Buying a $3,000,000 Hyper Car | The Untold Story Of Shmee150

today I'm excited to introduce you to Tim also known online as shme150 bought my first Ferrari and Porsche McLaren 675 LT All in a 12-day period yeah it was kind of full-on for all of you car enthusiasts he needs no introduction but for anybody unfamiliar he is one of the most incredible car collections valued at over 10 million dollars his YouTube channel features some of the most insane automobiles on the planet and he started all of this from the humble beginnings of working a normal nine to five 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 gotta 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 strike driving your video to monitor eyes 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 have options all tracks are professionally produced by a diverse collection of artists and exclusive to epidemic sounds so you can't get them anywhere else so click the link down below so you don't miss out on this amazing deal and also you get access to epidemics incredible music catalog again the link is down below in the description to get started today and now with that said let's get back to the podcast we're not getting back to it let's get to the podcast welcome back to the iced coffee hour hi guys I'm shmee thank you so much for making it all the way over to Las Vegas absolutely pleasure yes yeah thank you and you pulled up in a crazy car you got to see this car jack it's an AMG GT Black Series see you know that's a lot of that's a lot of abbreviations for me that's like too too too many abbreviations could you explain to Jack the significance of this car how many did they make the AMG GT is kind of their super Grand tourer 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 Nurburgring which is often considered to be the most hardcore race track 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 this starting what prompted that so I've always had fun I actually brought my Ford GT my new Ford GT 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're gone we've gone kind of completely full-on um so we started in New York went up towards the Northeast um back when it was with all the foliage she was unbelievably pretty we crossed over to Toronto and Canada drove all the way over here we're actually here quite recently for the SEMA 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 50 is living the Supercar dream the idea has always been to create content which is sharing what I feel exceptionally lucky to do but I don't think any car Enthusiast would do if they can you know the dream Journey the dream road trip so we go to race tracks 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 background 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 a little nerve-wracking to put so many miles on a million dollar car I mean driving the car's worth a million dollars absolutely prob maybe maybe more depending on why is your 4GT worth a million and his is do you have this new one yeah okay yeah so the new I've done about 8 000 miles of my 4GT which has been all around Europe everywhere I've taken I think on 11 or 12 different race tracks 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 two different perspectives but [Laughter] 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 um 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 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 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 gonna drive it I'm gonna do this with it because you're not worrying in the same way yeah you know 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 the dealer markups have been going for we have the RRP and a dealer can't charge you over that so explain that in a normal World rewind three years if you walked in to buy a fairly normal BMW model you would be discussing a five thousand ten thousand pound discount on the retail price rather than not adding the premium if that makes sense so another 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 all 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 like show them off and get to know the sales person 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 there you know 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's who wants to buy a new GT3 RS that's just launched you know the latest hot Porsche you probably need to have a tie cat and a KN and some regular 911s 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 is only for like the super fancy luxury cars that they produce or is this like can you go in and just buy a 911 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 they put a sang way 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 or higher so one of their kind of Flagship cars we could say plus another car with a V12 because the new car is a V12 so you need to own those two and probably have some points from some other events and things so that means you you probably have to buy about a million dollars for the Ferraris how much is the SUV yeah to then be able to spend four or five hundred thousand four or five hundred grand for that how many Ferrari pointer do you have I don't actually I don't know how it works exactly I 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 um 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 is where lots of new products would be launched the Gumball 3000 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 was 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 at an investment consultancy actually really very analytical based which I would say is always where my YouTube side came from yeah it was like how do I understand what's happening what's working publishing content how do you reach audiences metadata tags analytics you know the drill it's 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's a lot of times especially unless you're just going like you know on the street here's a 30 second video just throw up whatever I was super super lucky actually back at the start because within the 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 you know the same 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 within single digits and the company had grown to just over 100 by this this point and he basically allowed me which sounds bizarre to say to to lower from working five days a week to working four days a week because my 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 um still see them both so it's really really nice actually so did you get a pay cut yes 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 only 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 um 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 not a lot I think probably I think at the point I went full time it was probably in the region of ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year that's when you went full time yes 10 to 15 grand how did you how did you justify it no no that's that's when I that's when I started let's say 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 that was what you had to do right what was the car um my Audi R8 at the time all right okay yeah so I guess I'd have been 25. financing the R8 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 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 Atlas VPN I've been traveling a ton recently and I don't expect it to slow down anytime soon and with all that traveling come sketchy and unsecured airport Wi-Fi well thankfully Jack you use your sponsor Atlas VPN 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 US 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 a dollar seventy 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 R8 I take it you quit your job when full time what's your schedule look like back then because now you have to just create content around the R8 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 okay yeah growing the channel trying to expand it and I mean it wasn't something that was earning certainly not a hundred thousand dollars 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 12C it was the McLaren so I bought a car in the UK for 125 000 pounds um which at the time would have been something like 180 000. it was really cheap so you have to think it was still 180 sure but what you have to remember as well is it's it's funny because you wouldn't realize it now new McLarens when they launched and the first 12 C's were delivered at the end of I want to say 2012. um 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 infotainment 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 was 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 bug 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 a Resurgence there was a lot more um you know people believing in in their products and they had fixed some of the problems so