Mat Watson: The TRUTH on CarWow, Past Controversies & Electric Vehicles

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I remember once going to the doctors,

so I've got this doctor with his hand around my nuts,

then he's like looking at me a bit funny,

then he basically just says,

Matt Watson.

I'm Matt Watson, and you're watching CarWal.

CarWal has surpassed 10 million subscribers.

You've driven just about every single car

and every single brand on the planet.

Ooh, it's super.

I drive cars, and I say things about them.

But it does look a little bit like a cat doing something else.

You've got over a million subscribers

on your Matt Watson channel as well.

I'm a little bit like a wasp.

You know, you can bat me away, but I keep coming back.

I love cars.

I'm the person within my friendship circle

and family that will come to for the car advice.

I get a job on a car magazine.

I was actually told by my editor,

Matt, you and I, we're not really made

for reviewing cars, are we?

This is more of our thing.

You know, the investigations, that kind of stuff.

I couldn't read.

I actually don't think that I was

a particularly good presenter.

Chris Harris, Henry Cachpal,

I think they're just much better presenters.

Matt Watson, the biggest automotive YouTuber in the world.

Recently, Carwell has surpassed 10 million subscribers.

You've driven just about every single car

and every single brand on the planet.

And you also have built a personal collection

that's epic too.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg

from my perspective.

But Matt, in your own words,

who are you and what do you do?

Do you know what?

I've watched your podcast so many times

and I haven't even prepared that.

OK, I drive cars and I say things about them.

It's as simple as that.

That is what I do.

I do have...

There's probably a bit more to it than that.

But basically, that's it.

I drive cars and say things about them

and I do it in a relatable way so people watch.

Do you find when you meet people out and about

that no doubt would have seen you

through the many lenses that you present to in your life?

Do you find that they are all like car well, car well, car well?

Do they know you for like just as Matt Watson?

Do they put the two together in one thing?

Or is it I, Matt?

Or is it, oh, it's car well, Matt.

It used to be car well, guy from car well,

but then it became Matt.

You're just Matt, Matt Watson.

Yeah, but it's generally...

There's been some strange instances

where I've met people

because if you think about YouTubers,

often the YouTuber will have like a following

and be known for creating content.

But what I also do is I'll review cars

which people just use as a resource

when they're buying a car.

They're not going to watch the videos

other than as finding out

which is the right car for them to buy.

So you end up with two kind of audiences.

There's the fans and then there's people just,

I know you from somewhere.

Did you come and did you with the guy

that fixed our washing machine?

You know, that kind of...

I remember once going to the doctors

and I ended up in hospital.

I had MRR saying had to do a swab

and they do a swab round by your groin.

So I got this doctor with his hand around my nuts.

Then he's looking at me a bit funny.

He's like, what's wrong with my nuts?

And then he basically just says,

I bought a Skoda Octavia VRS because of you.

And it's got his hands on my nut.

But do you like that in any way?

He was actually quite gentle so it was fine.

Yeah, I do like it.

So basically, I meet people.

People come up to me

because I've helped them choose the right car for them.

And so that's nice.

Or they're into cars.

So walk down the street.

It's not like you're on TV.

It's not like TV famous.

It's kind of people who know know.

So if you're into cars,

you'll probably have come across my work.

And so that's quite nice.

So it's not like being proper famous.

I think this kind of niche YouTube famous

is the right balance of fame at my level.

I mean, if you get into Mr. Beast, it'll be crazy.

But if it's like kind of niche,

it's quite a nice thing because people generally watch

because they like it or you've helped them.

As you said at the start,

you almost struggled to answer the question

because I gave you so much positive news

about yourself like, oh, it makes you do that a little bit.

But if I had 15, 20 year old Matt,

it's that opposite me right now.

And I was interviewing you in the past.

And I read him that line of the things that you've achieved.

How would he have reacted?

So this again makes me feel a little bit teary all night.

Just like kind of amazed.

But me, when I'm in it, it's not enough.

And you all know what it's like

because I'm sure you're the same.

You've got all these different ventures going on.

It's not about, it's about where next.

So it's about the journey really,

isn't it, than where I want to be?

Because actually, if you'd have asked that,

that Matt of 20 years ago,

it's like, so what's the internet?

You know, you didn't even know this job existed.

But this is why I love to do what I do.

And it generally was why I kind of smiled

when I saw the title of your new book

because your new book, the title,

an A to Z of cars.

Yeah.

What I like to do is an A to Z of my guests.

And I think there's so much that you do

that is present in the moment,

whether it's selling a Suzuki Jimny

and figuring out how to import them into the country

or getting them around

and whatever car has just been released

or whatever drag race has just been filmed.

Everything that seems to be done and put out

is very present with Matt Watson.

And what I want to find out about today

is actually the Matt Watson

that's led us up to that present

because there really isn't a lot about that.

And believe it or not,

people do find you very, very interesting

because of all these videos that you've created.

So was there a moment that you can pinpoint for me

in those earliest years,

that lad that I would have interviewed at 15, 20

to tell him about what you've done now

that you think was the most fundamental moment

that set you on the trajectory

to doing what you're doing now?

Okay, so I didn't know what I wanted to do, right?

Maybe if he'd have asked me when I was a kid,

I'd have liked to have been an actor, right?

But how from just some lad who goes to just a normal comp,

just very average kind of background,

how you'd ever be an actor, I don't know.

People tell you you have to have like a proper job

to be able to afford a house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And when I was growing up as well,

you guys see the careers advisor, it was basically,

okay, you're either gonna do like blue collar stuff,

so like laboring and stuff like that,

or maybe if you do a little bit better at school,

you're gonna do things like maybe we're an accountant,

a lawyer, a teacher or whatever.

And sure enough, I actually ended up being an accountant

for a period of time.

So...

But you were an accountant that hid in a drawer

whilst playing hide and seek.

Yeah, how did you go all by your own zeno, right?

Okay, sort of.

So it wasn't the accountant in the sense

that we all picture in our heads.

Okay, so what is it?

Is there anything that I did early on?

I always managed to kind of get to do what I wanted to do

despite what was around me.

I sometimes describe myself and a lot of the PRs might,

like who work in the motor industry,

like we'll probably laugh at this a little bit.

I'm a little bit like a wasp at a picnic.

Just like, you know, you can back me away,

but I'll keep coming back and I'll end up

with that jam sandwich.

You know, it's kind of that thing.

And so I always had that in me,

that kind of like driving determination.

I'm sure you're very similar.

But that driving determination is an ingredient

that goes into a recipe

and you need all the ingredients

to come together to make the recipe.

So like, you just mentioned there

that you went to go and see the careers advisor

at school to kind of figure out where you were going.

Okay, but you remember that moment.

More than kind of spring into mind,

saying my mum or dad told me that I could go and do this

or want to go down that path.

There's none of that really.

So your horizons, like when you're growing up

in the 80s, like I did, 80s, 90s,

there was none of that you,

the possibility of what's out.

There was more just quite a narrow horizon

and you'd look at what your friends' dads did.

So one of my mates, my best mates is dad was an MD

of a company that made casters for seats,

you know, on like office chairs and stuff like that.

Plenty of teachers, the wealthiest people that we know,

one was a lawyer, did like divorce law.

So it was quite narrow.

You didn't think about all the possible jobs out there,

which, you know, now you can just go on your phone

and find out lots of different things that you could do.

So it was kind of like just,

just like bouncing your way to end up here.

But there's a couple of things.

One is I wanted to be an actor.

So I like to perform.

Do you quite extroverted early on?

Am I extroverted?

Probably not.

Somebody's introverted.

Well, accountants normally are.

Yeah.

So introverted, but also extroverted at the same time.

So a little bit of a kind of contrast.

So yeah, it's quite funny.

I didn't know we'd be getting so deep.

But once again, I've like listened and watched

so many of your podcasts.

And so it's quite funny, like getting into the depths of it.

Because it actually does make you think about it sometimes.

And sometimes it also proves

that we don't have the answer to everything.

Sometimes stuff just happens without us even realizing.

But to get to where you are,

there has to be a certain element of passion.

And to get passion, which is an ingredient,

you have to capture it from somewhere.

Like it's very hard to have passion

when you come from backgrounds

that don't really have a lot of color or vibrancy about them.

You just make it so I'd look at what the friends, dads did

and sort of pick up.

Where did your passion come from?

Where did like that love of like, I want to do that.

I could be better.

I could do something like that one day, come from.

Or did that come later?

I was good at forcing myself to do things

which were like hard so I could do graft.

Like from an early age, a good example is my father, right?

So my dad would give us from an early age pocket money

and he had the opportunity to either spend the money

or he would keep it for you

and then it would multiply slightly

and then he could have it all in one lump sum in the summer.

