I recently had the opportunity and privilege of speaking with one of the most influential automotive YouTubers on the planet, Doug DeMuro. From microcars like the BMW Isetta to the Bugatti Chiron and everything in between, Doug has seen it all in the decade since he began his YouTube Channel. To give you some statistics, he now has over 4.6 Million subscribers and more than 1.7 Billion views on his channel. Those really are some staggering numbers.
But before I begin, let me be honest, I’ve been a bonafide Doug fan for over seven years now. His candid and often hilarious style of delivering in-depth car reviews had me hooked on his videos almost instantly. It wasn’t long before I was binging on some of his older content as well. Now that you have a brief idea of where I’m coming from, you can only imagine my excitement as I sat down to chat with him.
So buckle up as there’s a lot to unpack starting with his entire journey so far, right from his early days of writing for auto-sites, to growing his YouTube channel to what it is today and now - Cars & Bids, his online auction website for buying and selling cool cars, which recently received a big investment from The Chernin Group.
The Early Days
Before Doug began his YouTube channel, he had previously worked with Porshe and also used to write for several publications including Jalopnik, and AutoTrader.com. Given his humorous way of going about things, it caught the attention of one of his readers who suggested that Doug try making videos on YouTube, and the rest as you may know is history. Well, not quite, this was where it all started and the year was 2013.
Doug kicked things off by featuring cars that he came to own at the time with models like the Cadillac CTS-V wagon, the Ferrari 360 Modena, the Hummer H1, the Dodge Viper, the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, and one of my favorites, his CarMax Range Rover. While these cars did make for great content, it wasn’t until 2016 when he started to feature some properly rare super exotics on his channel, did things start to take off in a big way.
Think of cars like the Porsche Carrera GT, Ford GT, the Ferrari F40, and the Lamborghini Countach. As an early influencer, getting access to cars directly from Automakers wasn’t always easy, and this was where renting cool and unusual cars from places like TURO really helped. One of these rentals was the OG Tesla Model X and Doug’s review really caused a stir because he called it an awful car, but for those of you who may have watched it, you know Doug had some really interesting practical “Real-World” demonstrations of the Model X.
Doug DeMuro’s Signature Style And What Sets Him Apart
‘This is the ……..’ - For those who binge on Doug’s videos, this opening line should be familiar to you. In the video above, Doug talks about his entire journey. Over the years, Doug has refined and developed his signature style adding even more elements to his videos, like the Doug Score. But by far, what really sets his videos apart are his ‘Quirks and Features’ element.
I think the Doug score has been a cool part of the universe, but going in-depth and pointing out things about the cars people don’t have access to was huge. People do want to know how a car drives, but it turns out that people also want to know about the weird buttons in a Countach and that’s just as interesting to them as how it drives - Doug DeMuro
Doug tells me that when he started out with YouTube, most car reviewers mainly focused on how a car drove. Doug decided to take a different approach and instead do a deep dive into every model that he reviewed. And it worked.
One of the things that hit me early on was that a lot of these car reviewers get access to these amazing cars and all they really talk about is the way they drive. But I was always interested in things like, in an F40, what do the buttons do? Like nobody talks about that. They must be interesting. So I figured there might be other people out there who might be interested in that and I think that I was right. I look at the watch time numbers and it's a flat line during the quirks and features part of the video
There’s a big audience out there who really were interested in some of these not-so-obvious features of a car. Doug further adds that the quirks and features make up for nearly 70 percent of a video and if you’re in for one of them, you’ll probably be interested in more. His Channel analytics show that people even skip the driving review and jump straight to the Doug Score.
Cars And Bids: Not Your Typical Car Online Auction Site
By 2020, Doug had north of 4 Million subscribers on his YouTube channel, which was a sizeable audience to gain exposure for his next venture Cars&Bids, a car auction website for cool cars that he co-founded with Blake Machado in May 2020. While there are some big players operating in the automotive auctions space, Cars&Bids is an auction marketplace built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
Doug was able to leverage his channel’s massive audience to grow a remarkably successful online car auction platform. Since its launch, Cars & Bids has successfully sold more than $230 million in automobiles to date through more than 10,000 auctions and the site gets over a million users monthly. They primarily focus on models that are from the 80s and up and belong to the modern era. But it’s not just retro and or cars like the Toyota Mega Cruiser, Nissan GT-R, and Azuro Aquarius that have sold on the site, modern-day EVs from the likes of Tesla and Rivian too have done incredibly well.
From a perspective of a user of the site, I felt like younger people here in North America and Europe are getting into these cars and there are other auction sites that are more broad and generalist, but one of the big benefits of our site is that we focus on some these cars, especially that my generation holds dear and want to be a part of it a little bit more
Doug adds that they are extremely picky about what cars they list on the site. Given the platform’s incredibly quick success, Doug and the Cars & Bids team have announced a $37 million investment from The Chernin Group, one of the most widely-respected investment firms in the world. Life-long car enthusiast Rogelio Choy has been the CEO of the new venture.
While this is fantastic news, I really wanted to know what even got Doug thinking about a car auction site in the first place. Well here’s the real reason why Doug DeMuro started Cars&Bids -
I had developed this large audience and felt I didn’t have enough control. With YouTube, the algorithm owns the audience. Even though they’re my audience, the algorithm can make the decision to stop showing me to people, and it's not really an ideal situation for me. That made me a little bit anxious, and for me personally, the impetus was I need to get something where I can bring the audience and have a little bit more control over it and start a real business
Believe it or not, about 10 months ago, Doug was considering reviewing nothing other than new cars on his main channel, as they don’t bring as much traffic. But with Cars&Bids, he now has access to an endless selection of weird and quirky cars.