they're all running properly um 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 I just done something do you remember what your payment was yeah it was it was roughly a thousand pounds a month okay which was fine like I say right 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 demuro doing that with his uh 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 but what I certainly felt like I was working for was to have the opportunity to drive these kind of cars um 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 dreamed as a teenager I was completely kind of one day I learned a Supercar that's my goal one day one day so how old were you when you got the McLaren uh so early 2014 I would have been 26. so you're 26 was that like your daily driver or it was my only call yeah that was your daily driver 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've probably got some pretty funny looks and stuff like that driving 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 um 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 the 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 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 that means 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 then it's the the waiter 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 like 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 video you're talking about as well that went hyper viral it's a Lamborghini crashing in London everyone has seen this video everyone everybody it's that black vented all right yeah and it's going down the side street and it hits like a minivan and then it flips over it jumps up and yeah you film that you saw I didn't actually film it but there's quite a story behind this as well but it is the biggest video on 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 remember seeing this on the cover of like Yahoo yes but cover I mean front page all the newspapers everything everywhere but the interesting story behind it was that 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 that's pretty Rife but back then I was trying to 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 Science Alpha for Mother's Day lunch and I heard I had heard there's been a Lamborghini crash and it's right outside where I used to live like half a mile away so 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 in the site the side idea was can you get a video or something yeah and 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 um 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 really no idea yeah no idea but I 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 at this point of so many different cars that people would buy if they wanted you know the different TV shows that put together mashup 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 out like someone like Yahoo can't they just link it back to you or I guess then that they would credit you pretty much everybody commercial 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 if anybody steals one of my videos now it's still got my face in it so it's kind of I I 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 generally 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 um and I was always trying to be the first to upload videos I would I would stand at the side of a car reveal you know holding my camera up over my head um 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 the 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 like if you search YouTube for LaFerrari 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 LaFerrari reveal at the Geneva motor show was live before Ferrari's own pre-filmed video had even gone live like within 45 minutes the reveal so at the time it was kind 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 could only have dreamed about before no what were you gonna ask Jack I was gonna ask you so you bought the video for about two grand right something like that yeah 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 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's actually a lot lower than people would think for 35 million views it's a short video right it does the average retention is 15 seconds yeah so it'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 um so it's certainly a much smaller figure I can tell you I have videos with two 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 preaching to them the the experts here there's there's so much more understanding of how this works than just stick a video online and get out of many views um so it's 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 do you remember have you seen the Dubai Police Supercar Fleet I filmed that similar kind of time Audi R8s and they have well crazy Bugatti Veyron yeah Aston Martin one seven seven 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 I didn't 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 the Dubai Police or however exactly it worked um and they used them at you know for patrols at Big public events or venues or that kind of thing um but it kind of went a bit further and effectively 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 setup 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 the back in the back of like a Veyron because at that point and that's what I'd probably break there is there is a Brabus G-Wagon they could throw somebody in the back of a privacy but it's it's it was a you know a huge marketing thing as so much of the the content or things you see from the UAE um have been uh but my my video of videos of that from the beginning were obviously really big because people hadn't seen it before you know I've had some big videos of 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 of this video as 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 um you know a couple of friends from the cast spotter World um 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 Myspace 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 1 series a diesel uh one Series Coupe lovely car but people can see that progression from that all the way through so I now have a garage for about 20 cars and it's all like 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 um I I upgraded from that McLaren to another one I actually had four McLarens in a row um 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 massive shift towards creating longer form content um and I was like I had my light bulb 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 675lt but also bought my first Ferrari and Porsche all in the 12 day period so it's kind of day yes it was kind of full-on at the time I was just kind of what is happening how is this like would you be comfortable talking about some of your finances back then 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 but the early ones this must be been like 2012 or like 2013 and I kind of wondered going through that like how how do you afford all these cars yeah I mean I'm the first to admit around it this is uh 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 um and outgoings and certainly at that period it was like that the 675 LT I think I had bought that probably 50 50 and something like that as a deposit the uh 981 Cayman 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 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 gonna lose money on it perhaps a little overconfident 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 can match more 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 the guaranteed Buy-Back 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 Arturo 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 a hundred thousand dollars 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 which is really quite interesting so what is 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 nobody understood that and and certainly it was quite a I think a hard thing to do from the outset but you obviously like anything this you you show them 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 um so I think at the time I just submitted the the application um 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 were they hesitant though about you making content with the car I heard Ferrari is 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 answer the convertible or it was 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 up 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 like 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 because he had bought amazing cars like absolutely amazing cars but to buy a laferrariapater 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 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 LaFerrari apertures I can't only made 200 of them right it was two million dollars each yeah yeah I mean