So I learned to delay gratification.

Dividend.

Not so much dividend, but it was like,

I learned that you put something off today

and it'd be worth a bit more in the future.

So I got that and the ability

to not just take something straight away

to work for something in the future.

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So your dad taught you to kind of wait

for what was coming rather than just take it all at once.

You'd kind of delay what it was that you got.

And do you think that actually helped you out then

in your earlier years and like your teen years?

I guess so.

I mean, you don't enjoy it at the time,

but you learn that you don't have to have everything

immediately, so you can put off,

like you can put in some graft,

knowing that it will reap rewards in the future.

What about cars then?

Because alongside what you wanted to do career-wise

and who you were going to become,

the passion and the energy for cars already began.

Yeah, so always love cars for as long as I can remember,

like friends and family that had cool cars.

My dad had a cool car,

but he sold it before I was born and I never forgave him.

So I always wanted one.

I mean, you might not think it's cool nowadays,

but it was an MGB Roadster on a chrome bumper model

and he had that and he sold it just before I was born

and then he sold it to his mate

and his mate crushed it within a day, wrote it off.

So I was, and I never forgave this mate.

I mean, he had friends who had like Jaguar XJCs,

Jaguar E-types, my mate's dad had an M535i.

So he had lots of friends that had cool cars,

but my dad never really did after the MGB,

even though he liked cars.

My mum had the better car,

so she would have things like XR2s, XR2i's

and stuff like that, which I eventually got to drive,

but my dad didn't so much,

but I was always into cars and toy cars

and one of the first toy cars that I remember

was a remote control Porsche 924.

That's when my love of Porsches began.

My uncle, my godfather had a 911 SC.

So always surrounded by people who had cool cars

that I really liked and just wished

that my dad had bought some more cool cars.

Do you remember what you'd watch on those cars

alongside just knowing people that had them?

So I'm so old.

It would be like the original top gear,

but like, was it even before Clarkson's days?

Probably not, like his early days.

So I remember watching Clarkson

and Clarkson was just different.

So I would watch Clarkson for Clarkson,

even if there hadn't been cars involved.

And so really it was watching original top gear,

the segments in particular with Clarkson

that really helped get me more and more into cars.

And he also, from the early days,

like telling you how to tell stories about cars

in a way that isn't dull.

Did you become sort of more interested

in how something was written

and kind of dissect the stuff he was doing

rather than just kind of laughing at the thing itself?

No, not at that point.

I just thought Tor, odd looking man

with like curly hair, very funny.

Just the way he says things, very funny.

Did you think I wanna do that one though?

Later on in life, but not when I was watching it back then.

No, I wasn't thinking that.

Did you get, if we just make a jump

for a second before I come back,

did you get a moment when you got into,

so at the beginning when you were at Dennis Publishing,

your first channel grew over to like 800,000 subscribers

in my right before you even went.

About 600 or something carbide.

Something like that.

Did you get like your first video

that you can think back to that you thought,

I'm doing it, this is it.

This is like top gear.

Like did you get that pinch me moment?

No, because it's probably shouldn't say this.

You go online and look at something like

auto express, HID gas discharge bulbs.

It's my first video that I ever filmed.

Now anyone who thinks I'm not gonna be able to ever do this,

go and watch that video

because you will see the worst presenting in your life.

And I'm not joking, not joking.

It's so bad.

I actually don't think that I was

a particularly good presenter when I was,

especially when I was watching like people like Chris Harris

and Henry Cachpal and stuff like that.

I think they're just much better presenters.

And I was really, I really had to work

and try until I didn't give a shit.

And then just easy.

So what made you stop giving a shit?

Over exposure.

So I stopped over analyzing it

by just doing it over and over and over again.

Just over and over and over again.

And I was so used to doing it that now I can do it.

Have you ever read anything

like the don't give a fuck kind of ethos, the mentality?

As soon as you stop giving a fuck,

it's when the fuck comes around.

Probably, but like with all the kind of like

those self-help kind of books,

you read them and think that's a great idea.

Then you forget about them.

It's funny, that video, you want to hate it,

but a small part of you I know doesn't

because it was the video that sparked

what you do now, which you clearly love.

So like what made you stood there

presenting a video about light bulbs?

How'd you go from accountant hiding in a drawer

to light bulb changing on car video?

Okay, we should probably need to explain

the account hiding in a drawer

because it almost sounds like a metaphor.

Like I'm just an accountant hiding in a drawer.

I don't want anyone to see me.

No, what actually happened?

Shall I explain it?

Okay, so I used to work for one of the big accounts

he finds at PricewaterhouseCoopers

and we do these really long late night

group consolidation audits.

So I'm like 24, we're locked in a room.

We're checking facts and figures

about these companies till like 2 a.m. in the morning.

It's insane graft, right?

Anyhow, there's people,

a couple of other people my age as well,

so you end up having a bit of a laugh with them.

We're so bored, we're waiting for some documents

to come over from the States.

We decided to play hide and seek

in this rabbit warren of a building

which was the company's headquarters.

Anyhow, I go into the FD's office

and lock myself in there in a cupboard

waiting for my mates to come on and try and find me.

The FD comes back because he's forgotten something,

opens his cupboard and there's the accountant

like in there hiding.

And so I just looked at me and I said,

we leave no stone unturned and walked off.

Now he found that really funny and kind of let me off.

But I was reported to my senior manager.

But the guy, I think the guy said,

yeah, I thought it was for Don't Fire Him.

And so I think I've done quite a few things

and got away with them like that.

But that's the story of why I was hiding

in a drawer cupboard.

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So then how did that transpire to be stood in front

of a camera poorly presenting light bulbs?

Okay, so before then,

so basically I'm being a motoring journal.

I'm being a child accountant and it pays well.

So it pays well and I get a job here in London

which is quite a decent amount of money

from someone coming from Warsaw.

My parents are dead pleased.

But I've got a mate at PWC who's Mrs.

works on a local evening newspaper.

And she's the only person I've ever spoken to

in my entire life who talked about her job

with any form of passion.

And I just thought, this sounds so cool.

You know, you're going off like interviewing people,

finding out about them, hearing them tell their stories

then you get to tell their story to everyone else.

I wanna do that.

So I decided at the age of about,

I just qualified as an accountant.

So I'm a qualified child accountant.

And I thought, sod it,

I'm now gonna do a journalism course

and did a journalism course,

qualified in that within,

I think I did a fast track for like half a year.

Got NCTG qualification.

I can do 100, well,

I could do 100 words a minute shorthand.

So then I got a job on a local evening newspaper

for about a fifth of what this job offer was in London

and my parents are just like.

What are you doing?

My dad more so who got his friend

to like talk to me about it.

My mum less so because my mum probably figured out

that he's probably gonna do better

at something that he likes.

Did your mum and dad love what they did?

So they're both teachers.

My dad actually wanted to,

my dad wanted to be an actor.

So he was super bright.

He like got, he was in like two or three years

above his age group at school,

which actually probably went against him in the long run.

But back in those days,

you had to pay for your apprenticeship

and his dad, who was a doctor died

and then his family was skinned after that.

So he couldn't afford to the apprenticeship.

So he went and became a teacher,

but he's also, he was brilliant at maths,

but also brilliant at sports.

So you like play County tennis and,

and so he became a PE teacher

and then a maths teacher

and then a deputy head doing the school finances.

So he was kind of, I think he might have,

in some ways you could say,

his skills weren't fully utilised in some ways,

but he inspired some boys to go on to do

the same kind of job as him, be teachers,

be PE teachers and some going

and working actual sport and stuff.

So, you know.

But I can't believe it was 24

before you were almost captivated by a story

of like somebody else saying to you

like your mates misses to think,

I can actually go and do something

that I'm really passionate about.

I'm willing to drag Jack all this in to do it.

It's kind of like a Eureka moment.

Yeah.

Because then you're exposed.

OK, so normal people can do these jobs.

I never really thought about it.

And if I'm brutally honest with you,

I didn't read.

I couldn't read.

I couldn't sit still to read.

I was in like a specialist.

Which is quite funny.

So I've been talking about my new book here,

Autobiography, an A to Z car.

So I talked through all the car manufacturers

from A to Z.

Finding Z was quite interesting.

And you'll see how I did it in this book

if you buy it, which you can do.

Now you can pre-order it on Amazon.

OK, there's a link probably in the description maybe.

There is, but people might be watching this

after it's actually out.

So you might not have to pre-order it.

Oh, yeah, so yeah, so it will be available on Amazon.

Go check it out.

I mean, I'm so proud of it.

I've always wanted to write a book and here we are.

And I hope you enjoy it.

I think you will.

I'm heart and soul into it.

And yeah, and he clearly wants you to buy it

because he spent an hour and a half

in the back of my van just to talk about it.

