Shmee150 REVEALS the TRUTH about some car collectors, Car Specs and more!
Road To Success with Benedict Fowler
Shmee150 REVEALS the TRUTH about some car collectors, Car Specs and more!
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Term
12-cylinder
A 12-cylinder engine is a powerful type of engine that has twelve small chambers called cylinders. It helps cars go really fast and run smoothly, and is often used in fancy sports cars.
Car
Ferrari 365
The Ferrari 365 is a classic sports car from the late 1960s and early 1970s. It's known for being fast and stylish, and one of its most famous versions is called the Daytona.
Car
Ferrari SF90XX
The Ferrari SF90XX is a super-fast car that uses both a traditional engine and electric power to boost its performance.
Car
Ferrari 599
The Ferrari 599 is a luxury sports car that is very powerful and comfortable, designed for long drives.
Term
limited series
'Limited series' means that only a few of these cars are made, making them special and often more valuable. They usually have unique features that you won't find in regular models.
Term
hybridized
'Hybridized' means the car uses two types of power: a regular engine and an electric motor. This helps the car use less fuel and can make it faster.
Brand
Saab
Saab is a car brand from Sweden that made cars known for their different designs and turbo engines. They have a dedicated group of fans who love their unique style.
Car
BMW F12
The BMW 6 Series is a stylish and comfortable car that is great for long drives. It offers a mix of luxury and sporty performance, making it a favorite among car lovers.
Car
Ferrari F12
The Ferrari F12 is another powerful sports car from Ferrari, known for its speed and performance. It has a big engine and is designed for driving enthusiasts.
Car
Ferrari 550
The Ferrari 550 is an older model from Ferrari that combines speed with luxury. It has a powerful engine and is designed for comfortable long drives.
Car
Ferrari 575
The Ferrari 575 is another model from Ferrari that is designed for both speed and comfort. It has a powerful engine and is great for long drives.
Car
Ferrari 812
The Ferrari 812 is a fast and luxurious sports car made by Ferrari. It has a big engine that makes it very powerful and is designed for both speed and comfort.
Concept
Festival of Speed
The Festival of Speed is a big car event that happens every year in England. People come to see all kinds of cars, from old ones to new fast ones, racing up a hill.
Concept
Geneva Motor Show
The Geneva Motor Show is a big car event in Switzerland where car companies show off their newest cars. It's important for the car industry and attracts a lot of attention from media and fans.
Car
Ferrari LaFerrari
LaFerrari is a high-performance sports car made by Ferrari. It's special because it uses both a traditional engine and an electric motor to go really fast and be more efficient.
Company
Koenigsegg
Koenigsegg is a brand that makes very fast and expensive sports cars. They are known for their unique designs and powerful engines.
Car
McLaren P1
The McLaren P1 is a very fast car that uses both a gasoline engine and an electric motor to go super fast and handle well.
Car
Lamborghini Veneno
The Lamborghini Veneno is a very rare and expensive sports car that looks futuristic and is extremely fast.
Car
Bugatti La Voiture Noire
The Bugatti La Voiture Noire is a unique car that was shown at a big car show in Geneva. It's famous for being very expensive and having a cool design, and some people say a famous soccer player bought it.
Car
Aston Martin V8 Vantage
The Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster is a fancy sports car that has a powerful V8 engine. It's known for being stylish and fun to drive.
Term
R8
The R8 is a fast and stylish sports car made by Audi. It's known for its great performance and looks.
Term
VAT
VAT is a tax that you pay when you buy things. It's added to the price of products and helps the government earn money.
Term
luxury car tax
Luxury car tax is a special tax on expensive cars. If a car costs a lot of money, you might have to pay extra tax on it when you buy it.
Car
Lamborghini Murcielago
The Lamborghini Murcielago is a super-fast sports car with a striking design and a powerful engine. It’s one of the most famous Lamborghinis and is loved by car fans.
Car
Zenvo
Zenvo is a brand that makes very fast and expensive cars. They are known for their eye-catching looks and powerful performance.
Concept
Beast of the Green Hell
The 'Beast of the Green Hell' is a catchy name used by Mercedes-AMG to promote their GT R car, showing how well it performs on a famous racetrack in Germany called the Nürburgring.