it'd 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 um like when the new Corvette came out the C8 generation called that 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 bone stock unchanged because I don't want to get into any warranty battles if something goes wrong that they're known you know they want they're very happy for you to use the cars you know 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 the right look now why do you think it is that Lamborghini doesn't go after uh 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 over Lambos 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 there's no alternative so I think Lamborghini embraced that 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 they're 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 multiple Lamborghini serial Lamborghini buyers they're not Ferrari guys huh what car make do you think is is uh is liked too much is overhyped interesting what you want to spot here yeah I'm very on the spot with that one what I'm careful what you said I already is listening you know what if we talked about let's say the multi-million dollar cars you know this world of Bugatti Koenigsegg Pagani 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 the 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 seven eight nine hundred thousand horsepower car we're normal humans the the rate of acceleration and cornering ability you can't do on the road like these cars make absolutely no sense um 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 you know I prefer the flare of an Italian engine more than that for example so I don't necessarily think well I couldn't I couldn't really point one brand and say you know they're over hyped per se but I think different cars will appeal to different people you're like I'm I'm more of a McLaren and a Ferrari guy than I am a Porsche guy so for you personally Porsche I I'm not I'm not the biggest Porsche guy um I've owned a couple um I've had a GT3 two gt4s um recently had a taikan their electric car um but like I'm not the one lining up at the door for a new GT3 RS 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 GT3 RS 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 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 then it's like any rich guy can say all right now I'm gonna buy this for all right shove them off to the set I'll buy that but keeping some of the mystery and having someone at Ferrari hand select those people I think is part of what makes people want to go the extra mile like maybe I should buy that fifth row 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 um 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 and 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 yeah and you know you want to keep that relationship as well so swing some roundabouts how do you balance the two between making content and being honest about your experience with 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 um but then if you don't talk about it and all of a sudden like a car is 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 why is this 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 make makes it possible to do what you're doing yeah um I try and give the brand a very fair opportunity to help with whatever it is not not like trying to pull strings of if you don't do this I'm gonna 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 yeah that kind of thing and to be fair most genuinely are but you've built 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 um 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 um and it took probably six months to get them in so for six months I couldn't drive the car what what was the part dampers suspension possible suspension um crazy expensive Parts as it happens but just you know unobtainium um and so there was a lot of back and forth as you can imagine um but ultimately you know they helped they tried to get them the dealership have been great good communication about it also 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 a 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 I'm sure now how much of that though is you having a channel and a large presence that they put you at the priority oh you think you would get the same experience as someone else who has no following whatsoever calls in my sin is broken um I don't try to use it like that though um I know that when various cars I own whether it's Ferraris my Ford GT or Lambos or whatever go for a service they'd 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 but right it's for you yeah 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 competency only their new limited edition V12 um 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 is a swings and roundabouts thing as well it's sometimes in your favor sometimes against your favor 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 gonna 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 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 yeah I know there are plenty of people that do I believe that if you want 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 they're gonna be a long full list yeah I want the full list I'm not even sure if I can do the full list from from craziest down shall we say my craziest car is a Zenvo a Zenvo tsrs and most people don't know what it's envo I don't even I don't know I know what that is and I I love cars yeah so so Zenvo is a Danish company um the car has 1 360 horsepower um in-house engine full carbon everything as you can imagine brutal thing to drive I kind of describe it as an Aventador on steroids it's really aggressive um I'm gonna pick this up a couple of months ago how much did that cost that's fairly expensive wow crazy machine this this is real yeah oh my gosh look at that it actually kind of reminds me of my Miata very similar oh my God yeah it's it's a wild wild thing um very small company how many cars like have they made they make a couple a year a couple a year yeah how did you get one so I've 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 oh yeah there you are you typed in the car and yeah so that's 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 it's all over the Internet oh my gosh but now like I say I've known the founder of the company um 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 um from other uh 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 um for me there was a lot of am I Really Gonna Do this that's that's I was making financing though yeah that's that's a big part of financing 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 sizeable double-digit deposit of a multi-million dollar car it's it's a scary number whatever you do um 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 um 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 like 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 could make it up on the back end so it is exactly that yeah 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 this is about to say I don't know if it'll have lost 50 or gained 300 you know I I 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 bought them still have them it's exactly what James said a bit of a lost leader into the channel in the sense of how crazy is this content and you know the the views on on the car in some ways aren't as big as if I had bought a more well-known car of that price point and 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 as envo 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 ten years time people are looking for zembo Content they'll end up looking at my videos and it will keep everything very current um 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 hyper car that I'm not going to travel around the world that will put you over the edge there versus like a Pagani or a Koenigsegg price is relevant price is relevant the zembo is a cheaper entry point um the tsrs My particular model um here in the US suspect the car would be about two million dollars whereas a Pagani or a Koenigsegg you'll be looking at three or four so that is relevant I'm not gonna 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 no um go and go and drop um 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 are now buying the cars who've seen my videos like how cool is it yeah as as nonsensical as it sounds how cool is it that I can upload videos of two million dollar car and people will see those videos and go and buy it you know it's like you think you've got a wild audience yeah you think if you think imagine that you think of influencing for selling accessories or selling like you know easily attainable things but it is genuinely true even with Hyper cars you know you're bringing to attention something that a product that people didn't know about um 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 very cool yeah it's really really cool but it showcases what it's all about you know there are some amazing engineers and technicians and designers and people behind the brand at zenfo 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 really isn't it to be honest so click the link in the description to uh today yeah he's our affiliate the first five people who buy his envelope get a free auto t-shirt t-shirt I've actually influenced people to buy Lexar cards you know like because they sponsored me on the channel but I can't imagine it's getting somebody to buy a two million dollar car that I don't think you know it's not that simple somebody doesn't watch a video right no no no no no but that's where it starts 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 it's crazy to me that that happens but it does happen you know what's neat uh I haven't talked about this in a long time when I posted my 78 Tesla video yes I put my Tesla referral link as the first link in the description guess how many Teslas I sold I can imagine it's a lot let's guess how many views does the video have uh probably 8 million fifteen thousand I'm gonna guess no 280. oh you're really close uh about 240. 