I used to be so I used to be in the in the like the

like very bad like me and a couple of other kids

will be taken out of our mass class to be taught like reading

because you can really read that bad.

Yeah, but it's so funny.

Like some people are either really good with numbers

or really good with English words.

And some of them like myself are just useless with all of it.

And just have to sit here talking all day long.

So I think I'm actually I'd rather be a specialist

but I think I can do everything but only to a certain level.

So an example of that is like in the end,

I ended up getting an A at GCSE English lit and language.

But one of the language,

now the lit might have had a bit of cheating involved.

So I found a cheeky way around it.

Probably wasn't the right thing to do,

but that was, you know,

I'd always find a way of making things work.

Then I was good at maths and science.

But then when I went to university

and I studied chemistry at university,

I realized then that I ain't going to be anything

in science when you see people

who are actually good at stuff.

You know, when you see people who are good at,

like you think you've got a talent for something,

then you see someone who's actually good at it.

I don't know, do you play golf or anything like that?

Fishing.

As you know.

Yeah, okay.

So fishing, how do you be good at fishing?

Isn't it just luck?

Hey, look, you're talking to a man

that wanted to record this at my lake.

So you're hiding something in here.

No, I'm not.

I'm no good at fishing.

Because you have to be patient for fishing.

You don't seem to me to be someone that's patient.

How can you fish?

You are?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm very patient.

You have to keep this bit in.

Because the thing goes, I think when we're watching,

when people watch this,

what I like about it is it's not just one way,

like you learn about you as well.

I can't stand in a queue at all.

If there's a queue, I can't do it.

It will absolutely kill me.

But if I'm using patience as a superpower

to calm my mind to make a better judge decision

on something that will then get me further quicker,

I'd be fine with that.

Okay, so that's different.

You're not patient.

You're actually not patient.

You are someone that is kind of doing mindfulness

through fishing.

Yeah.

That's someone who's driven.

And a journalist has just picked me apart for.

So again, how though,

does all that transpire to you be stood in front

of a camera presenting with that light bulb video?

It's like a fit.

Okay, so I'm working on the local even newspaper.

Job comes up on Autexpress magazine.

I love cars.

I'm the person within my friendship circle

and family that will come to for the car advice.

So I'm the one that researches cars

and finds out about them.

Not necessarily like reading magazines so much,

but we're like watching this like top gear

and just chatting to people who are into cars

or have cars to find out about them

to then pass on that information.

And then I get a job on a car magazine

which is fricking brilliant, right?

So now I can get access to cars.

Only I didn't get access to cars

because the job that I got on the car magazine

was the stuff, it was a section called Watchdog,

which is you'd have like people would write

into the magazine who had had problems with their car

and then I'd help get compensation from manufacturers.

So I'd help negotiate their case.

Now, the reason I was quite good at that one

because of the Wasp analogy again, I wouldn't go away.

But secondly, because as part of my accountancy degree,

I used to audit big car dealership groups.

I understood how they were worked

in their profit margins and stuff like that.

I also used to, I did business law.

So I understand like contract law.

So I came from a place of being able to negotiate

from like a legal point of view

and a business point of view.

So I was really quite good at this.

And then I sort of got pigeonholed into,

because I was good at this and it was a job

you join a car magazine, you don't want to be doing that job.

You want to be in the cars, right?

So to fill that job's hard.

So I was kept in that role.

I was actually told by my editor, he was similar to me.

He worked on national newspaper

and he wasn't necessarily slagging me off

or putting me down.

I remember him saying, Matt,

you know, we're not really made for reviewing cars, are we?

This is more of our thing.

You know, the investigations, that kind of stuff.

I mean, he used to get stuff

in the national newspapers and go on TV.

We like my investigations.

And obviously he didn't want to lose that role

from the magazine.

But you know, you're always stuck with me.

You're not the kind of person who can review cars.

It's like, well, let's find out about that.

And so what happened was, on my magazine,

it wasn't really possible.

I faced in sort of fit, really,

for the car reviewing side.

But I had a girlfriend who worked on Maxime magazine.

Maxime had a car section.

So I made friends with the editor of Maxime,

who was a bit more kind.

I was a bit more like, he was more my kind of person

than I'd say that my car magazine editor was.

So I kind of got on with him.

He gave me the Maxime car pages.

So I'd then get car stream Maxime.

So I'd start like reviewing cars for Maxime

rather than auto express.

And obviously the rich for Maxime was bigger.

And then Maxime got a video camera

to record their cover shoots with the girls

when they were like doing their cover shoots.

And this is then like the late 19s at that point?

This is, no, no, no, no, no.

Please, Ben.

You went all high-pitched then.

Goodness.

How very dare you know.

This was like mid-naughties, OK?

Right, so mid-naughties.

And so they'd enter these shoots once a month.

So this camera and the camera operator,

which they'd hired, would have nothing to do

for the rest of the month.

And so they thought, why don't we film cars?

Now, a lot of the car journalists

didn't want to mess around with filming stuff.

That's just showing off.

We want to give our,

we want to write our opinion on these cars.

Yeah, and I was like, I'll do it, you know.

I'll get access to some more cars.

I'll get to drive some more cars.

Plus, you know, like I said,

I quite fancied being an actor when I was a kid.

I used to be in school plays

and local Amdran kind of stuff.

So I didn't mind showing off a bit.

And so I did it.

And that video was the first thing that I did.

It wasn't a review of a car,

but it was the first thing that I did

through Express.

And then after that, I did more and more and more

because people didn't want to do it.

And the truth is there was a lot of the journalists

who didn't want to do it.

Whereas if you went and film,

if you look at their videos

compared to my early ones,

they were better than me.

It's weird that, isn't it?

Because even I know the kind of journalists

you're actually referring to,

because they're the kind of journalists

that are very, very hard to get on something

like the podcast.

Because when they see this form of media,

they almost look at me as like this young age crypto,

probably selling a course somewhere,

trippin' a,

that's doing a podcast to help

vlog their courses or something.

And I think they've all got that like tinted glass.

What's he doing with making these videos?

Like I don't understand it

because it's not like writing or proper.

I'm talking about maybe the days of E.Coty

and stuff like that.

I struggle to sometimes get those chaps

to like come and give me their time in the seat.

And it's only when you kind of prove

who you've had on and kind of worked through

that you were in the respect to be like,

oh, actually, I think this is something,

like this is actually a proper thing.

But that's kind of the pushback I find.

It sounds like there's almost like a similar thing.

Those guys just looked at the camera

and looked at sort of new age stuff

as that's not proper motoring journalism.

That's back then.

Back then.

I mean,

so others did like, for instance,

I'm not talking about like Henry Catchwell was like later.

I love Henry.

Yeah.

I met him at Caffeine Machine.

He's fabulous.

Yeah.

So he's, he's late.

I'm talking, he was like, when was it?

I think it was 2007,

my first video, 2008, something like that.

And so he'd have been super junior then anyway,

but it was more like the older guys weren't so interested in it.

And no one knew where it was going to go.

No one knew what was going to happen with YouTube.

I mean, you could say with hindsight,

well, it was pretty blooming obvious,

but it's like, like you just mentioned crypto.

It's like we crypto, you know,

who knew that it was going to be where it is today?

And like in the future,

we don't know where it's going to be either.

When did you start to know about YouTube though?

Obviously it launched in 2006.

You grew that first channel

to 600,000 subscribers that you built.

When did you start to really get it though?

In that perspective?

So I knew it was an opportunity.

Now, before I really, really got into like the YouTube thing,

YouTube was more just a place of where we'd like,

just upload the videos as well.

I actually did this digital magazine called iMotor.

So it was, it was based on like Flash

and you know what Flash is, yeah?

Okay.

Okay, so it's like a, some form of HTML, right?

And it's like, it's like page turning kind of thing

on your computer screen.

So you're using your mouse to turn the pages

and you could interact with bits of it.

And part of it was a video player.

So you'd have a video player

and that's when I really started getting to producing

the videos and trying to do them slightly different

than a normal review.

Anyway, we launched that and it was funded by ads

and we launched it just as like the 2008

global economic crisis hit.

So no one was spending money on ads.

So it actually had quite a good reach,

like 150,000 people to open it, an issue,

which was pretty decent.

So, and we saw how many people watched the videos

and how much interacted with like the written content,

which was really quite short,

but we'd have like games in there.

I did certain Flash games,

which actually got picked up by blogs

and got like shared all around the world

with like millions of views.

It was like kind of crazy.

I don't know if I can say this one.

Remember when Jeremy Clarkson did this whole thing

about truckers and prostitutes?

Yes.

We did a game which was like a side scroller

where you had Jeremy Clarkson in like a truck

and he had to like dodge, I think dodge the,

you were in a truck, you had to dodge the police

and like run over the,

I don't know, it was something really dodgy anyway.