Car
Mclaren 650S
The McLaren 650S is a high-performance sports car that is very light and fast. It has a powerful engine and is designed to be fun to drive on both the road and the track.
Car
Aston Martin GT8
The Aston Martin GT8 is a special version of a sports car that is made to be lighter and faster. It has a powerful engine and is designed for better handling on the road or track.
Car
Ferrari 458 Speciale
The Ferrari 458 Speciale is a faster and more powerful version of a popular Ferrari sports car. It's built for high performance and is great for driving on the track.
Term
limited edition
Limited edition means that only a small number of these cars are made, which makes them special and often more valuable. They might have unique features that other cars don't have.
Car
Tata Motors Aria
The Tata Motors Aria is a roomy vehicle that can be used for both family trips and everyday driving. It’s designed to be comfortable and practical for various needs.
Term
limited numbers
Limited numbers mean that only a small number of cars are made, making them special and often more valuable. People like to own something that not many others have.
Term
collectible
Collectible cars are special cars that people want to own because they are rare or have a lot of history. They can become more valuable as time goes on.
Term
supercar
Supercars are very fast and expensive cars that are built for performance. They are usually made by luxury brands and are not common on the roads.
Car
Audi RS4
The Audi RS4 is a fast version of the regular Audi A4, designed to be both fun to drive and practical for everyday use. It has a powerful engine and can handle well in various weather conditions.
Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that has been around for a long time. It's loved for its speed and stylish look, and when they make a special version with only a few available, it becomes very sought after by car enthusiasts.
Car
Ferrari 812 Superfast
The Ferrari 812 Superfast is a very fast sports car with a powerful engine in the front. It’s designed for both speed and luxury, making it one of the top Ferraris you can buy.
Car
Mclaren 600LT
The McLaren 600LT is a super-fast sports car that is designed to be very light and quick on the track. It’s built for performance and is loved by car enthusiasts.
Car
Mclaren 765LT
The McLaren 765LT is an extremely fast sports car that has been made even more powerful than its predecessor. It’s built for racing and is one of the top models from McLaren.
Car
BMW F80
The BMW M3 is a fast and sporty car that's based on the regular BMW 3 Series. The F80 model is known for being fun to drive and is popular among car fans who enjoy performance vehicles.
Car
Ferrari F50
The Ferrari F50 is a super-fast car that was made to celebrate Ferrari's 50th birthday. It has a special engine that comes from racing cars, making it very exciting to drive.
Car
Ferrari F40
The Ferrari F40 is a legendary sports car that many people admire for its speed and simple design. It was one of the last cars made with direct input from Ferrari's founder, making it very special.
Car
Ferrari Testarossa
The Ferrari Testarossa is a famous sports car from the 1980s and 90s, known for its unique look and powerful engine. It became a symbol of luxury and speed during that time.
Car
Ferrari Ff
The Ferrari FF is a special type of Ferrari that can fit more people and luggage than typical sports cars. It’s fast and luxurious, making it great for long drives while still being a Ferrari.
LIVE
Out of all the high-end collections you've been to, how many of those collections are from legitimate money?
Ho ho ho ho ho!
Shmee 150 everybody! We're going in heavy here, aren't we?
Yeah, we are! Let's just hit it, let's get straight to it!
When I uploaded the video, screaming on the phone, lawyer threatening to sue me, had no permission to film the video, blah blah blah blah blah.
So do you think that if we pull up on the same day next year and open the back doors and click roll on the cameras, that it will be this that we see?
A couple of different cars maybe. Do you think it'll be here? Wait and see.
Shmee 150 everybody for the second time on Road to Success. Why did you decide to get back in the van?
I don't know. You've kind of brought the van to me, right?
We've got things to talk about.
We've got things to talk about. You've said to me that I can pretty much ask you anything I want these days and you'll just give me an honest answer.
So I'm going to get right into it in the same way Rogan did in one of his past conversations and say,
how the hell do you sometimes think that the specs you choose on the cars are going to A be able to sell them again in the future?
Or B look nice? I'm sorry, the 12-cylinder thing is awful.
Like, what are you thinking sometimes?
We're going in heavy here.
Let's just hit it, let's get straight to it.
Do you know what? I've always been a person who loves color, but I also love a story.
So whenever I spec a car, often with my partner puppy, we're choosing something that links to an element of that company's history, that links to something I've filmed.