240. I was I was going way over because people click the link and paste the deposit there right no this is actually a Tesla is actually uh delivered okay 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 watch the video and click the link that doesn't mean I mean I reckon probably 15 000 people have bought cars who have watched your video and maybe used another Lane yes or just gone direct to the website yeah rather or already had one on order or were just aware of it you know um 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 videos yeah um it's amazing to think isn't it yeah because that's the deposit is well the car isn't cheap it's 40 50 60 70 000. yeah and the cool part now is that I have basically unlimited supercharging miles uh just because of people signing up through that link so they Unfortunately they changed it um I got the car right after they expired the uh the referral program where I think it if you referred a hundred 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 5000 free miles of supercharging yeah but you get 204 I mean I'll never be able to drive the car as many miles as I 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 if elon's listening right now we need to change it back they also used to do a giveaway so uh 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 one or the I don't think they ever did it I think they just said it and 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 silence interesting so I think they figured they could just get away with not doing it and no one's gonna say anything I mean it's just like the YouTubers that give away like PlayStation 4s and stuff like that like the kids YouTubers the iPhones 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 uh oh gosh there was something that 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 yeah well it's got to be no purchase necessary yeah but it's also gotta 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 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 is 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 Suite Life of Zach and Cody that was on Disney Channel and they ran the sweepstakes that you bought this yogurt like Danimals yogurt and they were giving away uh like a vacation or something with the 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 it no I can't trust the world no but when you when you were doing the referral links to the tessas and same with many other uh crazes on the platform I was watching that thinking I want to get involved with this because I was thinking I could do that but Tessa hadn't yet reached Europe in the same way oh so I had to watch John 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's crazy in the beginning Tesla videos were similar to the videos that you'd make on an iPhone and people would love them 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 yeah 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 yeah it's it's twofold right there's there's so much Intrigue in the electric car World positive and negative um the products themselves and Tessa's such a talking point controversy overload right with every possible thing I I bought my taikan 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 um not Tesla level huge but relatively let's say buying a Panamera 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 day that worked really well that's good I got a couple of more questions for the Zenvo how long did it take to to make the car so from startup construction to delivery probably 15 months that kind of thing to make I mean you've got to think it's a small company so and they make everything in-house everything that's not bad engine actually gearbox every carbon part everything starts like buying one yeah 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 because you said they only sell what a coupling no I I mean like let's 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 right really buying the car um Beyond just putting in a big deposit um 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 you know for example if somebody reached out to them they it might it's probable that somebody who works there knows who that person is there's a very it's a very small world at that end of the the hypercar game shall we say do you know if the company is 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 why I got involved because they're developing some really cool stuff so I think you should just take ownership in some of the company I'm not sure I could afford it still they could give you five percent I'm gonna say they you deserve five percent selling it really well here yeah but 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 to help promote the company and 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 some help or something um they'll take it to a few events around the world which is super cool because I get to turn up on my cars 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 products future opportunities because at the end of the day you know when they released the new car one of the perks for me is if I'm the person who's able to film it first because 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 but in the normal World wouldn't be relevant you know what I mean just from the extra business I haven't actually come off that so you got the Zenvo what's next oh yeah it took a long time to get through the center didn't we go through these cars yeah so Zenvo tsrs McLaren Center and Ford GT we mentioned all right let's let's start with the Santa how did you get that allocation for Santa that was really difficult actually that was that was hard so I'd had the 12C the 650 675 Coupe and then the spider um but basically McLaren wanted you to have owned either a sports series car which was the 570s basically or the uh new Super Series car which was the 720s Now new 720 s's 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 it's one of the greatest cars McLaren I've ever made so I'd put my name in for the center 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 you know it's it's not as hyper hyper as December and other things but it was the best part of a million dollars of car um 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 um I actually got turned down for getting the car I was a bit like you know but 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 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 one kind of thing okay 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 bummed out about it I was like come on I've been singing 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's kind of like what what you know what did I do wrong type thing um and then as it happens I actually was at um 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 there 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 um and a lot of the people who own p1s or McLaren race cars would go to that kind of day um and I was having a casual chat with um a friend who's very well connected uh 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 um 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 be on 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 four thousand 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 so what could you do like hypothetically if you take delivery of the McLaren and then sell it immediately afterwards it's like 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 um I think it comes down to the manufacturer if you flipped a Ferrari you are gone good luck they will not talk