It's basically GTA in your car.

It's kind of, yeah, but really poorly done,

but he got shared on loads of the blogs and stuff.

So, it did decent numbers,

but that's when I really got into doing the videos

properly and trying to find and do them in a way

that was more engaging than probably how

a standard written review in a weekly car magazine

would have been structured.

And did you have a video though

that you uploaded to YouTube

that was like one of your,

Christ, what the hell's happened to that?

When you opened it up.

It wasn't like that then.

It wasn't quite like that then.

Now, I didn't have access to the cars

that people like Steve Sutcliffe, Chris Harris would have.

Those are the ones where they really went mental

because no one else back in those days

could get access to these cars.

But it's different now.

I mean, they had the weight of the magazine behind them

and they were known personalities on the magazine.

Now, I wasn't.

And so, I got some of the scraps

and so, you didn't really get the,

like, you know, I wouldn't be in the Ferraris

and stuff like that.

I might, if I'm lucky, get an M car.

I actually then, once that thing went bust,

I'd set a car buyer, videos,

all the videos for car buyers.

So, it was basically a rip off of what car in a way.

And we decided to have like videos,

a core part of its content strategy.

And I set up what the videos are like

and how they're delivered.

And I just basically was just consumer related reviews

but didn't in a way.

And I still use this format in a way

where I'm just your car expert, mate.

And I'm going to talk around the car

and we'll have some fun while doing it.

It's not going to be stuffy.

It's not going to be like pulling teeth,

trying to do your research on this car.

I'm going to try and make it easier and fun for you.

My girlfriend can't get in and out of a car

with a water bottle without mentioning your name.

Yeah.

So, just going to do the math,

what's the distance to the side door, whatever.

But that's obviously transpires

because it comes across to people.

Do you know where that comes from?

No.

Okay.

So, the water bottle test,

which some people think is stupid,

but I think it actually came from a BMW,

the original X3 or the second generation X3 launch

when they said they redesigned the door bins on it

so that it could fit a one liter bottle

after a focus group.

And then I thought, that's absolutely right.

The old car was real pain whereas this is...

And so I thought that's important to people.

And so I thought, I gathered a lot of this kind of information

that I thought from various sources

would be important to consumers,

what they're going to want to know about

when they're doing their research on which car to buy.

And this isn't car fans,

it's normal people buying cars.

Okay, so that's where it comes from.

And I knew that we'd kind of,

we had a bit of reach when I was on the train somewhere

and some guy who was actually on a placement from China

came over and just put a water bottle on the table

and goes, you'll be needing that to check out the door bins

and then just walked off.

I was like, oh.

But after you had success with things like the water bottle

and people recognizing it

and clearly the things that you were doing in videos

and your strategy behind them worked,

would you then start to get more and more access

to those other cars and those other brands?

Yeah, so basically you get more reach,

you get more access,

but it's not strictly the case though because...

Depends if someone likes you or not.

Yes.

Well, all likes the way that you do content.

Which master doesn't.

Which master didn't know.

And I can understand their point of view.

Because you compared their car to a shitting cat.

To a shitting cat having a...

So it's this master three, right?

And by this point I'd realized that you had to have a

like a hook at the beginning of your video, right?

I mean, this sounds like basic stuff now, you know, but...

Everyone's like Delvin that do YouTube into car

videos and like, how the hell do they do the start

at the middle of the end?

How's it doing?

You're just like, well, we need a hook.

Yeah, but it's what it was like early on.

We didn't really think about this

because you were coming at it almost like a written journalist.

And so it's more about a worthy title rather than a hook.

And I kind of learned all this on the go.

Like, if we go back to like early videos

of being told, don't do this, don't do that.

And like someone telling me who's more senior than me

that you shouldn't do lies.

You shouldn't do lies.

It's not on brand.

It's not quite right.

And someone, they go, look at their video.

You should have done it like their video.

And then me going back to that person going,

I've got five times the views.

What's the game here?

What are we trying to achieve?

Are we trying to say things in a certain way?

Or are we trying to get as many people

to watch our video as possible?

Within reason, obviously.

We're not going to set fire to the car

to get clicks, right?

But that learning different things

that will get people watching the video for longer,

figuring out this whole balance between watch time

and thumbnail and title.

Figuring all that kind of stuff.

Hook at the beginning of the video to like hook people in.

And looking through like, we didn't even,

I don't think we had the view through graph

at the very beginning either.

Imagine not having your view through graph.

There's definitely none of the click-through rates

and reach graph.

It's just like, oh, this one seemed to do better than this.

It's like, these are your views.

But would that mean that you'd also learn

that sometimes you'd have to actually overstep the mark

to kind of learn from it a little bit?

I learned, I knew that if there's two things, right?

One is getting people to expect the unexpected.

So we're trying to do things that,

okay, I know it's going to review a car in a certain way,

but I don't quite know what he's going to say

or how he's going to say or how he's going to like

compare this car to another car.

But I'm still going to get all my information

about this car.

And then there's the other thing of like, yeah,

are you trying to piss people off?

No.

I don't think I'm necessarily like someone

who's trying to be controversial.

I think it's more, the other thing that,

that first thing that I said is what's important.

The second thing is you want to have fun

when you're doing it.

So it's got to be fun.

So it comes back to I'm your car expert mate

and I talk around this car and we're going to have fun.

So it's just like I'm showing you around the car,

I say things that I would say to my friend.

Now a lot of people probably or motoring journalists,

they wouldn't think of the things to say that I might say

or they just wouldn't say it

because it's a bit too silly or crass.

And I was willing to say that stuff

and let it go in the video.

Even from an early, early stage,

I would let my fluffs or cockups or errors

or stupid things go in

because it would make me more relatable.

See, that's all right

when you've got your own business

and you're in charge of your own destiny.

So for most people,

most people's train of thought

is that's fine if it's my thing

because who's going to take it off me?

But at this point,

you are fully employed by the companies.

So I'm fully employed by Dennis Publishing

that's a little bit like not sure about it.

So, and then what happens is car work comes along.

So my mate, you probably know him,

James Bagger, car dealer.

He met James Hinders, the founder of car work at an event.

James Hinders saying to Bagger, listen,

we need to, we really wanted to do video.

James suggested me, I had a meeting with James Hind.

And he was, because it was a startup,

you know, willing to take risks.

This is back in 2016.

2016, bang on 2016, willing to take risks.

What can we do that's different?

How can we make a name for ourselves?

So I'm here going, listen,

I've got this idea of how we could really escalate

our content.

I don't feel like I've got the freedom to do this.

And we're not talking like really obtuse,

like crazy stuff.

It's just a little bit more freedom.

And also another thing was focus.

So still at Dennis Publishing,

the videos were a secondary or third thing.

You know, what's more important is getting the magazine out.

They're in the web stuff.

And then videos like this afterthought.

So it doesn't have much prominence.

And I can completely understand that for that point in time

because when you look at the income,

like the under revenue stuff,

it doesn't make any financial sense.

So it takes a really strategic person

and with it aligning with that overall strategic vision

to be able to go, let's invest in this.

Because you could argue that someone like Evo

could have had this whole thing wrapped up ages ago

because they were pulling in big numbers,

had access to cars, same with auto car,

auto car more so, drop the ball.

But when you look at it from a financial point of view

and what their, how their businesses were monetized,

they actually made the right decision

at that point in time.

So funny you talking about having access to cars

because it's like along this timeline,

I try to do these podcasts and envision it

as like a timeline.

You're sort of working so hard

to gain access to these cars.

Like you'd be happy with an M car

where some are getting into the Ferrari stuff.

And now on the drag races,

what we see is actual private individuals cars

going up the runway a lot of the time.

It's kind of funny how that's sort of spun on its head

that now the thing that the access of cars go to

is actually you'd rather have a public members car

than a brands car.

It depends.

Okay, so we're jumping forward quite a bit

but we'll take the cars where we can get them.

Depending on what we're doing,

if it's like a tuned car drag race,

then we definitely need Pontus cars.

If it's a Ferrari needs to be a Pontus car

because Ferrari will not lend me cars.

Just won't.

Used to, but won't.

But fortunately we have all sorts of demographics

watching us.

So, and they will lend us their cars.

It's easier getting cars from a manufacturer

but over time their fleets have shrunk

and he asked for their fleets as grown

and grown and grown.

If you think of it from a car manufacturer's point of view,

in the past they'd probably have to deal with 15 titles.

You'd have your major magazines and some newspapers.

Now, it's so many different people,

so many different media, so many different platforms

and their budgets are shrinking as well.

It's honestly, the guys in the PR departments

work their asses off, it's really tough.

