years later, they would then do the rest of the cars. And obviously, in the first time around,

you got to think this is back in 2016. most people don't go out and make a video to apply for a car. But obviously being a video guy, I did. And I created something that basically snapped into 60 seconds, why I thought I thought I'd be a good customer for the car and what I could do with the car and what I do with my current cars. So I showed like driving my McLaren at spa. And I showed going to a big event with a massive crowd in my Ferrari in Italy.

And I showed just doing all sorts of different car stuff, you know, voiceover style on a video that I actually filmed because I was in Monaco. the times. I woke up and went and just made the video straight away, same day. Because in case there was any, like, priority for doing it faster or something, I was like, I've got to get this in today, day one. And, you know, you didn't hear anything until a couple of months later, when they sent out emails, basically letting you know, either you had secured an allocation, or you were on the wait list for the later cars, or you weren't able to get one. And they announced for that first 500 cars that they had six and a half thousand completed legitimate applications.

So 6,500 people who would, were in a position to buy that car, which is crazy. And my email had come through, like I say, saying that I had secured an allocation. And I was like, I can't quite believe this. At the time, I was, well, I was ecstatic and excited. But I was like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to afford this? Because that was double the price of any car. I don't know. Like, I had my McLaren's, but the UK price of the car was £600,000 pounds.

Oh, wow. Because it's US price plus all the import duties and taxes and conversion. Is that before options? It wasn't much you could add. So 600 is about where it ended up with options. It's a bit more now for the later cars. So I didn't really know how I'd got the application. I knew that the team from Ford Great Britain

had been championing for me to get one. They were being amazing. Like they were super keen. But I mean, I was going to all of the events and things with them and covering all Ford products. And, you know, I was telling them that I'd take this car around the world and I'd do a ton of cool stuff with it. What transpired down the line actually,

because not very many people in the social media world did get an allocation. Like a lot of people had applied for one as a, you know, maybe, but very few people did get one. I mean, like... I was shocked that James didn't get one because he had the G, the normal 4GT, well, the 2005 or 6. I don't think he had it back then. I think he did.

He already owned one. Okay, maybe. I think his situation was actually a little bit more complicated around it. But for me, you know, I just thank my lucky stars. Like, how crazy is this? This is so cool. Blessing and disguise,

because like I say, I had to then start working out how to afford it when I'd eventually get it. And there was no information about when it would arrive and what the story would be. So how did it work?

Did you have to pay for the car up front? You had to, when it went into bill, give 50% cash deposit up front. Okay. There's a lot of money. What was quite interesting prior to getting to that stage, though,

was I did kind of find out more about how I had managed to get one because there were only, I think, 12 UK cars in the first batch. So in that first 500 cars, it's like really lucky to get one. And mine was the last. Mine was actually the last European car of the first lot. So number 80 of 80 of the European cars, which is kind of cool to this day. But what I was told at a later time was that the way I got my allocation was actually that they chose 10 out of all the applications that had videos.

So they picked 10 of the applications that had a video to choose the cars. and mine was one of those. So it wasn't having a social media following per se. It was that my 60 second video actually stood out, which is really cool. It made all of that stress that day worth while. I'm shocked, by the way, I look at Bring a trailer just about every day. Yeah.

The number of cars, the four GTs that are being sold right now with zero miles. Yeah. They're almost all completely undriven. A lot of them have still the plastic on the car, the protection over the seats, maybe like 20 to 80 miles. So there's only people to sat on them. But this is really interesting why this is. So Ford tried to avoid people who have garages full of many of these cars.

They wanted you to really appreciate your Ford GT. You know, if you own 20 Ferraris, you're not the guy for them. They wanted you to be someone who has a couple of nice cars, but this is going to be a car, you're going to treasure and you're going to look after and you're going to really love owning. What happened off the back of that was all of a sudden, because people who have a lot of money to buy whatever they want, can't get one, the prices overnight hit like $2 million.

So the US cars that were 500,000 or 550 with spec were suddenly selling or being demanded at $2 million. So your next customers, for whom this is the most expensive car they've ever bought, are looking at a car that potentially has $1.5 million upside on it. And that's life-changing. You know, that's genuinely an amount of money that through the best will in the world you might have wanted to drive it. But like it, come on, you can kind of see how that happens. So that, I believe that's basically why that happened. values have suffered, but even still, they're a million dollars, right? They're all a million. So there's still like four or five hundred grand.

There was one that was really interesting. It had like 60,000 miles on it. And this guy daily drove it on his commute. I think it was like 75 miles each way. It's crazy. Daily driving this car and put it up on Bring a Trailer to sell it. And I think it hit $850,000, $800,000. Didn't sell it. Didn't sell. Didn't hit the reserve. But still, the fact that someone's willing to pay, 300,000 over MSRP for a car was 60,000 miles on it, daily driven like that, goes to show you. And that car apparently had like zero issues. Yeah. All complicated modern cars perform better if you drive them lots. Like I'm a firm believer in like modern stuff, you know, the latest McLaren's and especially hybrids. The more miles you can do on them, the better. But not necessarily crazy, crazy miles, but like regularly driven.

Sure. Like don't have to sit for six months without being touched kind of thing. Very different on slightly older stuff. They don't have all the electronic gremlins and things in the same way. Seals and things like that still, but it's not the same. And the Ford GT is just the ultimate example of a company making a car for a reason. You know, that was a massive loss leader for Ford. They had this idea that they wanted to go back to Lamar 50 years after they won with the GT40. They wanted to win it. They did win it. And they were going to do that at whatever expense it would take. And there were loads of discussions about the balance of performance and whether the car was, whether it was fair, whether it had been sandbagged in the buildup or whatnot. But the fact, the fact that,

remains that they did go and win and that means that every car they built has cost them some huge amount of money you know it's not a car that was introduced to please shareholders to make ex-profit on each unit etc etc it's a car that was introduced for an emotional reason and i think that's always been a link to values now when cars have a reason behind them there's always huge demand around them the latest example of this is the amg one where they've put the formula one engine the road car and it's the f1 engine that's led to mercedes to win eight constructors um eight seven how many is it a few constructors championship wins brain block right at the second with with that engine and again massive cost to the company but if you want

one right now and they haven't even built them yet you need to stump up a million over already what is it two and a half million yeah yeah and that's before cars are physical believe me when the cars are physical it'll be even more like it's crazy but it's a car with a reason it seems like it's a lot more common now that cars are a million dollars is now the base price oh the car market's crazy. You know, if you think to James's Bugatti Veron, when that car came out, if you wanted to spend a million dollars on the car,

you had one choice of Bugatti Veron. That was it. That was the Crem de la Crem, nothing else. If you want to spend a million dollars on a car now, you've got about 50 choices. It's crazy to think. That one million dollar flagship benchmark, I mean, Bugatti set the standards themselves

because their most expensive car was a one-off they created Labo Tia Noir, which is one of my most few videos as it happens. It's on nine or ten million or something. Again, the first video in the world from the reveal at the Geneva Motor Show doing what I do. That car cost in euros, it was 16.7 million. Oh, my gosh. So in the region of 20 million.