And I'm not worrying from day one, like, am I going to be able to sell this?
It's for me. It's for how I want to do it.
So you talk about the Dodici Challendry in Italian, the 12-cylinder.
Very imaginative thinking on a new 12-cylinder named products there, isn't it?
That's a different topic on its own.
Its design is inspired by the late 1960s, 365, the Daytona.
So I went with the color scheme from the 365 so that it looks late 60s, it looks 70s, it's retro.
You don't have to like it, but what's really interesting about that car is that was so polarizing,
but yet I've had to date five different Ferrari dealers asking me for the spec plaques so they can copy it for their customers.
Really?
More than any other car I've owned.
That does surprise me because over the past few years,
I like to think that I see people more confident about getting in a Ferrari.
There's a different spec, a different choice, a different color.
But from seeing it attend many events, like when we did Petrodinism in the summer and it was underneath the covers,
I could see people walking around it like, what was he thinking with that one?
And that's what I ask you because it's what I hear people say.
I've had it so many times over the years. I've heard everything to do with specs now,
but the difference is when you're talking about a Ferrari like that,
I'm sure we're going to expand this conversation in a moment in different directions around Ferrari cars,
but that particular model, anybody who purchases one will generally have a couple of different Ferraris,
but they'll also have quite an understanding of the Ferrari history,
and that plays such a big role and factor.
We've got the SF90XX here as well, which is very Larry,
and I have to be honest, that was the spec that I thought when we did it was going to be the most polarizing.
That was the car that I thought everybody would gasp whether for positive or negative reasons.
And to be honest, the response has been incredibly positive to it,
but it was for me chosen because of a link to the history.
So I started my channel in 2010, Geneva Motor Show that year, and Geneva Motor Shows were huge for me.
I filmed so many videos out of them.
That year was when Ferrari showed the 599 high cars,
which featured the previous year's Formula One hybrid technology cars very different to what we have now,
but they presented that car in this bright metallic green, a satin version rather than the gloss,
and I thought that was super cool.
It's probably like the 10th video on my YouTube channel filming it, 7000 videos later now.
So for me, when I was going to get my first limited series hybridized Ferrari,
I was like, we've got to link it back, we've got to do a nod back to that,
and then the gold details on that car are exactly the same as the Torse 700, same kind of gold.
It's funny you mentioned Geneva, because what I've got on my list today to kind of talk about
is car shows, car events, and ones that we found each other out of the last couple of years,
and ones have passed, and that's something that completely escaped my mind,
but when I first started watching your channel,
and I think first saw you for one of the first times,
it was in full Schmi 150 mode, as we call it in the creative world,
which is just like walking at the fastest pace you've ever seen before it becomes a run,
on a round a car show, just going from place to place,
like each filming location is a square and an Excel spreadsheet.
That's like how I remember it, and it was actually the first time I ever heard any criticism about you
was from the Geneva Motor Show, because people would say,
yeah, he just shoved me out the way, he said everybody off the stand so that he could film this car.
Like, why am I not allowed to stand on the stand that he is?
That was the first time I actually ever heard any Schmi critique.
I think it was because the first time, but just get on with it, go, go, go.
We've got business to do here.
I don't know if we're going down that now, but the Geneva Motor Show has a very soft spot in my heart,
because I really went all out for that event every year back then.
It was the early days when magazines hadn't really started doing YouTube channels yet,
and I'd gone originally, obviously, as a car fan, just going for the day.
But once I started making videos, I clocked on to the fact that I could just run around,
do what I love doing, which is go up to a new car, learn about it myself as fast as possible,
almost regurgitate that in a video, and put it out in a way that a viewer could comprehend
and learn something about the car in a concise to the point format, right?
Because that didn't really exist.
It was exactly what I wanted to watch. It didn't exist.
And I figured that I was pretty good at taking in that information and showcasing it in a way
that didn't come across like you're watching somebody's marketing video.
I mean, it wasn't marketing, but in an explanatory way.
And I really enjoyed doing that.
So I'd go to Geneva and I would have this massive list of cars that I was going to try and film,
even from day one, even going to see the 509 hikers that I mentioned.
I knew here, Ravi, and it got in the later years to like 80 cars.
I was like, I've got three days. I'm making videos with 80 cars. Let's go.