And also, they're next on the line when they lend you a car,

you know, you have some idiot like me says something

and they will get, they can get into serious trouble

if we say the wrong thing.

Which is mad when a lot of the people

that do the best in what we do almost have that

don't give a fuck kind of attitude alongside as well.

Yeah, because people want to watch the truth, right?

They want it to come from someone

that's telling them the truth

or what they think is the truth.

Sometimes people escalate stuff,

so there's various online creators

who will escalate stuff or try and find a problem

where there's not one.

I don't do that.

It would more be along the lines of

if something would annoy me, I'll point it out

and I might take the piss out of it.

Like I'd take the piss out to you,

but I'm not overly sensationalising something.

Had you had the idea in that 2016,

here's my, if I could just do everything I wanted to,

brief, was drag racing part of that?

So the reason behind drag racing

is because I wasn't a good enough driver

to do track battles.

So when I was at Dennis Publishing,

we would have like a racing driver on the magazine.

You'd have an auto car.

You'd have Steve Sutcliffe on Evo.

You'd have Dickie Meadon or someone like that.

They've got Randy in the states.

Yeah, Randy.

So these guys, right, they can get in a car

and they can put in a lap time within a couple of tents, right?

So how can I, as someone who,

my own lap time in a single car,

I'm not terrible, right?

But my own lap time can vary by,

and we're not talking about tires

affecting it or heat soak or anything like that.

My own lap time would be seconds,

depending on if I've nailed it or not, right?

And so how can I analyze a car

and give a verdict based on a lap time?

How can I do that?

I can't.

And so what I can do though,

is accelerate in a straight line, right?

Like most people can.

Now the beauty of it, though, is the-

It's actually harder than your thing

to go at the right time,

sometimes with that kind of thing.

So actually, but through practice,

you can do that quite easily.

So we can time it.

Because when we drag race,

we're trying to get the cars to leave it

exactly the same time.

So the viewer sees a fair representation

of how the cars perform side by side.

Now, one of the things about the drag races,

which is quite interesting,

is that within the motoring journalist world,

they thought drag racing was a bit dirty.

Drag racing doesn't show off the handling of the car.

And the motoring journalists would prefer a track battle.

And you could almost say that I personally,

as a car geek, in some ways, preferred a track battle.

But visually, it's not as interesting

because you have one car go around a track on its own,

gives a time,

and you have another car go around the track on its own,

gives another time.

In a drag race, you have them running side by side,

so it's a competition sport in a way.

So they're racing side by side,

so it's quicker, it's snappier.

And once again, it's probably more relatable as well

because you've got a bunch of, like, real hardcore,

like, car fanatics will watch,

would rather watch a track battle.

But a wider audience would rather watch a drag race

because anyone can say to their mate,

Mark, car's faster than yours,

or they can find out which car is the fastest

in a straight line.

And anyone can do it, you put your foot down and go.

Even up to a Bugatti-Sherron owner versus a Formula One car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

Which must be a bit of a challenge occasionally

because if you've got 10 people sat across the line,

like, we all have these things that we don't really

always think about just watching the videos, et cetera.

But the things that properly do,

I'd imagine, get on your nerves now and then.

For me, I find dealing with people or multiple people

can be a challenge.

If you've got a day of shooting,

God knows how many drag races.

I'm imagining that it's not always

every take makes the video that you're going up the runway.

So we tend to show everything

because we've moved away from in the early days,

it would try to be like, this is the best things

that we could show and this is how the,

when the cars performed at their best.

But then, obviously, YouTube likes to long a watch time

or more people are watching on TV.

So you've got to give them more of an experience.

And now we're showing it warts and all.

So this is the story of the drag race

and how it all worked.

As much as you've had manufacturers

that have not wanted to give you their cars anymore

for various reasons,

have you had individuals that have come and done

the drag race that didn't want the video

to go out afterwards?

Not really.

It's pretty decent on that.

Yeah, I mean, there's been a couple of that

haven't been so sure of,

he weren't so sure after it went out go on.

I was so happy about this.

But no one has said, I want you to take it down.

No one has had any real problems.

And they're there on the day.

What we find is, is that sometimes people

want to drive their own cars, which is fair enough, right?

And we'll probably let them have a go.

And if they're good enough,

they can keep on having to go.

But if they're not, and they can't quite launch,

it's like, mate, listen,

do you really want your car to not perform as well?

Maybe we'll put racing drivers,

Salmoneer or one of our guys to just launch it.

But we're happy for people to drive their own cars.

If A, they're insured and B,

they can show them off in their best light.

And how many are you recording on a single day?

Well, it can depend from one to,

I think we did eight once.

Eight drag races in a day.

And some of them were with like eight cars

in the same drag race as well.

No, so you can figure it out.

The more cars you add, the more variable,

the more that can go wrong, the more false starts,

more problems with the cars won't go into launch,

more problems with, oh, this one's got a punch in now.

You know, all the kind of stuff that can happen.

How many drag races are you like filming in a month?

How many days do you head to that track?

So we try to do two, two a week.

That's the aim.

At one stage, we're doing a total of,

I think seven videos a week,

but we did daily videos for maybe a month once.

And then we'd probably do five or six,

but the videos were shorter.

So YouTube was working differently then.

Like in 2016, 2017, we were told by YouTube,

it's all about regular uploads.

Upload every day, upload every day

because they wanted to pump their platform for the content.

So they're telling all the content creators to do that

because there weren't so many content creators.

Now there's a lot more content creators.

They've got too many content creators.

And that's why the algorithm changed from,

you know, if you subscribed, if you had subscribers,

it would be pushed to all your subscribers.

Now it's not like that.

It's all driven through the home feed, isn't it?

Do you remember though,

when you started to upload those videos?

Yeah.

The first time you're like, I got this plan right.

What I said to them, this goal,

this vision I had for what I wanted to do

with the Carwell channel, this is going to work this.

Would you ever have those moments?

Would you just kind of roll with it?

Yeah.

Do you have those moments?

Definitely.

Okay, so I don't, I'm crap at that.

I'm crap at celebrating success.

I move on to the next one and the next one.

So it's done, like 10 million.

It's just a number.

Does that look as someone else has got more out there?

So you may as well just go and chase the next one.

Are you actively chasing the next number

or is that number just a thing on the journey to where you're going?

The only thing that you chase is the next video upload.

How's that doing?

And that, I mean, YouTube was so smart

with their ranking from, if you don't do YouTube yourself,

you have this ranking where it shows

how your videos performed to your last 10

and that basically feeds on your dopamine cycle, right?

And it just hooks you in

and so you're watching it, monitoring it.

But usually you can tell,

unless you package a video wrong

with the title and thumbnail,

you can tell where it's going to come out in the long term.

And so even though you know

that you'll still keep going back to check the numbers,

but it's quite funny how it does just,

and they've got loads of people hooked.

How often are you on your studio app a day?

Too much.

And in a way that it does, I'm not learning from it.

And like, I don't, I'm not necessarily learning.

It's almost like vaping.

You just open your app because you need to see it again.

Yeah, so yeah.

I don't know if you all like that.

Are you like that?

Yeah, very much so.

And it's not, you don't feel satisfied.

It's a bit like, it's a bit like doing scrolling TikTok.

You get this, you've got the same kind

of hollow feeling after doing it.

Which is mad because also you're uploading

not just on the Carwell channel, it gets onto it.

You've got over a million subscribers

on your Matt Watson channel as well.

And have to find time to create the content

and regularly upload on that as well.

We'll get on to time.

I've got four year old daughter as well, yeah.

Which is insane to be able to fit all of the stuff that in.

A lot of people on the outside world

will see that as an insane challenge.

So like, what is your driving force

behind that much stuff?

Dope and mean loop.

The YouTube.

That sounds awful, but it probably is.

If you like really go base down

into what is driving it, it's probably there.

When did you start your Matt Watson channel?

Ages and ages ago, I just uploaded some stuff.

So was that pre-Carwell?

Yeah, yeah.

Was it motoring along pre-Carwell?

No.

Okay.

Because I didn't do it enough.

And it didn't really have a strategy for it.

Whereas it sort of does now.

Hence the chimney there.

I was going to say because was the strategy

behind it in the early days,

not to think the relationship with you and Carl

because you're owner of Carwell now,

one of the shareholders.

You've got shares in Carwell.

So I've got shares in Carwell.

So let's make this clear in cases like some videos

or something that come out later.

Whether I'm an owner.

I was going to question this in another way,

but where are you now?

So Carwell, right, is a car changing platform, right?

It's a marketplace where people can go and sell

their current car and buy their next car,

or lease their car.

You can do all your car changing through Carwell,

be it a new car or a used car, right?

And you can find out all the information

you need to know about cars, check different offers,

sell your new car through it and buy or lease

your next new or used car.