So the most expensive car in the world 20 years ago was a million, and now it's 20 million. That is the most expensive car in the world? New car. It's actually been superseded since by Rolls Royce. Oh, what is it, the boat? Yeah, they made the sweptail and then the three boat tails. And yeah. Rolls-Royce?

Yes. How much? Well, a regular production model is a six-figure size. up to a million. This specific boat tail, they never confirmed, but it's believed to be in the $25 to $30 million range. What makes it so special? They made three of them completely bespoke for the customer.

So not three. So I think it's one customer and two of his acquaintances. I'm not entirely sure, but somebody effectively went to Rolls-Royce and said, I would like to build a one-off car with you. I want to make one that's for me and no one else. And Rolls-Royce is just like, sure. So that experience then for the customer

is sitting with the designers to work on it, sitting with the material specialists, sitting with everybody to be part of every step of the process. I wonder how worth it it is for Rolls Royce to do that, because you'd think they'd be making a ton more money. Just like $75 million to Rolls Royce doesn't sound like that crazy of an amount. I actually think it's probably quite significant. I mean, I don't know what the actual cost of the car is to make, but for that money, you can hire quite a few really skilled employees. You can really bring a lot to your company, to your team, and there's got it, let's face it, there's got to be $50 million profit in that or something. Probably. Okay. But there's also going to be a good image for Rolls-Royce

to have custom one-off cars. And to be the brand that produces the most expensive car in the world. Yes. You know, that really adds to the prestige of the brand. So this guy, like basically hand-selected exactly what he wanted in this car and did his two acquaintances get the exact same car, or did they also get to hand-select? They're all the same design, but they're different materials and done in slightly different ways. Got it. And what kind of like unique stuff do they have? Because I remember Rolls Royce, they used to come out. Or they had this car that like had, you know, the umbrella that pops out of the door.

Oh, they all that was like the big thing like a super long time ago or whatever. Like what kind of unique features? No, we're talking like the umbrella. Oh yes. The umbrella. Like seat warmers, you know, you press a button and the seat gets warm. Massaging seats. We are talking custom wooden teak decks on the rear back that open up to reveal.

your crystal glass set inside and your expensive cutlery and crockery and whatever else, all stored within the back of the car. Like, does it have like a refrigerator or something in it? Yes, that's normal. You can have a refrigerator in any resource. Like, that's pretty much.

All right. So if you could think of it, they'll probably do it. I heard a lot of it is the type of wood, but also like diamond-encrusted whatever you can. Oh, do they have the diamonds in the ceiling line? Yeah, you can do that on everyone. But they do that.

Yeah. No, it's it's like you say, it's it's not even just the car. It's the fact that the wood will be some super rare impossible to get wood that is however old and whatever. I'm not an expert in that sphere. And the same with every other material. You know, the type of leather that's used the materials for the switch gear and even the paint. It will all be done with things that no one else is going to do because of the cost is crazy. But I mean, let's let's be real. If you're buying a 25, 30 million dollar car, you're probably in billionaire status, it's very different. At that level, what can you do that's different? It's like, all your mates have $100 million yachts and private jets and whatever, right? Oh, I'm going to own the most expensive rolls. Now, what I like is the one guy does the pinstripes. Do you see this video on

this guy? Yeah. You've seen him? Yeah. It's got to be more than one guy now. They're making too many cars. You think so? It's certainly for a long time has been one guy. It's been one guy. Yeah. I found it so interesting. He said he never took a day off because he was worried that if he takes one day off, he's not going to be as precise. And for those unaware of what we're talking about here, the pinstripe is hand-painted. Maybe now it's more than one guy, but for a while it was one person

who knew how to do this pinstripe, and he does it in one swoop across the car, and you could only get it right once. And any mistake, I don't know if something, the whole car has to be scrapped. Like, not, but they have to repaint. Yeah. They have to sand it down, like, the whole car has to be scraped.

I mean, this is the Rolls-Royce. It's like a 20-foot car from front to end. But anyway, this guy does a, perfectly straight line from the start to the back and one swoop and his whole life revolves around that one line. What do you think he does? Like, like, if he sprains his wrist

or something like that? I think he has insurance. I'm sure he would have to. He would have to have mega insurance on that. He would have to have insurance on his wrist. Wow. Yeah. And I think it wasn't he, I think he was trying to teach

a son how to do it or like he wanted to pass on that skill or that's what that's what it is with these cars, right? It's an emotional reason. You dream of a Rolls-Royce because of this, because of things like this that are just bizarre but so cool. That's what creates this like, you know, as a child is like one day maybe. So what is the most expensive car sale now? That isn't a new car. Oh, probably the Ferrari, right?

The vintage Ferraris. Recently a vintage Mercedes sold for $140 million. And that became the most expensive car in the world. It was sold from the Mercedes-Benz Classic collection from their own heritage. heritage fleet. It's called an Ulanhout and it's kind of, they literally took their Grand Prix F1 car at the time, put a roof on it and made it a road car prototype. So we all knew this, if this car came for sale, as road cars go, it would be a record sale and they did an RM Sotheby's auction held at in Germany only a year or less than a year ago in itself at that price.

outside of that, about half of that will get you a Ferrari 250 GTO, which is the kind of go-to that everyone has talked about in recent years. But you've got to wonder now, this prestige thing comes back into play, right? Will Ferrari try and find a more expensive car that they can sell to be the most expensive car in the world again? But it's all, it's a funny conversation because the Bugatti Atlantic, they were three of them, they're only two surviving, one zoned by Ralph Lauren and one's owned by someone else. If either of those were sold, it'd probably be more, but you'll never know because it will never be sold. And there are a few cars like that.

Mercedes also owned the car that Stirling Moss drove to the win at the Milamila. If that car was ever sold, again, $250, $300. Who knows? Because if you want the most famous race car ever, you're probably not the only person who wants it. And there are a few very wealthy people that will fight that one out. Wow. Yeah, it's really interesting.