On those videos that I do on those that go on Cars & Bids, I don’t need to make as much money on the video, because we’re converting videos people to the site, they’re going to buy the car and use the business and we’ll make the money there. So I can review a car with 300,000 views which isn’t much for me, but I love doing those videos. So, it was this perfect ability to review these cool cars that I want to do anyway, and still make financial sense
When asked if selling Classic or Muscle cars was a possibility on the platform, Doug feels that they’ve barely scratched the surface of the market for cars from the 80s and up. He gave the example of the M3 marketplace, where you’ve got thousands of them in North America, but they’ve only sold 350 on Cars&Bids so far.
Doug’s Big Move To California
DeMuro is currently based in San Diego, but back when he started his channel, he was based on the northeast coast of the United States. He admits that he’s not really a fan of living in California, and even misses Nantucket. However, he adds that the move to the Sunshine State back in 2018 was instrumental in the sharp growth of his channel. The weird and eclectic selection of cars and super exotics is omnipresent in California and so is great weather, which is ideal when you’re shooting cars for a living.
I do not like living here. However, there is absolutely no question that the move to California was integral in the growth of the channel since we moved in the summer of 2018. Then when we launched the business, we were able to recruit really great talent here in California because really great people live here
A lot of people like to knock California for a lot of reasons, but it's 70 degrees and sunny all the time, this is where the cars are and this is where talented leaders in the industry that I was looking for are. I miss living on the east coast, but this is the place, and it's the epicenter of car culture around the world. So yes, the move here had an enormous effect and thus I’m not leaving anytime soon
Also, San Diego is on the border with Mexico, which gives Doug access to some global icons from across the border. Think cars like the Suzuki Jimny or the indestructible Toyota Hilux, and the not-so-iconic Suzuki Swift and Peugeot 3008, all models that Doug has previously reviewed on his channel.
Doug DeMuro’s Garage
Hey, maybe that could be his next YouTube channel. Fans will know that the man also runs More Doug DeMuro, but switching it back to his current crop of cars in his own garage, it varies from a mix of rational cars to aspirational.
The Mercedes E63 Wagon and the Land Rover Defender 110 are daily drivers, while the funky off-roaders i.e. the old-school 1997 Land Rover Defender 90 NAS and Mercedes G500 Cabriolet fit somewhere in-between, with the aspirational cars come in the form of the Ford GT and the most recent addition to his garage, the Porsche Carrera GT. But aside from these two exotics, one 80s icon that Doug has always had his eyes on is the Ferrari F40. I asked him if it was on the cards down the road and, here’s what Doug had to say:
I think I would love an F40. I actually went looking for one. It has become clear to me that the F40.. if I didn’t buy it three months ago, I was never going to be able to. It’s already insane money and I think it will be so insane that it will not be attainable for me anymore, even in a couple of years. So I went looking for one, as this might be my last chance to get an F40 and in the end, I was not able to afford one. So I think, I’ve already lost the ability to get an F40
Also, I’m starting to realize with the Carrera GT, it's such an expensive car that you’re always anxious all the time driving it. I really like to use my cars. I’m starting to think about cars that are still usable and iconic. I’m limited by space, and now that I have in my opinion the two best, I don’t want to get an exotic just to check a box. I want to instead get something that really appeals to me
Starting Out As A YouTuber Today
I obviously wasn’t going to skip this one and this is a question that Doug still gets a lot. I asked him what would he tell himself if was starting a YouTube channel today.
I would tell someone to get a time machine and go back to 2013. I don’t know. It’s hard now. It was hard then, but by comparison, it was way easier. There are a lot of people out there who want to do this now. I think a lot of my success has been due to hard work, but a lot of it also is about luck and timing. I think if I showed up today. It would be a lot harder
I truly am not the best person to ask about starting a channel now, because I didn’t start a channel in these circumstances and if someone succeeds today, that’s even more impressive than what I did. When I started to blow up back around 2016, I got a Countach, and nobody’s ever seen a Countach on YouTube. But now, you have all these rich dudes who have channels and they don’t even get views with Veyrons and as it turns out, you now need more than that
The Next Chapter For Doug DeMuro And Cars&Bids
Before I began working in the publishing business, I used to be a full-time stock trader and at the end of a rough day of number crunching, Doug’s videos were borderline therapeutic for me. His channel has an exhaustive collection of car reviews (893 videos, I counted) that can both educate and keep you entertained for days if not weeks.
If you are looking for no B.S. car reviews with a dash of humor, few can match Doug DeMuro's demeanor. He is undoubtedly one of the most respected names in the industry. Now, although YouTube has played a big role in getting to where he is today, he admits that his first love is still car journalism and writing and he still thinks that he’s better at it than anything else he’s ever done.
With this latest announcement about the investment from The Chernin Group, you can expect both Cars&Bids and Doug’s main channel to go to the next level. Their main goal is to make transactions more seamless for people and strive to have a better and cooler variety of cars on the platform. Doug’s videos still bring in between 15 and 20 million views a month and now combining his passion for making online video reviews with the auctions business, I can’t wait to see where Cars&Bids goes next.