The YouTube side is like a big part of it as well.

It generates income and it also is great marketing.

Yeah, it's literally marketing that's paying for itself.

Yeah, and then some.

And you know, it's kind of like my baby.

I've been in it from the beginning, me and Jack.

Hello, Jack.

If you're watching,

probably won't be probably editing a video,

but yeah, so we're, you know, it's like,

been doing it for so long, it's like my baby.

Are you doing 50 to 70 million views a month?

It's a significant baby.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot more people involved in it now

than like the early days,

but we, you know, we started it,

came with the concept and...

So I'm guessing it was a collective,

like you should have a part of this.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also hook you in, right?

Because you don't want,

it doesn't make sense to invest all this money

into the channel and then I just bugger off.

I mean, I have no plans to bugger off.

And I'm guessing because from an outsider

that say a casual view,

because on YouTube it's almost like rings,

you have like viewers that watch every single video,

then you have your casual video viewers

and then you almost have these sort of

more semi-casual viewers

and then you have new viewers that come in.

But those kind of casual rings,

I could imagine they would potentially think like,

why doesn't he just upload all of this

on one channel?

Like everything on Carwell versus,

like what to put on Matt Watson versus what to put on Carwell.

But I've now started to realise with your content

that a lot more of the stuff that you really

nerd out on and absolutely love goes on your channel.

Yeah, so it's more about the cars that I own.

So like my old Porsche, my old Mazda,

my old bit one, two, six.

I knew you were going to list out those cars

before saying a 992 GT3 RS,

which is now a 911 ST.

911 ST.

Because it was the 3 RS, which was in your big video

with all the cars in the background,

but now it's 911 ST.

And I knew you were going to read out

all those other cars first.

Why?

Because you wouldn't start with the biggest thing

in the most shiniest object first to read out.

So this is the weird thing about me that

the best car that I have or have ever owned

is the 911 ST.

In fact, I'd get to drive loads and loads of cars

and if you just said you can have any car in the world,

you can't sell it and all maintenance

and everything is free.

Which car would you have 911 ST

would potentially be in there?

Just because of how it is to drive.

I'd say if you've got to have it,

got to keep it, can never sell it.

And it's just about how it makes me feel

it would be the 911 ST.

I've driven loads and loads of hypercars

and no, it would be that.

What was your first super car purchase?

GT3 RS.

Is that even a super car?

There's a debate on that.

Was it a significant car to you

to make it feel like a super car?

I'd say it's a super car.

No, because I don't think I had that.

When I was a kid, right?

I liked Porsches at first,

but then I liked Ferraris.

308 GTS, I'd have loved one of those

or 355, 355 Berlinetta.

I still want one now.

So Ferrari would be like a super car.

But did I want a super car?

I was more into driving.

I went through a phase

where I kind of went a little bit off cars

more into bikes.

And if I'm brutally honest,

bikes are more fun from what I can remember.

They're also a lot more dangerous

and a lot less practical.

So I came back after having a bike accident,

I came back to focus on cars,

but I was more, me and my mates, more bikes.

So they're just faster and more nimble?

There's something about a bike where,

have you ridden a bike?

No.

Don't ride a bike.

No, I've dealt with too many fatal accidents

on my road.

Okay, don't ride a bike

because it's like, don't take heroin.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Just don't do that

because you might have liked it too much.

You set your sense of speech.

You must get that with a lot of the cars

that you drive as well.

You always get these real set of speed.

It's the sense of freedom

and the way that to turn,

sorry, I'm just talking about it.

That's right.

Because I'm so passionate about bikes.

It's the way you drive a car

by pulling these levers and doing these things.

And you do, like certain cars,

you feel like they're part of you

or the way they rotate.

You know, you feel like you're dancing with them

in no way.

But the bike is, it's part of you.

It's almost like being able to run really,

really quickly.

You know those dreams that you've had

when you've been flying

or you've been able to run really fast.

I don't know if you've had that.

I don't take that much acid.

Okay.

And so, but it's like that.

You're just the freedom

and just the way you just, yeah.

It feels like another body part.

It feels part of your body.

It feels totally natural for free.

Is bike wow coming any time soon?

No, because I won't get back on a bike.

But yeah, because, yeah.

But as much as I can tell

that the kind of massive, significant moments

that mean a lot to others,

you kind of gloss over them

because it's all about the next thing,

the next video, the next everything.

What I'm trying to get at was,

was it quite cool for you to buy your first

like big car, like a GT3 RS?

Did you go like, wow, look at that?

Yeah.

It wasn't.

Tell me about it then.

So the problem is I was filming it at the time.

So when you're filming it, it takes the edge off

because I'm thinking about what's it looking like?

What's the story like?

Well, also trying to enjoy it.

So it does, because I'm thinking about filming

that you're getting bothered by a boss, aren't you?

No, it's fine, it's gone.

He's gone.

So it's probably not the same

as if I was just going to buy the car

without having to film it.

So filming it takes the edge off.

I think the specking was fun, was more fun.

The ST, interestingly, getting the covers off of that

because I'd already done the GT3 RS video.

It was basically the same format.

Didn't have to think about that.

So I got to enjoy the experience more.

But you've also got to remember I'm a very privileged person

that has, I worked for a magazine,

which you've got a lot of these YouTubers have come up

and they're trying to get cars from manufacturers

and stuff like that.

It's a real hard graph doing it off your own back.

I had the luxury of being part of a title

that was just given cars.

So I was used to being around these cars.

So it's different for someone else who's just,

you've worked really hard and now I'm buying my dream car

because I've driven the 3 RS many times,

quite a lot before, driven on track.

So it's not the first time I'm seeing this car.

It's not the first time I'm experiencing it.

So it's not quite the same.

Is it hard for you to get excited

about driving a car anymore?

No, and this can probably come back

to why I listed those other cars off first.

One, because I don't want to seem

like a bit of a noggin on 911 ST.

But also because those other cars give me pleasure

in a similar way.

Like that Jimny, right?

The Suzuki Jimny, I reviewed it.

Which we should probably talk about now,

55 minutes into the podcast,

the fact that there is a Jimny in the back of the shop.

Yeah, so I'm selling Jimny.

I did a video on about importing Jimny's.

I started importing cars from Japan

because I love Japanese cars.

I love Japanese culture.

I love the Japanese people.

And so I started, I just went over to Japan

to do some stuff for car work.

Went to an auction, bought a car, imported it back.

Then I thought that was a Honda S660,

always wanted one of those.

Didn't really get them in the UK, so I imported one back.

Then I got Toyota Century, which is Japan's only V12.

So I thought I want one of those.

And it sums up everything I like

about the Japanese, understated, supremely well built.

And so I imported one of those.

And I loved importing that as well.

And it's more, each of these cars

have a very special character to them.

So this has a character.

When I reviewed this car, I said,

a lot of people would be looking at that going,

I don't know what I could do with like a little SUV.

That looks like a mini G-Wagon that would be perfect

for my life.

But actually, no, you have to be a bit of a car fan

to like a Jimny.

Because there's a lot that shit about it

when you're driving on the road.

Constantly having to steer it.

The back seats are a bit cramped.

But it's got character.

And all the cars that I have have character.

Now, if you're interested in buying a Jimny,

you can check out my new car dealership.

So it's called Japanese Dream Machines.

It's JapaneseDreamMachines.co.uk.

And you can email me at info at JapaneseDreamMachines.co.uk.

Got loads of stock, go check it out.

Do you think that's the most important thing in a car?

Yeah, character.

So what you pulled in today,

what I had to follow you in

all the way down into where we are now

was an electric Chinese car.

It's a new JQ5, right?

So electric cars, electric cars,

I've got an electric car, I've got a Tesla Model 3.

Chinese electric cars, that car in particular,

would I buy one of those?

Not me, personally.

Would I recommend it to someone

who wants a good value for money car

who can do pretty much what they,

all they want for an insanely good price?

Yes, I would.

So there's two different elements.

There's Matt Watson, the car fan himself

who's buying cars for himself,

which is what my channel's all about.

And the shenanigans that I get up to,

like starting a Japanese car import business.

Does anyone ever tell you no?

What do you mean?

Because of like your time, like family, back home.

Matt, what are you doing now?

Ah, yeah, but I've got this.

Like you've got to hang yourself up

with loads of Jimneys in it,

and they're all for sale suddenly,

but you're also doing Carman,

you've got your own channel

and you've got this governor.

And by the way, it's Robert Burke.

Yeah, but I don't understand time very well.

Well, it's taken me a year to get you to say it.

I'm not very good at time.

So like...

But it doesn't stop you.

It doesn't stop.

So I don't understand how long

these things are going to take, right?