And that is an insane prospect to even think about doing that,
because not just from the fact of creating content, editing it, putting it out,
making sure you're on it when it goes live to talk to your audience and understand your community.
For me, there's another element to it, which is the sheer amount of learning
you have to do about those products that have only just dropped those cars.
It's hard.
And the only person, and this all tests the audience's knowledge of who was watching YouTube back at this early stage,
because the only other person that I would watch that I would consider to have a higher level of knowledge
about a lot of vehicles and the intricacies of them was a guy called Saab Kyle 04 in America on YouTube.
And he would go around an individual makeup model and the stuff he knew,
the level of information he knew in one tape, pretty much, was insane.
And the only other person that seemed to do that was you.
So how did you do that when you had no video to go off?
But it comes, it's different for different people, right?
Kyle did it for all different types of cars, all different categories.
New cars, used cars, American cars, muscle cars, family cars, everything.
I had very much my niche and my niche was that of super cars.
It was what I was personally obsessed over or obsessing over.
And I figured that I could learn very quickly because I was so interested in it
and because I followed the industry very closely.
It comes really easily now.
If Ferrari released a new model now, I've got a lot to even go back in my own mind,
my own, let's say, history of content to look at.
So I know when a new car comes out, I know where it sits in the portfolio.
I know everything that came before it.
I can recite straight off.
If you start talking, let's say they make a limited version of the 12-cylinder at some point,
which they probably do, could happen.
We'll have to wait and see.
I can immediately tell you the history of the limited versions of the 812, the F12, the 599, the 575, the 550.
I know how many were made, what engine is in it, all stats about it.
I don't have to go look it up because I know it.
So because of that, it makes it easier now than you think.
But obviously, you still have to go from zero.
Now, when a car comes out, there will be pretty filming.
There will be information that's shared.
But 10 years ago, there wasn't.
10 years ago, I'd wake up at the Geneva Motor Show with the list of the things I think are going to be shown,
with no concrete information about anything, and certainly no actual details.
So what would happen is we grew this relationship with all the different PR managers and whatnot,
and they would know Geneva would come around or Frankfurt, Paris or whichever Motor Show.
I would pop up with Mark at the stand, and we would just like somebody to give me a 5 to 10 minute introduction to that car as quickly as possible.
Have it ready, fire us the information, and then it's up for me to try and work out what I want to share of that, how I want to say it.
Let's go.
Is it hard to do that in an environment that's also full of fans?
It's much harder now than it used to be.
It sounds strange to say it, because I obviously massively appreciate all the people who watch my content,
but it adds a challenge that never existed before, and a lot of contemporaries I'm sure people you've spoken to will say the same.
One of the hardest bits is that you want to give everybody all the time that you can, but go to an event like Goodwood,
and I have responsibilities with brands I'm working with, contracts, important things, with Goodwood themselves,
places I need to be, hill climb runs, can't change the timing of those.
And I always hate that awkward moment where somebody wants to stop and talk to you, and you're like,
I have to be somewhere five minutes ago, and there's no concept to the person that perhaps you're talking to,
that there might even be like a stage or a place you're supposed to be in front of quite a few people,
and you're not trying to be rude to them saying, I've got to go, but sometimes it's how do you get that across.
So I always find those types of situations really difficult, because the last thing in the world I want is somebody to feel like I don't care about them or something like that.
But you can't control it. You've just got to go.
It's fascinating you mentioned Festival of Speed, because I was hoping to get on to Festival of Speed at some point,
because when we talk about Geneva, do you think Geneva was a bigger thing in the motoring calendar as Festival of Speed was back in the kind of 2018, 2019?
Obviously, 1819 was the end of Geneva.
You know, 19 was the last year we had the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland in full pelt.
It sort of semi happened the next year, because it was March 2020, it was right at the wrong time.
And it's obviously not come back in the same way.
Certainly, if you go back to 2010, Geneva was bigger. Geneva was huge. Such a cool show.
For new cars coming out, it was the start of the year, it was end of February normally.
It was the first big time that, you know, lots of new cars were being presented.
It was all happening in the same place. You had customers, certainly for hypercars.
You had all the PR staff, marketing staff of every car company in one room.
And you had all the magazines and all the journalists and everybody who worked in the industry.