to you after you get this new 812 competency only 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 right um if you do flip it you will not be buying another Ferrari so hypothetical numbers that's center right yeah like immediately once you bought it how much could you have flipped it for in the US market they were much stronger than in the UK market so initially a little bit um I think initially in the US maybe 300 000 over so a car a spect car would have cost you around 1 to 1.1 million and you could sell it for 300 000 over that kind of thing um they did soften there was a period where they probably dropped down to I'm guessing here but 800 000 dish where there's an alien did they only go down to a million they're back over a million again now um you know you see these curves obviously depending on availability of credit what the markets are like etc etc but also what the demand is like and with the kind of in our face electric future that is being talked about non-stop cars with combustion engines are in so much Demand right now like people just want to enjoy them or they still can so anything from recent years that's in limited numbers the 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 um of anywhere it goes basically a new genre genre of cars have arrived now the hybrid the hyper cars the likes of the Mercedes amg-1 the Aston Martin Valkyrie 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 it makes it more fun to drive because you're not lugging so much weight around the track um really hard to give any kind of meaningful numbers but if say if the Santa went to the Nurburgring in Germany it would be like up there it would be black record time fast it 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 Spa Franco Shaw and gone to you know 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 got to talk about the Ford GT because that is something I would I would have loved an allocation to that but I think I think they're all sold out they've all been spoken for yeah they're about to finish the build it's been a long time yeah um I went to the introduction of the car at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2015. wow that'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 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 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 um before I got the allocation for the GT um I went to that launch event so I was going to all the motor shows um 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 um 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 why would they I 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 really it was completely secret until they did that apple one one more thing style reveal at the show they had been showing the new Shelby GT350 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 all struck because I mean I 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 um but fast forward nothing really happened I 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 1100 1200 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 Moore the Le Mans 24 hours where they introduced their race car and announced that they were going to race the next year um so I was like you know again talking to everybody trying to figure everything out I went to all the shows I went to so many events to try and understand it 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 you're a part supplier or a big customer or something what your racing experience is 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 um 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 it created something that basically snapped into 60 seconds why I thought I just why 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 um you know voice over Style on a video um that I actually filmed because I was in Monaco at the time so 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 um and you know you didn't hear anything until a couple of months later um when they sent out emails basically letting you know either you had secured an allocation or you're 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 six and a half thousand people who would were in a position to buy that car which is crazy and um you know my email had come through like I say saying that I secured an allocation and I was like amazing believe this at the time I was well I was ecstatic and excited but I was like oh my gosh how am I gonna afford this because that was double the price of any car yeah like I had my McLarens but the UK price of the car was 600 000 pounds oh because it's us price plus all the import duties and tax is in conversion is that before options is that like there wasn't much you could add so 600 was about where it ended up with options it's a bit more now for the later cars um so I didn't really know how I'd got the application allocation I knew that the team from Ford Great Britain had been championing for me to get one um 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 four 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 six I don't think he had it back then I think his situation was actually a little bit more complicated around it um but for me you know I was just thank my lucky stars like how crazy is this this is so cool um blessing in 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 or you had to when it went into build to give a 50 cash deposit up front Okay this is a lot of money um what was quite interesting prior uh to getting to that stage though was 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 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 allocate 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 worthwhile I am 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 the protection over the seats maybe like with this 20 to 80 miles so too many people sat on them but this is It's 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 two million dollars so the US cars 500 000 or 550 with spec were suddenly selling or being demanded at two million dollars so your next customers for whom this is the most expensive car they've ever bought are looking at a car that potentially has one and a half million dollars upside on it and that's life-changing you know there's genuinely an amount of money that through the best will in the world you might have wanted to drive it but like hit come on you can kind of see how that happens to that I believe that's basically why that happened obviously values have softened but even still they're a million dollars right 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 I was daily driving this car and put it up on bring a trailer to sell it and I think it hit 850 thousand eight hundred thousand dollars didn't sell didn't hit the reserve but still the fact that someone's willing to pay 300 000 over MSRP 60 000 miles on it daily driven like that uh 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 McLarens 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 it's not the same um and the 4GT 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 the balance of performance and whether the car was whether it was fair whether it had been sandbagged in the build up or whatnot but the fact 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 police shareholders to make X profit on each unit Etc et cetera 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-1 where they've put the Formula One engine into the road car and it's the F1 engine that's LED 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 and what is it two and a half million yeah I know 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 best price oh the car Market's crazy you know if you think to James's Bugatti Veyron when that car came out if you wanted to spend a million dollars on the car you had one choice a Bugatti Veyron that was it that was the creme de La Creme 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 that one million dollar Flagship Benchmark I mean Bugatti set the the standards themselves because their most expensive car was a one-off they created Noir which is one of my most viewed videos as it happens it's on 9 or 10 million or something so again the first video in the world from the reveal at the Geneva Motor Show doing what I do um that car cost in Euros it was 16.7 million oh my God 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 a Rolls-Royce oh what is that the boat yeah they made the sweptail and then the three boat Tails Rolls Royce yes how much well a regular production model is a six figure sum this exactly this specific boat tail they never confirmed but it's believed to be in the 25 to 30 million dollar range what makes it so special they made three of them completely bespoke for the customer so so not three so I think 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 