So even like meeting you here today,

I think a lot more is possible

in the space of time that I have

than there is in reality.

So I get myself into these situations

and then you have to sort of follow them through.

I mean, you've got a lot of things going on.

There's quite a few plates spinning, aren't there?

There is, but it just kind of happens

and just kind of do it.

And I'm the same thing like this morning,

I thought that, okay, my journey's X,

I need to get up, it'll take me 15 minutes

to leave the house.

It took me 35 minutes to leave the house.

It's like, it's so hard sometimes to manage time

when you have so much stuff going on

because the unexpected could happen.

You know, you need a poo.

It's one of those things.

So it's curt wings.

Yeah.

It's all that buffalo sauce,

but that is genuinely the stuff

that actually causes me to be late now

because time's down to such a finite thing

that the kind of unexpected that goes along the way.

With all of the stuff that you have to encompass

under a certain amount of time,

what is your biggest challenge

that you face in your day-to-day life?

It is that juggler time and where to prioritise it.

In some way, sometimes I can get distracted

with the things that aren't so important

and get hung up on stuff.

And this comes down to in some ways

why I can be good as a car reviewer

because I will spend an unnecessary amount of time

with that car that I've got there,

the JK5 driving it on various surfaces of road

to find out exactly what it's like

even though really the people that are gonna buy it

probably as long as it's not,

I just need to find out if it's shit or not.

And if it's not shit, I can just say it's not shit.

Whereas my motoring journey side wants to know

how it ranks compared to everything else I've ever reviewed

in terms of the driving dynamics.

Who's your great leveler?

Does anyone ever tell you, like, no

or makes you think about something?

I think they do but I don't hear it.

I don't know.

Sometimes I have to say no myself.

Other people, like when you ask for stuff

and they say no, then you, yeah.

My partner sometimes, you know.

When you talk about, like, me spinning plates, for example

because you see that stuff, I don't have a little one.

So has that been something that,

because if that was 2016 when car well started

and started to motor and take off,

would you say that that's been one of the hardest things

for you to balance is kind of, you know?

So I'm, if the timing was about right,

so if it had happened sooner,

I don't think I'd have been able

to put the same amount of energy in

you require in the initial push.

Like the amount of drive and work that went into

like the first five, six years of car work

was pretty insane.

And I'm still working hard now

but more comes to you now

just because the numbers, more opportunities come.

So the hunt for the opportunity,

I don't, we don't have to do it quite so much.

What was the hardest moment

that you've had to overcome in your career?

You ever thought, like,

shit, like Jesus, this week's been tough

or this month's been tough?

No, there's certain times where you over book

and you think, oh God, I just can't,

I don't know, I've taken on too much stuff.

You know, you wake up in the night

and you go, oh, I've got too much stuff going on here.

But you said at the start of the podcast

that you actually, through doing all the law stuff,

especially the early car magazine,

you got really good at learning to say no

and also going back to people like a wasp,

like going back to them.

I'm not so good at saying no,

but I'm kind of don't give up.

So that's the thing,

I can sometimes take on too much stuff,

but I am good at, like,

if I think something's worth doing,

I don't give up too easily.

So what was your driver behind doing this?

So someone actually contacted me

and I'm going, Matt, you should do a book.

And I was like, yeah, right, you're awesome.

Because there's one thing about doing,

so there's one thing about doing like videos and stuff.

You can't really, to show someone a video,

you have to go on your phone and go like that.

There's just something to,

it might be my generation as well,

to just have a book.

It's such a tactile thing.

Just a thing, like, no one can ever turn that off.

You know, that can never be,

that's always going to be there.

I've written a book.

I also really enjoyed writing it and like remembering,

like, so basically I'll go through.

Did you do a lot of the writing yourself?

Yeah.

So like, it's all like,

my take on different manufacturers and my experience

with different cars and manufacturers and so on and so forth.

So it's something you can like,

What's your favorite page?

Open it.

This is actually a dummy book

because it's only being printed now.

I caught him out.

What is my favorite,

do you know what my favorite?

Shit.

I know my favorite page actually.

It's the one where I dedicate it to my daughter.

So I said, this is from my amazing daughter, Grace.

I always thought it'd be cool to have a book dedicated to me

and now you do.

So I can go, look, that's for you and she likes cars.

That's the main thing.

We talk about those moments that I feel

for like most of the podcast,

hitting 10 million subscribers,

hitting a million subscribers,

number three kind of moments.

And you're just like, yeah.

No, it's not.

Sorry, that's really flippant me going,

yeah, well, it's more the fact of

when I sit down and look at it and go,

oh yeah, that's really incredible that we've done that,

that we've been able to achieve it.

But it's almost, because there's so much going on,

you don't have the time to sit and appreciate it.

What do you guys do when you hit 10 million subscribers?

Because there's a big team at Carwell.

It took a while, but the video team went and had a meal

and I, because I was off filming somewhere else, make it.

Do you find that quite pretty bad?

I feel really bad that we didn't have the time,

but then they're more like,

we will need more videos out, get out, you know.

It is just a really tough balance.

It's just, yeah.

I mean, this is one of the things I think,

as well, looking back at YouTube,

from how we started and how we structured the channel,

YouTube has changed and in hindsight,

I would structure it differently.

But that's YouTube.

We spend so much time talking about YouTube.

We've already mentioned the words Top Gear once.

Top Gear obviously become the grand tour.

And we know recently they've gone out

and taken on three new presenters

or a team of new presenters.

If the phone rang from Amazon,

they've got your book listed,

but to have you listed on their screen.

Check out Amazon.

Would you be saying, yeah, sure.

Well, I think you'd be mad not to.

And it's quite funny, like, have you read Chris Harris's book?

So he basically goes into how he,

he thought it was a poison chalice,

but he took it because you could not take it.

Because sometime you'd be led on your deathbed.

Yeah, and it has worked out for him.

You know, it's elevated him.

And it's also, yeah, you know, the experience to do it,

to do something different.

Because you'd always wonder with a phone call like that

or an opportunity like that,

what would happen if you didn't do it?

There is one thing that's different, though.

I would not give up.

I'd figure out, if you want me to do it,

how do we make it work alongside Carwow?

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Thank you.

Is that still a goal of yours

in the back of your head to do one of those?

I know you've done TV before,

but I'm talking about the Grand Tour Top Gear.

No, it's not.

But if I could, so I wouldn't go hunting it.

And I would run, this is part of the thing

of one thing I love about YouTube.

And yeah, I don't know in Carwow,

but you know, I've got full autonomy

of what goes on the channel.

Same in my own channel, right?

The control that you have, I'm not,

you know, especially on my own channel,

I'm not gonna ever fire myself.

You know, you don't have that.

You can decide, you make the calls.

You can decide whether you're pushing it too far or not.

You're not justifying it to anyone else.

You're making those decisions.

And I think that one of the problems that I would find,

and I did find it with TV,

there's two things that I found a problem.

One was the creative, not entirely,

I like creative control.

The second thing is the standing around.

I can't stand around.

And so I'd find it very hard

with all the camera setup and stuff like that.

Yeah, I could get over it,

but that whole standing around for the shot.

Because one of the things that's very different,

I think, for YouTube,

and yeah, strong production values

really, really do matter now,

more than ever, because people are watching TV.

But ultimately, I think YouTube still comes down

to the story as the king.

So be it the car or the narrative,

that is what matters.

As long as your audio's okay,

you can't have shit audio, can you?

Do you think you've recorded

your best ever video yet?

Do you know what, all these questions that you're asking me

are not kind of things that I really think about.

So do I think about,

have I recorded my next best ever video?

What is, what, define best?

So you've got to define the terms of best.

Something that you are very proud of

and that you go back in the same way

that you open that studio at multiple times

and that's the one that you click on to be like,

we did this.

No, but I, so there's not that.

I don't think I do that.

Do you not think that you've lined up a Formula One car

and have a gattie share on next to each other on a one way

and sent them down there multiple times?

So that was cool.

You can start a smile on your face

if that's not what I'm describing.

Turning up to that shoot

and seeing the Formula One car

and the whole team there and just thinking,

you know, last thing I was like reviewing Kea Picantos.

Here we are, look at this, this is amazing.

So yeah, sometimes we have that

but then you're into the shoot

and there was all the drama of that shoot.

I don't really want to go into the details of it now

as you can imagine, it wasn't all planes sailing.

Formula One car is pretty tricky.

You've got little windows of opportunity

of when it can run.

Then there's various things can happen on a runway

and things happen.

And so then you're into the battle.

I mean, I say my job quite a lot of the time

when you're filming,

it's a bit like an episode of The Apprentice, isn't it?

Do you know what I mean?

Like it's this challenge, kind of get this thing done.

And so you're not necessarily in the space of enjoying it.