All right. So after the 4th, After the board you see. What else? What else we got in? Every car we do a little side tangent here. You should get a Model T, an original Ford Model T. Yeah, that would be quite cool, actually.

That would make incredible content. So I'm going to run through this. It would be kind of cool. We've had Zenvo Center for GT. Okay. Let's do the Merks. The GT Black Series I've driven here. I have an SLS Black Series, which was the predecessor.

I have a C-63 Black Series. I technically own an AMG GTR Roadster, which is a convertible kind of one of the one I have here. Other Fords, I have. have a Shelby Gt 500 Mustang, which I bought out here, drove 12,000 miles in the US and have just imported to the UK, which is kind of cool because you can't buy Shelby Mustangs in Europe. Aston's, the first car I ever revealed on my channel as the Shmimaville, which all my cars have become named since, actually the audience named them that, and it's kind of stuck around, was a V8 Vantage roadster that was the first time I kind of revealed a car on the channel.

It was the first time I ever filmed myself talking to the camera, was driving that car. So the first time I ever tried to do a review, and it's so awkward to watch back now. And then the same car was the first time I ever did like a vlog series on a road trip in 2011. I was so young and it's so awkward to watch now. But it's kind of where it began. So I sold it in 2012, but I managed to buy it back last year. I managed to track down the same car. So I owned that.

And I'd also bought another vantage from factory, which I'd been able to film also with Aston Martin, the build. So I'd signed on the chassis and signed on the back of the headrest and that kind of stuff. So that's Advantage GT8. And I also own an Aston DBS, the Bond era, DBS, which is just a cool car. It's actually for sale, but it's a cool car. I had my fix. I got to own it.

That was one of the things. Where are we? Lamborghini, Hurricane STO, which is like, they're crazy in your face. And mine's pink and yellow, which makes it even more on your face. I was like, if I'm going to speck a Lamborghini, I'm just going to do it as crazily as I can. Fair. Go wild with it. I don't even know where I'm at now.

Thinking around my garage, Renault, I have a exact matching spec car to the first car I ever owned. I actually own the first car I ever owned, but it got involved in an accident, so it got scrapped and became a cube of metal. Wow. But I managed to track down the cube of metal in a scrap yard,

and I own that. Wow. You bought a cube of metal? I did. How much did a cube of metal cost? 125 pounds, I think it was. What do you do with it? It just have it.

I haven't done anything with it. It's just sitting. I make it into a table or something. The idea is to come up with a half and I'd make like a few tables or something. Yeah, that's absolutely the kind of idea. So I have a replica of it and I also have a car that Renault made back in the early 2000s, which is called the Clio V6 that not many people know, but they stuck a V6 engine in the back of the hatchback.

So it's a rear-driven, manual, mid-engined hatchback, which is bizarre and really cool. They're very quickly becoming hyper-collectable and going up in value. So I got in there on the right time for sure. What else do we have? I have a show car, Formula One car from 1997. It's show car chassis one of the winning Williams F1 car from that year. And that was the last year Williams actually won the world championship with Jacques

Villeneuve. So to have the show car is really cool. It's currently in restoration because it's been repainted and re-liveryed because nobody really cared about these things back then. And now they're like, oh my gosh, this is epic. So that's just a showpiece to have in the garage. It's not a running. car. It's just a show car.

Lotus. I don't currently own a Lotus, but I'm about up in a Lotus. No, I have two Lotus's in Lottai in my garage that belong to a friend. What about the Exige? Or the Elise, didn't you get the last? So I've got two Elis's that belong to my friend. So the very final one ever and one of the very earliest ones. And the number plates are first and final.

It's amazing. God. Is that the orange one? The orange one is the final one. So that belongs to friend. I'm about to take delivery of an Amira, the new car. Yes. the day I get home from this trip, I'm taking delivery of my mirror. So that's kind of cool.

I haven't mentioned Ferraris, two Ferraris, the SF90 Stradale, which is actually kind of my daily driver, a daily driver 1,000 horsepower Ferrari. Oh my gosh. Those values are crazy. Yeah, but it's a has electric drive. It can do the commute from home to home to work, shall we say, to my garage and back. So I'm just enjoying it while I can. And then I have the GDC fall or so, which is the four seat V12 Ferrari as well. What do you think the total value is of those cars? The total fleet value? in dollars would be roughly i guess seven and a half that kind of region i feel like it's got it more given that number of million dollar cars i guess i'm going off my insured uk values

probably u.s values we would be more like 10 yeah probably because the uk market is softer with all sorts of economic reasons and whatnot so we're we're talking in that kind of region what's it's crazy insurance like every insurance is horrible insurance is a big number especially because of the exposure of the cars. If you think about it, I drive loads of miles, I have different people driving them, fully open discussions with my insurers,

they're actually great. Like, they know exactly what I do with the cars. They've come to inspect my garage. They spec out the security requirements. That's something people always ask me, like, as if we haven't planned it. Yeah. I don't show, obviously, all the security stuff

through the channel, but there's so much that we had to put in, like the budget just to install what they needed at the stars. What do they need to give us an idea? I mean, the obvious of the things like the alarm the sensors, the bollards, the camera systems, the backup systems, the multiple connections, the just endless list of stuff. Wow.

All fully monitored, all with police presence really nearby, all with everything. You know, the police have been to visit so they know what to do and where to go and how to access anything. They've got that all filed, et cetera, et cetera. It's like a full-on, full-on list of things. So the insurance company, I would say that I use are actually pretty good to me, considering what I do with all the cars, but it is, you know, my, my annual spend on a, on my car insurance. It's like enough to buy my Aston DBS.

For example. So we're talking like $100,000. Oh my gosh. But it's a business expense. Yeah. Yeah. Not fully. You know, it's not like a 100% write off, but I can expense of it. So it's kind of, yeah, it's just part and parcel. So for a lot of these cars, though, how much of it is a balance between what's going to do well for business and YouTube versus how is your passion of I want to buy this car. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting, you know, because a car has a longevity to it, or sorry, I should say, a restricted lifespan to it on YouTube. You know, once people have seen something for three years, they don't care anymore. You know,

there's not going to be any more interesting content to come around that. So, for example, some of my older cars that I've owned for six or seven years, if I was doing this purely for business, they would have been on the chopping block ages ago. You know, they make no sense to keep because I still pay to ensure them to tax them, to run them, to service them, to maintain them, you know, and it all adds up significantly, whereas, let's say, the income generated against them is kind of gone, but that's where the personal side comes in. One, because I'm a hoarder, two, because I just love them, you know, the memories, the experiences. And I think I said earlier, this is one of the things for me is like, if you ask me why, why would I work hard? What's my, like,

goal. It's because I want to own and enjoy these cars. So being lucky enough to do that, I feel like what would I, what would be the benefit of selling a car that has a personal connection to me right now? And I don't need to release the capital. You know, it's equity that at some point in the future, I can if I need to. And I believe it's quite a good place to have funds anyway, sure. At the end of the day, I think it's an interesting space and a space, obviously I know quite well. So on the one hand, there are cars like that. On the other hand, there are very much cars that I've bought specifically for a content series. I know when I buy it, I'm keeping it for a year or something.