was just so sure so that experience then for the customers sitting with the designers to work on it sitting with the material Specialists sitting wherever 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 like you'd think they'd be making a ton more money at just like 75 million dollars to Rolls Royce doesn't sound like that crazy of an amount right 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 it's got to be 50 million dollars 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 it is two acquaintances get the exact same card 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 like 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 that was like the big thing like a super long time ago or whatever like what kind of unique features now we're talking about the umbrella oh yes there the umbrella like seat warmers 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 and like to have like a refrigerator or something yeah you can have a refrigerator in any more choice 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 get do they have yeah let's start yeah but they do that too 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 um 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 it's very different at that level what can you do that's different it's like all your mates have 100 million dollar yachts and private jets yeah whatever right oh I'm going to own the most expensive Rolls-Royce now what I like is the one guy does the Pinstripes did you see this video on this guy yeah 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 can only get it right once and any mistake it's like I don't know if something like the whole car has to be scratched like not but they have to repaint yeah anyway this guide is 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 sure he has insurance on that he would have to have insurance on his wrist wow yeah and I think it wasn't I think he was trying to teach his 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 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 it's like one one day maybe yeah so what is the most expensive car sale now that isn't a new car oh probably the ferrariant recently a vintage Mercedes sold for 140 million dollars and that became the most expensive car in the world it was sold from the Mercedes-Benz classic collection from their own Heritage Fleet um it's called an ulenhout 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 uh in Germany um only a year or less than a year ago and it sold 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 talk 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 there 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 own the car that's Sterling Moss drove to the win at the sorry at the minute media 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 to fight that one out wow yeah it's really interesting all right so uh so after this afternoon all right every car we do a little side dancing you should get a Model T an original Ford Model yeah that would be quite cool actually that would make incredible content so I'm gonna run the car would be kind of cool we've had Zenvo Center for GT okay let's do the marks the GT Black Series I've driven here I have an SLS Black Series which was the predecessor I have a C63 Black Series I technically own an AMG GTR Roadster which is the convertible kind of one of the one I have here are the Fords I have a Shelby GT500 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 astons um the first car I ever revealed on my channel uh as the shimmy mobile which all my cars have become named since actually the audience named them that and it's kind of stuck around um was a V8 Vantage Roadster that was the first time I kind of revealed the 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 vloggy vlog series on a road trip in 2011. um 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 managed to track down the same car so I earned 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 a vantage 88 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 that was one of the things um where are we uh Lamborghini Huracan sto which is like they're crazy in your face and mine's pink and yellow which makes it even more in your face I was like if I'm gonna spec a Lamborghini I'm just going to do it as crazy as I can sure go wild with it um I don't even know where I'm at now thinking around my garage renaults I have a exact matching spec car to the first car I ever owned I actually owned 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 owned that wow I did how much did a cube of metal cost 125 pounds I think it was what do you do with it I just have it I haven't done anything with it it's just sitting I make it into a table or something cut in 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 at 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 um hyper collectible and going up in value um 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 Jack field nerve so to have the show car is really cool it's currently in restoration because it's been repainted and re-liveried 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 it's not a running car it's just just a show car um Lotus I don't currently own a Lotus but I'm about to go no I have two lotuses in low tide in my garage and I belong to a friend what about the Exige or the Elise didn't you get that so I've got two releases that belong to my friend so the very final one ever and one of the very earliest ones and our number plates are first and final it's amazing God is that the orange one the orange one okay so that one's a friend I'm about to take delivery of in a mirror the new car yes like literally the day I get home from this trip I'm taking delivery off my mirror so that's kind of cool I haven't mentioned Ferraris two Ferraris yes f90 stradale which is actually kind of my daily driver a daily driver 1000 horsepower Ferrari oh my gosh which is values are crazy yeah but it's um it 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 doing 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 the number of million dollar cars I guess I'm going off my insured UK values sure 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 talking in in that kind of region it's like everything 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 specced out 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 alarms the sensors the bollards the camera systems the backup systems the multiple connections the just endless list of stuff wow um all fully monitored all with police presence really nearby all with everything um 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 Etc 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 is like enough to buy my Aston DBS for example like a hundred thousand dollars uh oh my gosh but it's a business experience yeah yeah not fully um you know it's not like a 100 write-off but I can expense parts 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 much 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 oh 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 gonna 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 they 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 too 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 it's 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 but 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 you know 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 that will replace it certainly that kind of thing so there's a 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 is 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 Lambos I look at David Exotics 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 Aventador it would do better I knew that because that was right at the time when people were discovering they made flames and yeah they're just YouTube Gold um and it was actually the Dubai Police video I mentioned hadn't 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 didn't want my only Supercar to be a Lambo I'm not that in your face guy to try 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 um but I figured it was it was time you know I've owned cars I've been lucky to own cars from everyone else um in the Supercar space um exception being Rolls-Royce and Bentley because I'm saving that kind of luxury car for gonna have something to look forward to um so I was like I'll try 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 Master had to had to clear some funds um 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 gonna take it back I want it back yeah well it's still mine so I can right right yeah um 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 maybe yeah completely completely oil changes oh it takes time I mean I've come here from