Now when it comes out, it's great when the video flies.

So when that Formula One video flew

and you know, you know when you've got your usual kind of

that's doing well, that's doing well, you know,

like the day like it's spiked first day,

then it like tells off.

It's when it goes, it just keeps growing day after day after

then you know it's being spread out.

And that's the bit that your dopamine chases.

Yeah, and you're always chasing Doug in.

Passion, the bit that makes you passionate,

the bit that makes you want to do it again.

It's also the cars.

I'm passionate about the cars.

I really love finding out about these new cars

and going on these launch events,

but it's not just the performance cars.

It's also just normal, simple, everyday cars.

And you're still excited about the stuff coming out now.

Yeah.

You don't think the world's like cooked for

because a lot of my favorite stuff,

everybody talks about their favorites kind of era of cars

will say, my stuff is 2002 to 2020.

Like the stuff that was in there for me

because I love lightweight hardcore mid-engine supercars.

That's my thing.

And from 360 CS all the way through to 48 piste,

that's, that's my thing.

And I just can't get excited by like the 296 GTS 400.

Do you know, I'm with you in some ways,

but I wonder if you asked someone who like my dad's ages

was like, oh, one car's got a little bit too safe

and simple.

I preferred, you know, my 1960s, my 1970s cars.

I mean, for me, peak car is around mid-noughties

where easy enough to live with.

Don't break down lots of performance,

not too much intervention,

lots of feel with hydraulic power steering and stuff like that.

But now I'm being like a car geek, right?

I mean, that's got hydraulic power steering and it's shite.

The steering is shite, but it's good for off-road.

So do I, I think as a motoring journalist,

what has become tricky is a big part

of what we would analyze in the car was the powertrain.

So the engine and the gearbox and how they interact

with electric cars that's gone.

So this is one of the things that I find interesting

with like Rolls Royce.

I remember when Rolls Royce, they like announcing the spectre,

I was like, oh, the spectre's gonna be

the most perfect Rolls Royce

because it's gonna be even quieter

because it's got an electric motor.

It's like Chinese can do a very quiet,

very smooth, very powerful electric motor.

What they can't do is a V12.

What a coin can do.

They can't do that.

And it's like, what watch have you got on?

They just.

So there we go.

I mean, why?

Why it's got like cogs and springs

and all that nonsense in it.

You just like the mechanicals

and you appreciate the mechanicals of it

and the look of it as well.

And so that for me as a motoring journalist,

as a car guy, I miss that.

As someone who's reviewing cars,

well, it's just changed the parameter slightly.

So it's more like, what's the energy consumption like?

What's the charging rates?

What's the human car interface like?

There's an element which gave the variation

in the car that's gone.

I also think that people are becoming

less interesting cars because they are ultimately,

now you've taken away the engine and gearbox thing.

They're becoming a bit more just like consumer tech.

Does that worry you?

Having chairs and pushing something forward like car well?

No, cause people are gonna buy cars

and there's loads and loads of cars coming out.

So that people need advice.

In fact, in some ways because less people are into cars,

there's less people in a social circle

that know about cars that can get advice.

So where can they come car well?

Everybody's talking AI.

Every single conversation, every single podcast,

everything in it is AI, AI, AI, AI, AI.

Yeah.

You're at the forefront of testing

everything that's coming.

I've recently just been to LA

and I drove around in a Waymo.

Yeah.

And it was better.

It was better than taking an Uber.

It was a better experience.

We felt safer, it's cheaper.

It's gonna come to the UK.

It's probably gonna land here next year.

Do you think that will take away passion for cars?

Or do you think passion will live on

through your children being excited about cars

because of you?

Well, one of the things I think

is that as cars have got better and better,

less people have to work on them.

So less people have to know about cars.

And because less people have to know about cars,

less people are interested in cars.

So, you know, you find that if you have,

like I test all these cars,

and then when I, so I own cars,

don't need to own cars,

like mountain journalists don't own cars.

I own cars because I bond with them more.

I find out their personality, I clean them.

They, you know, I love them and they back.

But you know what I mean?

You spend time with them, you bond with them.

I think as cars have become,

like you don't even work on your cars yourself.

People don't even like change tyres or that.

People are less bonding with their cars.

So general people are less interested in cars as they were.

People are still interested in having nice stuff

and things that make their life easier

and things that say something about their status.

Do you think the big brands,

the big European brands, Mercedes, Audi,

do you think they're even tougher times

than what they've got now

because of the Chinese coming?

Hell yeah.

Do you think we're going to lose one or two of them?

I don't know about that.

But one thing, so that JQ5, right, is a good example.

Often when I drive these Chinese cars,

feel quite fit and finishing side is good.

Tech is generally pretty good.

They're a bit over cautious on the safety systems.

But where they don't quite get it is the steering,

the brakes and the throttle mapping.

They just haven't quite got that.

And it's like, and I think normal people can notice it

when they're backed about the cars

because you want a car to do exactly what you expect it to do.

That's an interesting point out there,

the back to back of the cars.

I just find that correct

because that's what people should do a lot more

as probably go dealer to dealer and just drive them.

It's hard to do.

And they rely on people like me

to be able to do that for them.

The thing is, they're fixing it pretty quick.

So that is much better than the JQ7.

And there's seven months between the cars

landing in the UK.

And then it's just going to come down.

People are less and less brand loyal.

So they're already sweet.

We see that in car work.

People living in a cross shopping all the time.

With these Chinese cars, they're less expensive.

They're sort of at the back.

They're really on it on battery and motor technology

on like the tech within the car,

build quality and design.

And now when they get that last piece,

the driving dynamics.

Are you still excited about the videos you'll make in five years?

Yeah, because there's one thing, there's one,

we don't know what's going to happen fully with like EVs

and two years ago, everything was going to be EV now.

It's like, oh, maybe, maybe.

Porsche there where they can make

and there's a sustainable fuel like, come on.

Or even, or even the, I mean, they're just, you know,

I mean, for my point of view,

get away, step away from like the environmental concerns

and stuff like you want a car that's right

for the task at hand.

Now, electric cars are right for very many tasks.

An electric car is low maintenance.

It's brilliant for short trips

because you're not heat cycling an engine.

As someone who's like got mechanical sympathy,

I hate going on short trips

in an internal combustion engine car

because I don't like the heat cycle, the engine, right?

This is one of the things,

like we drag race, like these people's cars

and people like, no, but no, people like send it.

I'm like, no, I'm like, no, we need to warm it up properly,

get some heat through it

and then I'll do a proper cool down.

I'm an absolute anorak about it.

Like, is your car running yet?

They're like, no.

And I'm like, no, I'm not running.

I've seen cars away because they haven't been running

because I don't want to damage them.

I'm an absolute, honestly, I can't help myself.

And that's on a day where you need

to film a drag race.

Yeah, my team are like, just fucking race it.

I like, but I just can't do it.

I just, yeah.

And it's someone else's thing

and I wouldn't want someone to do it to me.

Anyway, backing up to electric cars

are really good for certain jobs.

Now, if you've got, if you're someone

who does a lot of miles, you want to diesel.

You just want to diesel, right?

You want to not have to keep on filling it up

all the time or remember to plug in at home.

You want 600 miles in your tank and your driver.

And if you run out because you've been working late

up North, you want to get in your car

and make it fill it up immediately.

There was a video recently

that I was absolutely hooked by.

It was my friend, Joe Achilles, did one.

Which was he drove a thousand miles in a Passat.

And I was like, I know, like doing it,

you'd feel like that, but it does weight you up

to the fact that like a thousand miles,

a car can do a thousand miles in like one drive.

Like, it's these things we just don't hear

because our world is dominated by 280, 350,

like constantly because that's the stuff

that's coming into our world.

I'm glad to think that you still think

that there is hope for the videos

that are coming in five years.

It's quite funny.

I spoke to Andreas Porninger at Porsche GT

and I was like, I asked him about the future

of like GT cars when eventually they become electric.

And he said, you know what?

It's not for me, but it's for the next generation.

They will figure out.

Engineers, jobs are to solve problems.

They will solve the problem of how to make a car fun.

Well, I think that that is a pretty good way

to close up this episode of Road to Success.

And the fact that there is actually some hope out there

for your children that might be into cars

and mine in the future and all the rest of it.

But Matt, I think to put your story

of actually how you got to where you are today

on this podcast, because there really

isn't that much out there,

is a lot of people will thank you for that

because there's so many things in there

that are relatable to so many people.

I think that's good.

I think it's good to give people hope

just like cars in five years.

So thank you so much for joining me in the back of my van.

No, it's lovely.

And if you want to find out more kind of like,

like linear, how I got into it,

there's some in the beginning.

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Mat Watson: The TRUTH on CarWow, Past Controversies & Electric Vehicles

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