Maybe it's a bit of a project. Maybe it's to do it up. Maybe it's for a specific trip or something. Or maybe because I already know that there's a successor model coming, that it will replace it. Sure. That kind of thing. So there's a variety. There's no one rule of thumb.

Like I say, the Zenvo wouldn't make sense as a car for specifically for the channel. But then when you balance the fact that it's really cool to do. that and there's potentially some upside in the future as well. And you know, if the company's successful, my car's going to be worth a lot more than I paid for it also. So that's a, like a fun element to throw into it. So being part of that hopeful success for them. Um, you know, something like, something like the Lambo is actually quite funny. I bought the Lambo thinking I've got to have a Lambo on the channel. You know, because I look at James with, right garage of Lambo's. I look at data and exotic with everything they do. And you know, Lambo has always been the key to success on YouTube. I knew way back,

when I, when I changed my first McLaren to the second, I knew then if I bought an eventador, it would do better. I knew that, because that was right at the time when people were discovering, they made flames and, you know, just YouTube gold. And it was actually the Dubai police video I mentioned had, had their event door as the thumbnail. It's one of the reasons why it did so well, right? Um, so I had known that, but it wasn't really me. You know, I, I didn't want my only supercar to be a Lambo. I'm not that in your face guy to drive that kind of thing. Um, I'm more into the technical side. of, you know, the McLaren, more about the driving dynamics than the flare.

But I figured it was, it was time. You know, I've owned cars. I've been lucky to own cars from everyone else in the supercar space. Exception being Rolls-Royce and Bentley, because I'm saving that kind of luxury car for, got to have something to look forward to. So I was like, I'll try it. I'll order a Lambo and, you know, make a whole series around it. But I tell you what, I really enjoyed it.

I really liked it. I actually put it up for sale because needs must. I had to clear some funds for a few other. projects and things and it's still advertised for sale at this point in time no one's bought it but i think i'm going to take it back i want it back yeah well it's still mine so i can right yeah it's one of those like i won't be unhappy if it doesn't sell sure what's your team look like by the way to maintain that i imagine that's got to be someone's full time making yeah completely oil changes oh it takes time i mean i've come here from being with james in utah and he's managing

his 15 odd cars himself and I'm like you're crazy this is this is too difficult when I got to about I think around 12 cars was where I was like I can't do this because one stuff goes wrong with them but two every car needs a service every year probably needs a dealer visit for something else every year and then you've got to deal with all the paperwork and documents and checking over and making sure everything's right and it's if you're living a busy schedule running a business and you know on the go every five seconds you can't do that so back at home I have two guys employed effectively at my garage which we call the schmuseum and they actually videos behind the scenes of the garage, which is quite fun as well. And actually, it's a completely different type of content, but the audience have loved it,

which is amazing. Outside of that, a couple of people working full time on the, like, business side, you know, brand partnerships, setting up the shoots and opportunities because I'm filming nearly every day. My partner travels with me, so we film all the videos together, which is quite fun, and ran it, manage all of the short form content and social media. So we're kind of, if you include, like, all the full-time people, plus, couple of part-time helping run my Facebook page and that kind of stuff. It's about 10 people run the whole operation.

Which people don't realize. Yeah. People think you just flip up a camera and start filming and that's your video. That's done. But I think anything like this and you know, within the next couple of weeks, my main channel's going to hit a billion views, which is quite fun.

Congratulations. Thank you. I'm super excited about it. With anything that's kind of at that scale, there's a whole lot more that goes into it, right? It's not just, I mean, you know, with your operation. and everything to manage multiple channels and multiple outlets

and creating all sorts of different types of content to go in different places, somebody might just see like your main channel, and that's all they see, and they don't realize around that, you're actually uploading something else every single day on other places. And it's not, it takes serious amounts of time and organization and structure to do it. I'll be out filming,

I've just got off a plane, I'm someone to heart and I'll forget half the things I have to do. So if I don't have people around to kind of support the operation, it's not going to happen. Can you talk about your income as a percentage? Let's say you can like drop high. What, you know, how big are each slice as percentages? It's very hard to say because it fluctuates a lot.

You know, this time of year, at the end of the year, you know, lead up to Christmas. Obviously, ad revenues are really high because companies are promoting in a big way. Let's say the Schmee 150 network. It's probably roughly a third is social media. So not just YouTube. It used to just be YouTube, but now Facebook and everything else. has taken off in a big way. A third is brand deals, brand partnerships, and a third is probably other things, which could be affiliate type things, merch, just all sorts of other stuff that

comes up, you know, appearance fees or hosting fees or licensing or who knows what. Random question, but what is the worst thing that's happened to you while driving a car? Like, have you ever been driving like a super fancy car and then, I don't know, something gets kicked up and cracks the wind-shelder? A truck drove into me when I was driving my sense. That was pretty bad. It hit you? Yeah, that was pretty bad. So that makes it sound way more dramatic than it was.

I'm sorry, it was completely fine and it wasn't too bad. It was just a very big bill. I was driving down to one of the biggest events of the year, which is the Goodwood Festival of Speed held in the UK. So that's for me an absolute must event. It's equivalent to Monterey Car Week and Pebble Beach that happens over here. And the car was due to be on show. So it was due to be on a stand that evening.

I was driving it down, just picked it up, sitting in traffic. So I'm going at 15 miles per hour. No joke, 15 miles an hour. I'm in the exit lane to take my exit off the highway, obviously left side for the UK. And I just get a massive bang from my right shoulder. And a truck in the adjacent lane, I believe, had been flashed out by the car behind me.