So you really had this whole industry in one place.
That was the one time. Goodwood wasn't yet that. Car Week wasn't yet that.
Nothing else was yet like that.
But obviously, it also was bubbling to the end of an era, because it was moving so far away from what it had been before.
You know, brands were having to spend enormous amounts of money to have a show stand,
to have all their team on site, to host everything around it.
And it was proving actually to become quite inefficient for them,
versus hosting their own event in their own place, having their own limelight with the media,
having their own customers that they could convert just for them,
rather than being focused on this mass thing.
And simultaneously, what I didn't realize that people like myself were part of,
was the fact that go back 20 years and the public didn't have a way to really know about these new cars.
So they would come to motor shows.
But obviously, social media meant that suddenly everybody saw everything.
So there was less of a need to have public seeing your new product,
because they can see it all over the Internet.
And they can learn more.
It's a little bit like how people say they actually get more from an F1 race
when they don't go to the F1.
Everybody says it.
Everybody says it, because you get so much more behind the lens of a camera.
But back then, you said you were filming like 80 videos at Geneva.
Would you also edit 80 videos?
Yeah, of course. I had a whole operation.
You know, we would camp out somewhere.
I'd have somebody with me on the laptop.
And then between shoots, I would edit as well.
So we were really turning over videos as fast as we could,
getting them scheduled and uploaded and prioritizing what had to go out.
YouTube was a very different place 10 years ago.
You have to remember it was much more a search and information platform
rather than the entertainment platform it is now.
Now you have content that's created to be TV.
Like you watch once a week your favorite creator,
whether it's a Matt Armstrong rebuild on a Sunday night,
a Mark McCann video on a Tuesday night.
You know who's uploading when you come online for that, right?
To watch that.
You almost have a schedule to it.
Whereas back then it was much more news driven.
So if there was a new car,
didn't matter what time of day it was,
if you had a video of something brand new that hadn't been seen straight out,
you weren't waiting for something.
Is that what you were doing?
Were you literally just finishing the editing, clicking publish?
So one of my favorite memories of Geneva,
which is quite funny given my Ferrari passion now,
was LaFerrari.
When LaFerrari was presented, Geneva,
I think it's 2013.
I'm not getting that wrong.
Yeah, I think it was.
I had just been running around because you'd had the Koenigsegg one to one.
You'd have the production spec P1.
I can't remember what order they were in,
but was that the Lamborghini Veneno year as well?
It was a mad Geneva show.
And I had just been a one press conference
and I sprinted over from the higher end all the way to where Ferrari were
to see the covers come off.
Look at the Montezuma alone,
the team pulling the cover back.
And I was a couple of people deep with my camera up in the air
trying to film this new Ferrari hybrid hypercar.
But what I was really proud of was that I knew that was a big moment.
So I had my laptop already on with a Premiere Pro sequence open, ready to go.
So I would film those clips,
car was on a turntable,
get some nice zooming in details and stuff,
and sprinted then from the stand,
not even having been on it, to my laptop,
got that video edited, exported.
I think I did it in a lower bit rate so that it was done faster, right?
Just had to get it online, uploaded it to YouTube.
And the coolest thing was that video was on YouTube
about 45 minutes after the cover came off,
which you couldn't do now.
You couldn't do in a way that YouTube would like the content.
And it was so much so at the time YouTube had less content on it.
So you could do a search and you could filter by upload date.
So you could put it by the oldest upload.
So for a couple of years while that functionality still existed,
if you type LaFerrari on YouTube,
the oldest video was mine,
the first video on YouTube of a LaFerrari.
Do you think...
Did you have any competition at that point doing that?
It wasn't competition.
It still isn't competition.
If you're in a position where you can get a video up 40 minutes
after a car has been launched back in the day,
like, you're going to see your competition
if there is anybody doing that.
Why do you think there wasn't necessarily much competition?
You think your work rate was just above everybody else?
Well, you needed to have a bit of an understanding of the point of it.
And certainly nothing commercial had yet clocked,
hey, this is actually a platform.
You know, you didn't earn significant money back then.
You know, you earned a little bit from advertising on social media,
but there weren't brands getting involved.
There wasn't an end goal of it.
There wasn't a plan.
There wasn't a reason to.
For me, the early videos,
and this, you know, I started uploading videos 16 years ago now, right?