being with James in Utah yeah 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 museum and they actually make videos behind the scenes of the garage which is quite fun as well um and actually it's a completely different type of content but the audience have loved it which is which is amazing um outside of that um 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 um 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 kind of include like all the full-time people plus a couple of part-time helping run my Facebook page and that kind of stuff it's about 10 people around the whole operation wow 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 um but I think anything like this and you know within the next couple of weeks my main channel is 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 something hot 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 draw up high what you know how big are each slice as percentages ah it's very hard to say because it fluctuates a lot um you know this 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 um let's say the xiaomi 150 Network it's probably roughly a third is social media so not just YouTube it used to be YouTube but now Facebook and everything else has taken off in a big way the 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 posting 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 get gets kicked up and criminals a truck drove into me when I was driving my Center 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 um 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 um and the car was due to be on show so it was due to the 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 pulled straight into the back of the center 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 City 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 um even up to that value because here in the US the value of let's say a lot of people would have the minimum of let's say 25 50 Grand yeah you would have to sue them personally but they wouldn't have the money no they wouldn't um 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 it's probably a government-backed type type system I'm not entirely sure 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 anything pulled over um 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 like a phone call with the insurance company or so he's driving a big rig and obviously his his company policy was basically he's not allowed to talk about it 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 God 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 so do you know what do you know so obviously immensely stressed but my biggest feeling this is really really weird I was supposed to be driving the Ford GT but we were running behind schedule and I just put the Ford GT in a truck um because oh no sorry the truck that was due to take it had had due to take the senate 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 um but obviously a week before my 4GT 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 my first thing on my 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 it it I was I was thinking at the time you know if this happens at 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 to 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 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 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 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 rumors and stories and things so I did make a video on the day straight away um 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 Etc et cetera but what do you gain from that you know at the end of the day firstly it's a car could be fixed nobody's hurt that's the most important thing but equally you're in a State of Shock you don't 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 a I mean I say accidents obviously it's I could still drive home it's not like it's or whatnot but it was the first time taking that in and especially what it would happen to my most expensive car right the center cost more although worth less than a GT it did cost more to buy um 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 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 cards down to this event tonight which starts tomorrow morning so put all 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 because what 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 at driving at night didn't see it that doesn't necessarily worry you too much you're still just like you know I'm still gonna drive these cars I'm gonna enjoy these cars yeah so the closest to near disaster we came was actually when I was filming with uh another friend in the YouTube world uh life of Palace Aaron Palos we were filming together in Colorado and we were driving on the highway in his Ferrari FF um followed by my partner driving in my GT500 and there was a um 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 trees everything um thankfully we 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 it you don't remember it 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 really it's yeah no speeding tickets never had any points on my license really in the UK okay um I've had a couple of the like tiny ones I I don't think I've ever had a speeding ticket in the U.S 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 as fast as you've ever gone in a car oh very fast how fast oh you could stay on the track right no no I drive in Germany all the time I used to have a place in Germany oh yeah the Autobahn so the car I've got outside has been 205 miles an hour it was 105. does it not scare you oh it's completely legal it's fine I know but I'm not saying it there 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 202 like just just throwing it out there it's 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 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're doing a wide open road yeah so you'll 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 um you know it's it's a 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 if conditions allow um I think it's it's one that probably won't be around forever though they're not gonna allow that to stick around aren't there many accidents on the Autobahn 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 um I've never there's nowhere else in the world where people follow the 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 it you know the equivalence of 70 miles an hour it's obviously in kilometers in Germany you know there's a chance that a car is going to come up behind you at 150 because 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 right whereas if you're going like 65 or like 50 you know what I mean you're probably like yeah 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 get very very messy very quickly but the accidents aren't that frequent yeah 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 I feel like you're in the US people are that stupid though unfortunately some will be but some will be everywhere yeah I think Germans are very sensible overall sure so what is your thought now on 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 and now there's a ramp up more in production more cars hit the market value is going to come down can kind of only go one way which has already started um you know if you look at the 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 little 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 live which is respectable I think um 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 car market where people who are you know like I have been in 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 the mass complete Globe for many 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 this is going that way completely yeah what do you think about the hyper cars the cars 500 000 to a million I think yeah I think 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 you know a lot of people have made a lot of money in recent years um I mean it was actually fascinating how many people specifically through crypto made a lot of money very quickly um 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 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 yeah you know so all of a sudden that car that should have been one and a half million that's two million whatever right they just buy it lots of those cars are actually Now quickly coming back to the market and no unsurprisingly um 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 you know 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 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 now whether that's because you've always dreamed 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 um you know my my favorite car my dream