So he was late to take the slip road, the slip lane, and the car behind had kind of backed off and flashed and he just hadn't seen me there. And he pulled straight into the back of the center. Yikes. Which damage-wise was vastly more, visual and it was mechanical. It was just body panels. So no damage to the suspension or to the like mechanic side of it at all. But I can tell you a center door, wing, spoiler, wheel and those

kind of cosmetic parts are very expensive. The repair bill on their insurance was enough to buy, would have been enough to buy another like flagship McLaren car, like a super serious car. What would you have done if they didn't have the proper insurance? So in the UK, you have to. Okay. It works quite, quite differently. Even up to that value. Because here, the US, you would have a value of, let's say, a lot of people would have the minimum of, let's say, 25, 50 grand. Yeah, that would not have to sue them personally, but they wouldn't have the money for it. No, they wouldn't.

So in the UK, all policies are, I don't know if they're unlimited, but there's certainly tens of millions. So you're kind of covered every policy. There's probably a government back type system. I'm not entirely sure. Or maybe it's like all the insurance companies work together. But we have vastly more camera control for this kind of things. so these kind of things.

So every police car has what's called an ANPR system, automatic number plate recognition. So if an AMPR system flags a number plate without insurance, the person gets pulled over immediately. Like every cop car would have that. So you can't really go very many places without getting pulled over. So insurance is much more strictly monitored here. It's obviously a bit more of a problem. And just out of curiosity, what happened after that accident? Was that guy just like freaking out?

Because I can imagine the phone call. the insurance company or so he's driving a big rig. Why did you hit? And obviously his company policy was basically he's not allowed to talk about it. Oh. So we weren't allowed to talk. He wasn't allowed to talk about it. So it was really frustrating.

It took 21 months to get it settled. Oh my gosh. And it was like a week before I started my Ford GT trip in the US. So I was dealing with this in the US with the time zones. So every morning I would wake up two hours earlier than I needed to because I had to spend two hours on the phone call to lawyers and stuff. It was an absolute nightmare. And what was your?

immediate feeling afterwards. Like, I just want to walk me through the emotions. So obviously immensely stressed, but my biggest feeling, and this is really, really weird, I was supposed to be driving the Ford GT, but we were running behind schedule

and I'd just put the Ford GT in a truck because, oh no, sorry, the truck that was due to take it had had, due to take the center had left, which is why I was driving the center. I was supposed to be driving the GT and I was going to come back and get it later. But obviously, a week before my Ford GT trip

to the US, so I've already booked the plane airfare for the cargo. I've already paid for it all. I've already booked the whole thing. So my first thing on the day was, thank goodness, it wasn't the GT, partly because the center is an easier car to repair than the GT, because the factory is around the corner. This actually happened about 10 miles from the factory. No joke. Like, I was thinking at the time, you know, if this happened to the GT, which I know every car has its own kind of unique body panels, you can't just get a new bumper and put it on. It doesn't necessarily fit so perfectly. Plus the fact. that if it needs to get fixed, it has to go to Canada, which is also a little bit of a problem,

even though I guess it was booked a flight in New York, but that's either here or there. So I was definitely thinking, thank goodness, my GT trip isn't ruined. And what about the display afterwards? So I put the GT on the stand instead. So obviously very lucky to have the option to do that and to have these kind of cars and to know the right connections to help with all the logistics. And I think being a car YouTuber, it had been on my mind for a long time before, if I ever, get involved in an accident, what's the procedure? You know, what's the, what do I have to do?

Because obviously the public are going to know about it. This is at the side of the UK's busiest motorway in a traffic jam. Everybody knew about it straight away. While I was at the side of the road, probably five different people I knew drove past me. Like it was, everybody knew about it. And I think a bit of, you just have to stay calm and have to like think about what's happened and what you do. You know, firstly, everyone's okay. It wasn't a high speed impact at all, obviously. So no drama, no airbags, nothing like that. Second thing is, right, I need to explain this. Because if I don't

explain it, people are going to run away with all sorts of rumours and stories and things. So I did make a video on the day straight away. And I think that's, you know, that was the right thing to do, not blaming anybody, not you know, it's just, it happened. It's not too bad. We're all fine.

Let's see what happens down the line with this. Because, you know, you could make a video kicking and screaming and being like, ah, my God, I can't believe this. idiot drove into me, et cetera, et cetera, but what do you gain from that? You know, at the end of the day, firstly, it's a car can be fixed. Nobody's hurt. That's the most important thing. But equally, you're in a state of shock.

You don't really know, you haven't processed it all yet. You know, I'm like, I'm never, that was the first time I'd been involved in a road accident. So it's the, I mean, I say accident, because obviously it's, I could still drive home. It's not like it's whatnot. But it was the first time taking that in and especially what it would happen to my most expensive car, right? The centre cost more, although worth less than a GT. It did cost more to buy. So I would say that was like, just super intense thinking about everything because there were the different elements of it. There was the getting the car to the show stand that I've promised and

committed to. There was the, I need to explain this somehow. And then there's the, I'm already dealing with the logistics because I've got to get multiple cars down to this event tonight, which starts tomorrow morning. So put all of that together. And yeah, it was a, challenge. And what about just like any other random thing that could potentially happen to you while you're on the road? For example, I was just recently driving a bit ago and a massive cardboard box hit this semi truck right in front of me and flew over and it was flying on the freeway and I was driving my car and I was like, oh my gosh. And I like swerved out and I swear this seems like a homing missile. Like it went this way. I'm like, no, no, no, I swear this way. It flies this way. It happened in slow

motion. And then this massive box just hits the front of my car. And I look and there's like some scratches and stuff like that. But stuff like that just happens. And whether or not you have control over it, like sometimes, sometimes you don't. Right. Yeah. I mean, the car I have here has a small crack on the front splitter, which happened because I hit a tire that was on the road, like a truck tire that had just been left in the middle of the highway. Like driving at night, didn't see it. And that doesn't necessarily worry you too much. You're still just like, you know, I'm still going to drive these cars. I'm going to enjoy these cars. Yeah. So the closest to near disaster we came was actually when I was filming with another friend in the YouTube world, Life of Palos, Aaron Palos.

We were filming together in Colorado and we were driving on the highway and his Ferrari FF followed by my partner driving in my GD 500 and there was a ladder on the highway. There was a ladder across our lane like no joke full on like extendable kind of if you drove over that that would have destroyed the car because that would have been front under trays everything. Thankfully we avoided it but that was definitely a moment we were like, whoa, that could have gone wrong. Do you know what? I've been very lucky that there haven't been too many disasters, like bad things. I mean, I've had more than enough flat tires or ran out of fuel because there are no gas stations anywhere or, you know, like stuff that

almost is just kind of, it just fades into, you don't remember because it doesn't really stand out. I think the things that stood out to me, like the random really cool stuff that's happened, you know, they're just people you meet along the way or places I've ended up and that kind of thing. What about speeding tickets? I'm pretty good with speeding tickets. Yeah. No speeding tickets. Never had any points on my license in the UK.