It's been a long journey.
The early videos were just because I loved cars.
Even going to the Geneva Motor Show,
if I earned enough from all of that content to cover my trip there...
That was cool.
That was living the supercar dream.
That was job done.
Yeah, I still had a full-time job, right?
So this was all...
I was booking my days of holidays in 2013,
my holiday days from work to go to the Geneva show.
What when you were making those 80 videos?
I don't know where exactly the crossover would have happened.
I think I left my job in summer 2014.
But it's there or there about.
Yeah, so certainly, while I was still in full-time employment,
I was booking that three-day period off to do the Geneva Motor Show.
Hypothetically, and these are just rough numbers,
say you go to the Geneva Motor Show back then
and you can do 80 videos in 48 hours?
I mean, three days, yeah.
That was the busiest two hours.
That was the busiest two hours.
Most years were not that many.
And let's say the average 150, 200,000 views of video, old RPMs,
that could potentially be while working a full-time job,
80 to 100 grand in revenue off those videos,
if you get that show right.
No, nothing like that.
It might as well be off.
Nothing like that.
Nothing like that.
Back then, no, no, no, not even close.
That was more like back in the day.
Annual social media earnings.
Right, okay.
But then, I don't know without digging out a computer
and giving specific numbers,
I would say that my biggest and most exciting Geneva
was when Bugatti introduced La Voix de Noir.
Okay, that was the one off.
The black thing that everybody says Ronaldo bought.
Exactly, yeah.
No, he didn't.
Okay, I even did a video with the car
a few months later of did Ronaldo buy.
I literally did that as a video
and obviously ended it with no, he didn't.
Yeah, because I've seen so many like AI edits.
It was really funny, actually.
So the first part of the story is that
I knew from a Bugatti collector that this car was coming.
So in advance of the show,
they had actually that year opened a new hotel
right outside the front door of Pal Expo, the Geneva Hall.
And so I had a room and I had inquired in advance
for what the internet was like there.
And it was insanely fast.
So I did exactly the same in my hotel room
and my laptop was sitting on the desk
with a sequence open ready, filmed the car
and I planned with Bugatti, I said,
please can I come on straight after
for two minutes and then I'm out.
So I ran on the stage as soon as it was being presented
on the stage, did a close walk around of the car,
got out of there, got my video online.
That video, I think it's on eight or nine million views,
but it all happened within 48 hours.
So that I think that was the highest my channel ever did.
It was the real time chart where you can see the views
in the last 48 hours.
I think that hit 4.4 million or something.
So that was of long form content, not shorts, obviously.
So I think that was the strongest my channel ever did.
Now that was quite a lucrative Geneva.
I'm not gonna lie, not enough to buy a Bugatti,
but as single videos go, that was a big one.
Enough to come back more than just covering your trip.
Like you can go on all day.
Yeah, that one did all right.
But nothing like it would if you did that viewership now.
But did that viewership today, different story.
At that time, you didn't even have your first Ferrari, right?
Because I remember your first Ferrari was a blue FF.
It was the blue crew at the time, wouldn't it?
Yeah, that was late 2015.
I think Labo Tianhua must have been 2016, 17.
So much crossover, but this was crazy now.
And this is for the audience too, is that this now,
that's now 10 years away coming up.
And it feels like yesterday because those memories are so ingrained
on someone that loves cars so much like myself.
And that era of cars between 2010 and 2018,
like so ingrained every one of those videos.
I don't know if you would remember it,
but here in my garage is my V8 Vantage Roadster.
That was the first, I'm going to call it, YouTube car.
Yeah.
That I had revealed on my channel.
Pre-R8?
Pre-R8.
So I had that at late 2010.
Truth be told, my work was going pretty well.
And like any foolish young 20s working in London
with no dependence and just renting a flat,
I earned some money and said,
oh, I'm going to go and buy an Aston Martin
because I'm young and stupid.
That one.
And it's that one.
But what's funny and what I was going to get to,
it's my first ever vlog doing a road trip in a car
and sharing daily videos was August 2011.
Next summer, that's 15 years ago.
Wow.
So I keep thinking about these anniversaries.
I'm like, how has it been 15 years?
I was 12 years old.
Thanks.
I was 12 years old watching YouTube videos
about YouTubers buying new caries.