car is a Ferrari F50 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 um they were Pride 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 500k couldn't have dreamed of that and now it's at six million it's completely out of reach I can't dream of that is there any car now that that you feel like is the next one for you to get like I would think a career GT free it would be like that so Carrera GT is a really softly priced in the UK versus here here they've started hitting a couple of million which to me is crazy yeah yeah it's crazy crazy um 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 you remember when no one was buying this yeah they were sitting on Lots on sold you could get money off it's the same problem for me um I was super lucky to buy my SLS Black Series um 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 if that value outright was not a good idea at that particular time luckily I guess for me whether that storm um had to make quite a few Cuts during 2020 and things but come out the other side of it and those cars are now it's worth at least 2x what I bought bought it for so I'm very happy about that on the other side but certainly there was a period of like whoa 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 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 it's like I didn't get here by making unwise decisions I think that's the same with cars you know I 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 physician to be in and I can't you know I can't believe I can say that but 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 so stocks 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 you 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 um 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 100. uh because I was like I've done quite well okay next yeah yeah I'm out it's peaked yeah well that was yeah I think 2012 maybe about that kind of time wow how did you find Bitcoin at ten dollars I don't really know to be honest I think a friend must have mentioned it I I really couldn't tell you um but I I was 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 I watched it all go up and say oh I should have stuck with that I should have stuck with things and Tesla and should have stuck with everything but shouldn't we all um at certain points um but I haven't really gone into the real estate thing partly because you you got to think this is another difference in markets and locations um UK property at the time I could have got in and started things you know let's say six seven years ago hasn't really increased since [Music] um 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 enjoy my current setup I rent an apartment in London it works works quite well so I'm gonna stick with that now speaking of Bitcoin I had an interesting experience I had a body when I was probably 21 I 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 isn't like a higher Hitman or 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 this a Bitcoin a dollar he's like no they just happened to be trading at the same same level so 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 I'm just trying to promote Bitcoin and there's a wallet address on here and there's like a Bitcoin on it there's something like that and I remember thinking oh that's cool and I put 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 to go to this website 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 it I was like what am I gonna do with this and I just left it there and I kept that car for years in a drawer and when Bitcoin hit it must have been like 50 or 60 000 like I should go to that card I gotta find it yeah 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 as a Bitcoin maybe half of one my brother has a very similar story really bought a big bought one 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 went back to his old laptop couldn't turn it on hard drives bricks itself and 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 every day probably a few more than before right so I'm curious the true number of real Bitcoins or rather is it 15 million is it gonna 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 yes whereas it was so much easier to get no nearly 10 years ago but probably harder to still have an interesting question it would be we'll find out one day yeah uh 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 um across all the channels it's literally been a video every day um the only year I went every single day without fail was 2017. 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 I need a break um 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 really pinched me pinch myself moments all the time um 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 I long believe that you know if you love what you do you never work a day in your life I think I'm lucky to be in that space um 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 redundant 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 in that specific model or you know somebody from the brand or somebody from The Collector themselves or that kind of thing um 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 it still does tons of views not happens very well I don't have a video idea that day but you're like I just gotta post something it's a very planned ahead I'm I'm super on it with my schedules and agendas so a complete travel itinerary 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 gonna be here's the travel I'm doing here's the Google Maps root link here's the booking references is everything and then a separate document which is what's going live on each channel on 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 it's wow there's a lot of very cool planning behind the scenes which definitely comes from working in finance you know spreadsheets and nothing like on that details definitely from the work background that's cool do you have anything Jack anything else I don't think so uh yeah I did ask I did ask overrated cars what's an underrated car oh underrated cars I like that underrated [Laughter] Acura NSX for me second generation so not the like so the new hybrid One latest the latest one I actually agree I quite like them I do quite like them um most people find them a bit I I think probably quite a few new cars are underrated especially by petrol heads because they don't have the the noise of older cars but technology technologically can be significantly obviously more advanced you know things like hybrids you still got a combustion engine that sounds great but you can experience that Tech as well um 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 to add to my collection just like a you know a random car that you really appreciate a car I like and I would but the thing is anything I say now the value no I'm sorry you gotta buy it first yeah I gotta buy it first wait to post until you buy the car and now you're good um a car I'm really after at the moment actually that I'd like to find one of is a BMW 1M which is what that is one Series Coupe manual gearbox limited edition kind of last hurray that they made of it and I think that's a very interesting era so this is 2011. um because this is an era 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 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 meats and get like external benefit by networking and driving just owning just driving privately at 50. easy yeah it's easy for me because the f50s and all the cars 25 years old would never be great for videos videos always like new stuff I think older just doesn't work so well whereas the F50 for me I'd just go and drive every morning and be a very happy bunny well he's cool I haven't driven that many cars to really give a good answer that's the honest truth I mean I loved the model 3 Tesla is like a daily driver but the favorite card that I've ever owned was probably the uh Lotus Elise it's the most fun I was thinking you might pick a Ford GT 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 and Tiny and practical uncomfortable 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 gonna go over like one of those bumps when I'm parking yeah you know like little speed things um I'm just paranoid something's gonna happen the Lotus Elise 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 problems yeah I I'm I'm good I'm Not Too Tall so like I never have to yeah well I'm telling every passenger who gets every passenger I do yeah and it's but even for me I know like I have you know a few inches but like you're still scared it's like the because it's a metal blade you're pulling towards your head yeah thank you I really appreciate it uh make sure to get your free stock at public you'll be linked in the description until next time thanks man