Okay. I've had a couple of the tiny ones. I don't think I've ever had a speeding ticket in the US. I've probably driven in the US in total. I would guess probably somewhere 50, 60, 70,000 miles. I've never had a speeding ticket in the US. It was the fastest you ever gone in a car. Oh, very fast.

How fast? Oh, you can say on a track, right? No, no. I drive in Germany all the time. I used to have a place in Germany. Oh, yeah, the Autobahn, right? So the car I've got outside has been 205 miles an hour on the oldobahn. Yeah.

Is it not to scare you? That's completely legal. It's fine. I know, but I'm not saying about the reality. But just like your life, like if anything were to happen at that speed, it's like,

what's... The thing I should stress and perhaps I say I've been 2002, like, just throwing it out there is that before you do that, like you're getting a car looked over. You know, you're doing it right. You're not just jumping into someone else's car that you don't know and keeping your foot pinned at 205.

I think when you, when you drive frequently, I mean, I've probably driven 50 different cars over 200 miles an hour. So I've got quite a lot of high speed driving experience. And, you know, you're not going to go flying past a car that's going 70 at 200. Like that's stupid. So you do it in a wide open road. Yeah. So you'll you'll only go that speed if you're on a straight section with distance you can see to be clear, you know, on a Sunday morning.

You're not going to be doing that on a Friday afternoon. Right. on a busy bit of autobahn. You know, it's actually a very delicate topic in Germany because there are constantly things where people have driven their cars to top speed and it perhaps hasn't been as safe as it is. And, you know, you shouldn't, obviously,

technically you shouldn't glorify the speed of it, but it is legal to do so of conditions allow. I think it's one that probably won't be around forever, though. They're not going to allow that to stick around. Are there many accidents on the out of bond or is it relatively safe? It's actually relatively safe because the lane etiquette of German drivers is unbelievably good.

Like, no joke. People will always look in their mirror before they move over. People will always tuck back to the right after they've passed. Like, it's really good. I've never, there's nowhere else in the world where people follow the highway code

as well as they do. I think automotive is instilled in the blood from the beginning. They grow up in the country with the Autobahn. So if you know there's a chance that when you're going at, you know, the equivalence of 70 miles an hour is obviously in kilometers in Germany,

you know there's a chance that a car is going to come up behind you at 150. You know, all the German cars are, or the majority of German cars are electronically limited to 155, which is 250 kilometers an hour. So everybody knows that if they're driving at 120, there could be an E-Class or an Audi A8 or something that just comes flying up behind them at 250 kilometers an hour, 155. I think if you know that from a young age, you're very conscious then that when you start driving, it's just part of it. You're always going to look in your mirror.

Also, if you are going like, I don't know, 90 plus 100 or so miles an hour, you probably are more scared to, like, get distracted by your phone or to, like, not be a super... Oh, yeah, absolutely. Whereas if you're going, like, 65 or like 50, you know what I mean, you're probably like, eh, it's not a big deal if I... I don't know the exact figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if even the German, you know, accident rate per X miles or kilometers is probably even better than

many countries you would be surprised by. Obviously, if there is an accident at high speed, it can, you know, can get very, very messy, very quickly. But the accidents aren't that frequent. I think most people, most people aren't stupid, right? Most people know that driving 200 is not a good idea if you're not ready for it. I feel like here in the US people are that stupid, though. Unfortunately, some will be. Well, some will be everywhere. Yeah. I think Germans are very sensible overall. Sure. So what is your thought now in the car market today? Car market's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, I know you've talked a bit about

a lot of people are probably going to go upside down on car loans. You know, values have been very high in the last year or two, mostly because of shortage of manufacturing. People basically were sitting on money, grants, loans, whatever, and didn't really know what to do. So people have been out buying. Now there's a ramp up more in production. More cars hit the market.

Values are going to come down. It can kind of only go one way, which has already started. You know, if you look at the top end of the market, it's not really affected. You know, people who can buy. multi-million dollar cars can still buy multi-million dollar cars. They might there might be some who need to get funds out to keep their business alive or something like that and there was a lot of that in the pandemic, you know, fire sale of different cars for people to keep their businesses alive,

which is respectable, I think. I worry about it much more in the world where people are financed into something beyond their means and this will heavily hit the 100 to 200,000 dollar car market where people who are, you know, like I have been a the past, financed into something with very little room to spare because they wanted to, because they could. And I know this is the industry I know best, which isn't obviously the mass complete globe from any respect, but it's the world I spend most of my time around. And the markets will move very slowly. And eventually prices are just going to come down and down and down and down and down. And there'll be a lot of people who need to pay money to get out of their loans.

It's going that way completely. Yeah. What do you think about the hypercars? Cars, 500,000 to a million? I think, yeah, I think if we say 500,000 up, I think really the global market for people who buy those kind of cars is actually not shrinking in the slightest.

A lot of people have made a lot of money in recent years. I mean, it was actually fascinating how many people, specifically through crypto, made a lot of money very quickly. The auction market in the last two years has been fascinating because a lot of cars have been bought by people who've made millions overnight and just want whatever car they want, right?

So they just buy it. I think if you have a big crypto portfolio and you're used to watching it going up by a six figure, up and down by a six figure or seven figure sum every five minutes, you kind of lose some of the sense of, let's say, appreciation of the value that a traditional collector might have.

You know, so all of a sudden, that car that should have been one and a half million, that's two million, you know, whatever. Right. They just buy it. Lots of those cars are actually now quickly coming back to the market. I'm noticed. I think generally speaking though that demand is just going to go up the combination of the fact that no new car really does what all the cars do

they don't have that same passion and involvement because it's all tech it's all electric you know there are some fantastic electric cars that are arriving now like the performance figures are mind blowing and what they can do is mind blowing but let's face it no one needs a one million two million three million dollar car like there's no need for for that. The reason you buy that is because your heart says I want that. And if you want that, you generally want an emotional connection with it. You know, whether that's because you've always dreamt of owning a Ferrari or whether that's because you want to feel a vibrating engine, you know, the rawness of the revs as they get up towards the top and you pull a paddle or engage the next gear or whatever it is. So I think that end of the market, as we're seeing really, if you look at cars like the F40s and F50s, you know, those really prestige names, both manufacturers and the

models, those are very solid investments. You know, my, my favorite car, my dream car is a Ferrari F-50. That was my first poster car. They came out in the mid-90s. I was, you know, seven years old, eight years old, whatever it was. They were, I don't know exactly, but four or five hundred thousand dollars not very long ago. And now a good one is six million. Yeah. That's the car that's like it was completely out of reach 10 years ago, 500 care. Couldn't have dreamt of that. And now it's a six million. It's completely out of reach. I can't dream of that. Is there any car now that you feel like is the next one for you to get? Like I would think a Carrera GT for you would be like that.