We skipped over,
but what I was going to say about the Ronaldo,
Lavochou and Noir thing,
I think I learned very early in the days of the internet
that people latch on to things they're told,
whether it's true or not.
And that was a really helpful lesson for me
in everything that came after,
especially with that car because standing in Geneva
at the press conference, they even told us,
I think maybe it was in the press release
at the press conference, the price.
And they gave us two prices in it,
one, the car and one, including applicable taxes.
And the reason that's relevant is because
if you did a very simple bit of maths,
you could work out that the applicable taxes
was at a tax rate, which only affected one country.
And that was Austria.
It was like VAT plus they had a,
I want to say a 32% luxury car tax.
So a simple bit of information you're given,
you know therefore the customer is Austrian.
Is that likely to be Ronaldo?
No.
You get my point.
So I learned very quickly that people don't consume
all the information that's given to them
and will form their own opinions.
So that's come up a lot of times.
We even in our last podcast,
we discussed similar types of situations
where people are told one thing,
they don't know the full story
or they haven't researched the full story,
they just roll with it.
So similarly in the content we create and share, right?
You see it with everyone.
But this with, since the last time we even spoke,
which is crazy to think of how much it's come on,
which was basically a year ago to the day,
AI has become so much more of a thing
in AI videos and social media.
And while we talk about Ronaldo,
did you see the video that Trump uploaded of him and Ronaldo?
Because you're a big football fan.
The football was moving unnaturally around the floor.
Just see Trump's legs.
But all the comments think it's real.
There are so many of these things.
Oh, we've had it.
We've had my partner, Edith.
Was it your dad, Edith, that sent you like videos
and my mum like, oh, did you see this bear,
nick a baby off a porch?
Like it's become so insane.
But it's also quite a shame because you say
that people latch on to the thing they see
that might not be true.
Yeah.
It'd be very easy to put Ronaldo in that car
driving out of his gates now
and fool a lot of people.
Oh, completely.
You know, there are so many of these videos.
I would like to say my own personal AI detector
is very good.
So I feel like, especially having worked in video,
you know, I've edited a video every day
for a decade and a half, right?
Basically, for being involved in media in some capacity.
So like anybody else in that situation,
you have a very good ability to detect
when something isn't right.
But it's going to be interesting to see what changes.
It's so quick, as you say,
from a year ago to today is insane.
Does it have any impact in any way?
Have you noticed AI having any impact
on the content or things that you do?
Of course, in a work capacity,
massively, to help with writing,
to help with YouTube titles,
to help with script outlines,
to help with ideas.
I use AI platforms probably every day now.
I try very much to not just go with it.
Never believe something it tells you.
I factually, it's just wrong.
Do you still look at it as a bit of an idiot?
Do you look at it with like a lens of,
I could still probably do that better.
I'm just using you as a bit of a helper.
No, no, no.
I change the way I use AI.
If you log on to chat GPT or something,
I use it from a perspective of,
can you give me 10 ideas for this?
And then adapt those with your own intelligence,
because it will get things wrong.
With cars, it gets a lot of things wrong.
It gets a lot of facts around cars wrong.
A lot of facts and figures and stories and data is just not,
it's not there.
If you give it a picture and say what...
So if you're interested in starting a project
and you'd love to speak to us,
just tap the link below and let's hop on a call.
It's this, it's just wrong.
Did you also have to kind of lean on your own conscious a bit
when you discovered in those early days
that the news that you told someone
that they would believe would sell?
Because you could easily get very click baity
with it is what I'm saying.
You have to resist yourself.
You could easily, as a creator,
you could easily make up a fact to do with cars
or something.
Put it out there and then it's solid forever.
But you've seen lots of people do this, right?
I've seen it happen completely.
You know, especially with my data platform
exclusive car registry, the number of times,
I'll give you one example,
the number of times I get told,
oh, the Murcielago SV,
they only made 185 of those, didn't they?
Because it was supposed to be 350.
Somebody somewhere once upon a time said that number.
It's not true at all.
They made over 300 of them,
but everybody is convinced they only made 185.
Because that could be having a massive effect
on the market, the prices, when they're sold,
when they're exchanged.
I've got a friend that's been on the podcast,
really cool guy, Matt Jones, MTV,
literally jumped through two lorries.