So Carrera GTs are really softly priced in the UK versus here. Here they've started hitting a couple of million, which to me is crazy. But one and a half to tell. Yeah, it's crazy, crazy. Good chunk under that for a UK car. I mean, for sure, that's like a dream. But again, there was a time when I was offered a Carrera GT for 220,000 pounds. I remember it well.

So the idea of paying nearly a million now is still. like, oh, I could have bought that for 80% less, you know. What about like a Lexus LFA? Again, another car I would love. But same story. I was offered one for 200,000 euros. I remember when no one was buying those. Yeah, they were sitting on lots on sold. You could get money off. It's the same problem for me. I was super lucky to buy my SLS Black series. I actually bought it at the time, February 2020, I bought the car. You can imagine the weeks that followed that. I was like, what have I done? The world's about to fall apart. Spending, buying a car of that value outright was not a good idea at that particular time. Luckily, I guess for me, weathered that storm, had to make quite a few cuts

during 2020 and things, but come out the other side of it. And those cars and that's worth at least 2x what I bought it for. So I'm very happy about that on the other side, but certainly there was a period of like, well, whereas if I didn't already own one, I'd be looking at the market now and saying it's gone. That ship sailed. I think I'm too much. much of a, I'm too calculating in the sense of I could have done that. Sure. And I'm not, you know, I get, as I think anybody who's in the public sphere who people think they can make a quick buck out of does, I get plenty of people offering me stuff I don't

really want for massively inflated figures. And it's like I didn't get here by making unwise decisions. And I think that's the same with cars. You know, I enjoy the fact that I'm lucky to drive so many of these all the time through my videos. You know, if I would like to drive a Carrera Gt or an F50, it's probably just a phone call away. And that's a crazy position to be in. And I can't, you know, I can't believe, I can say that, but I truly thankful that it's the case. Just, I couldn't justify doing it. I get that. Yeah. Where are you investing today? Is it all in the cars? Or are you buying

real estate, stocks? So, I'm very heavily in the cars, obviously. Yeah. Too many eggs in one basket in any realistic, normal world. But I think my justification for it is that this is my life. I know this is the life I live is making the videos and being invested in cars means that I have more avenues for content and I just enjoy making the videos so it's kind of Maybe that's my man math sales pitch to myself sure I've put in small investments into some different things obviously have some money in the stock markets never really did the crypto thing Started in crypto in the early days I bought some Bitcoin when it was like ten dollars no Yeah, but I sold it when it was a hundred I was like I've done quite well

Yeah, I'm out it's peaked yeah that was, I think, 2012 maybe, about that kind of time. Wow. How did you find Bitcoin at $10? I don't really know, to be honest. I think a friend must have mentioned it. I really couldn't tell you. But I was more having fun playing the quick ups and downs rather than kind of buying and

holding. I just had a little bit of in and out. But like I say, once it got to that figure and then, you know, watched it all go up and said, I should have stuck with that. I should have stuck with things in Tesla. and should have stuck with everything, but shouldn't we all at certain points. But I haven't really got into the real estate thing,

partly because you've got to think this is another difference in markets and locations. UK property, at the time I could have got in and started things, let's say six, seven years ago, hasn't really increased since. It's certainly not quite the same growth and demand as you see in, like, southern Florida or here in Vegas, for example. it's it's quite it's quite different so i have no regrets about that up to this point i mean they'll become a time and you know i'd love to build myself a nice house or something sure some inspiration from

some friends of doing that right um i think i'm i'm more on the road with all my videos travel a lot um and quite enjoying my current setup i rent an apartment in london works works quite well so i'm going to stick with that now speaking of bitcoin i had an interesting experience. I had a buddy when I was probably 21. It was really into the tech scene. And he first introduced me to Bitcoin when it was a dollar. And he was showing me all the cool stuff on the Silk Road. And not like cool stuff as in like a higher hitman. So something like that. But he was showing me like you have to like just just the intricacies of like what's involved in that. And I just found it so cool that like, oh, you have to do this. And I remember him telling me

Bitcoin, like everything was done with Bitcoin. And I remember thinking, oh, is just a Bitcoin a dollar? He's like, no, they just happened to be trading at the same, same levels. That was like my first intro to Bitcoin back then. But he took me to some sort of, I don't know if it was a conference or some sort of like his work tech event. And there was a dude there who was going up to everybody handing out these cards. And he came up as like, hey, I'm just trying to promote Bitcoin. And there's a wallet address on here and there's like a Bitcoin on it or something like that. And I remember thinking, oh, that's cool. And I put it in my pocket.

And I went home and maybe like a few weeks later, I took it out. And I like typed in because it wanted you go to this website and like type in the address. And I typed in the address. And I remember thinking like, I think it was either half a Bitcoin or a Bitcoin that was on there. But I remember seeing the value of it as being like two, three dollars or something worth. I was like, what am I going to do with this? And I just left it there. And I kept that card for years in a drawer.

And when Bitcoin hit, it must have been like, $4. 50 or 60,000. I'm like, I should go to that card. I'm going to find it. And I looked through everywhere. I threw it out. Yeah. Could not find it. So somewhere out there is one of those cards. And then I looked it up online to see if other people were getting the same cards. And sure enough, there were, maybe about a dozen people doing this, handing out these cards is because they're excited to like share the message of Bitcoin back then. Yeah. And I found cards that looked very similar to the one that I received. And it was like this kind of holographic credit card looking thing.

But yeah. So it's out there. I threw it away. So in some dump somewhere is a Bitcoin, maybe half of one. My brother has a very similar story. Really? BTC for, I think I can't remember. Maybe it was 100, 200, that kind of region.

And on his laptop, obviously moved to another laptop. By the time it got to a lot of money, he went back to his old laptop, couldn't turn it on, hard drives bricked itself. It's kind of like, what can I do to get this back? Yeah, nope. What I find interesting, and I think this is going to come way in the future of Bitcoin, just depending on what happens,

but how many Bitcoins are out there that are just inaccessible? Yeah. If there's 21 million Bitcoins, what percentage of them are just straight up never going to enter circulation because they were lost? Well, every day, probably a few more than before. Right. So I'm curious, the true number of real Bitcoins that are out there. Is it 15 million?

Is it going to be 14 million? It's not 21. Well, a lot of the early miners or distributors will have had much larger quantities that they can't get into now, right? So anybody who's acquired Bitcoin in recent years presumably still has it or knows the value of it.

Whereas it was so much easier to get nearly 10 years ago, but probably harder to still have. An interesting question. It would be. We'll find out one day. My last question for you, how do you post a video a day?

How have you done that for 13? I didn't realize it's every day. Yeah. Across all the channels, it's literally been a video every day. The only year I went every single day without fair was 2017. I uploaded on my main channel every single day of the calendar year, and it was intense.

At the end of the year, it was kind of need a break. I think just because I enjoy it so much. You know, we get to do so much cool stuff, drive so many incredible cars, opportunities that are really pinched me, pinch myself moments all the time.

And I enjoy every factor of it. I enjoy both the cars, the filming, the travel. So the things that would normally, put somebody off from doing that because they need a break from their job or from their work isn't an issue for me, you know. I long believe that, you know, if you love what you do, you'd have a work a day in your life. I think I'm lucky to be in that space. You know, there's a ton of

hard work, boring stuff, accounts, booking things, travel plans, etc., etc. But the highlights are so cool. And I try and be quite efficient with the way I film. You know, I've obviously evolved over time, the techniques behind it. There's very little. done on footage. It's very much filmed in a way that I know how it's going to be edited or how I'm going to edit because I edit most of the content still myself as well. Let's capitalize on what I'm good at, which is knowing details about cars, you know, create the content in that way. Or if I'm out of my element, rather than struggling through, invite somebody into the video who does know what we're talking about, that specific model or somebody from the brand or somebody from

the collector themselves or that kind of thing. To make it all quite smooth and try and just shoot it in a way that it's actually not as time consuming as people think. You know, for me, like a good video is one that I film within an hour or two and takes 10 minutes to edit. Sure. Then I've done it right. You know, still does tons of views. It happens very rarely.

If you don't have a video idea that day, you're like, it's got to post something. It's a very planned ahead. I'm super on it with my schedules and agendas. So a complete travel itinery that my whole team has access to. It's quite a manual document, to be honest. but, you know, every line is a day. Here's the video I'm filming. Here's where I'm going to be.

Here's the travel I'm doing. Here's the Google Maps route link. Here's the booking references. Here's everything. And then a separate document, which is what's going live on each channel and each platform every day. So color coded. So if I'm stuck for an idea, it's red. If I've got the idea, but it's not filmed yet.

It's orange. If I filmed it, it's yellow. If it's good to go live, it's green. So it's super visual. You just load it up. You can see instantly. Oh, my gosh, in three days there's a problem. Q brainstorming.

Yeah. So there's a lot of planning behind the scenes, which definitely comes from working in finance, you know, spreadsheets and being like on that details, definitely from the work background. That's cool. Do you have anything, Jack?

Anything else? I don't think so. I did ask, I did ask overrated cars. What's an underrated car? Oh, underrated cars. I like that. What's underrated?

Mast Dianada? That's my guy. I'm going to say that. I guess that one. I'm going to say the, Second generation, Accura, NSX for me. Second generation. So the new hybrid one.

The latest one. I actually agree. I quite like them. I do quite like them. Most people find them a bit. I think probably quite a few new cars are underrated, especially by petrol heads, because they don't have the noise of older cars.

But technologically can be significantly, obviously, more advanced. Things like hybrids, you still got a combustion engine that sounds great, but you can experience that tech as well. I'm trying to think of something a little bit older that would be quite underrated or undervalued or something. There are so many. I mean, I've got a short list of cars more from my childhood that I'm really looking to add to my collection.

Just like a random car that you really appreciate. A car I like, but the thing is anything I say now, the value. I'm joking. You've got to buy it first. Yeah, I've got to buy it first.

We'll wait to post until you buy the car. No, you're good. A car I'm really after. the moment actually that I'd like to find one of is a BMW 1m, which is one series coupé, manual gearbox, limited edition, kind of last hurrah that they made of it. And I think that's a very interesting era. So this is 2011 because this is an era of if you think the way the car market or the limited edition or supercar market moves is often in generational phases. So when people who had those cars on their posters, when they're a teenager, get into the position to have some money,

they go and buy them. So you see cars. becoming valuable about 20 years after they existed or introduced. It's, if you look through time, it's actually quite cyclical like that. Um, so I think a lot of cars from the early 2000s, that perhaps haven't been appreciated in recent years are about to be appreciated a whole

lot more. If you could have one car in the entire world that's ever existed, okay, but you can't sell it. Yeah. Get it for free and you can't make any content around it, nor bring it to meets and get like external benefit. by networking.

You just owning it and drive it privately. F-50. Easy. Yeah, it's easy for me. Because the F-50 is an older car. 25 years old would never be great for videos. Video's always like new stuff. I think old that just doesn't work so well.

Whereas the F-50 for me, I'd just go and drive it every morning and be a very happy bunny. That's cool. I haven't driven that many cars to really give a good answer. That's the honest truth. I mean, I love the Model 3, Tesla.

It's like a daily driver. But the favorite card that I've ever owned was probably the lotus Elise. It's the most fun. I was thinking you might pick a 4GT. No, you know what? Something about the Lotus of just feeling like really tight and secure within the car and like have it be really nimble and like you could see everything around you.

Tiny and practical, uncomfortable. I like that. It kind of sounds like a Miata, but better. Yeah, the 4GT, I like the car, but I'm terrified to drive it. I feel like it's very wide. I'm always paranoid. I'm going to go over like one of those bumps

when I'm parking. Yeah. You're like the little speed things. I'm just paranoid something's going to have to do. The Lotus of Lees was something I never had to worry about it. Yeah, that's true.

You don't have to worry about getting your head chopped off either. Yeah, or that. For Gt Gt problems. Yeah. I'm good. I'm not too tall. So like I never have to.

Yeah, well, telling every passenger who gets it. Every passenger I do. And it's scared. But even for me, I know, like I have, you know, a few inches, but like, you're still scared of it. It's like the,

Because it's a metal blade. You're pulling towards your head. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Make sure to get your free stock at public.com. Check out on Instagram. You'll be why.

You'll be linked in the description. Guys, follow me an Instagram. And with that said, until next time. Thanks, man.