Like I just opened YouTube and there he is,
jumping through two moving lorries on his bike
and he's just bought an orange Murcielago SV.
So I wonder if he thought there was 175 or 300,
but it shows that even the buyers
could potentially be fooled into it with what they're buying
quite a lot of the time.
100%.
So I find that kind of concept fascinating that,
yeah, somebody put something out there
and then it's treated as fact,
even though it's not.
It's the same with the Ronaldo Lavoche Noir thing.
Somebody said it.
Does that go for the brands too?
Because in a recent video you just did,
which was all about the depreciation
of a lot of the cars behind me,
so I have no idea how you didn't start crying.
Especially when looking at the Ferrari wall over there.
Do you want to know why I didn't start crying?
Because some of the depreciation might be bad,
but SF90XX, SLS Black Series,
that probably equates to all of the losses
of the other cars in this garage.
So it kind of, a bit like the early days of YouTube,
balances itself out.
It does.
Maybe I'll have a video on this coming soon.
So basically the only way to not lose money
on supercars is to buy loads of them.
Oh goodness, I wouldn't do that.
I wouldn't recommend that.
But the cars you have bought,
and we're going to get into the numbers in a bit,
which is the reason I brought that video up.
But have you genuinely bought them in specs
just to make you happy?
Have you ever bought a car to please the algorithm?
Like, did you buy the Zenvo in the Larry Purple
that's over there because you thought
that would do well on a thumbnail,
or did you buy that because you thought,
I love the way that looks?
I think this is a very big topic of conversation.
Firstly, the cars themselves.
I bought my first AMG GTR purely because
the Beast of the Green Hell marketing campaign,
there was a lot of hype around AMG at that time,
you know, mid-2010s.
We're talking came out in 2015, 2016.
Great car.
I'm lucky enough to actually own one of them.
Love it.
Really cool car.
And I bought it thinking this will be a good car
for the internet.
Like, I went into that thinking,
it's about £155,000.
I can finance into that.
This will be a good storyline online.
It turned out that I really loved it,
and I've had three more AMG GTs after that one.
But that's because of, I guess,
an accident of falling into a car
that I happen to really like.
Then again, my Hurricane STO,
a big part of that was the internet is telling me
to buy a Lambo every single day.
It's time to get a Lamborghini.
Oh, that was a horrendous spec, Tim.
I'm sorry.
I did not like the bike car.
I liked it.
I've seen it again since.
I like it a lot.
But buying the car, just on that topic before the specs,
again, was a big part of the internet.
I didn't love it as much as I wanted to.
That's why eventually I sold it,
and it hasn't had a successor in the garage yet.
Maybe eventually something else I'll try down the line.
In terms of the specs,
if anybody on social media...
I'm being punchy with him today.
If anybody on social media
wants the best way out of a car they've created content with,
spec it in a completely nondescript way
that cannot be recognized.
Black, black, black, generic,
nothing specific, nothing that links that car.
Because no buyer of a very expensive car
wants to feel like that car is someone else's.
They don't want someone coming up to them and saying,
oh, this was so-and-so's car.
They want it to be their car.
So when...
If we go back to a car that a lot of your early followers will remember then,
take like the 675 LT,
but the Cerulean blue version,
which I believe was your own color.
No, I didn't make the color.
It was off the menu.
But it was very much...
I think people knew you for that car.
And it was one of your first major after the 650S,
like supercars, lightweight, hardcore.
Is that a challenge then, selling those pieces?
50-50 flip of a coin.
Sometimes somebody will specifically want that car.
And there are certain cars that I've had
and still get offers on constantly.
And sometimes it will mean that nobody wants it.
So it can go both ways.
This is one of the...
I think challenging things to work out.
Sometimes you'll see an auction, right,
for Richard Challenger Road recently bought a Diablo that was ex-Rod Stewart.
Some would say that's a great thing.
Add some provenance.
Some would say I don't really care.
So it's exactly the same in the YouTube space.
You'll have some people who specifically want the GT8.
I've had a bunch of offers on the Aston GT8.
It's quite distinct.
And there are a lot of people who watched the storyline
of building that car 10 years ago,
now in a position to purchase such a car
and would like to buy that one.
So is it a channel fan half the time that also wants to buy it?
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's kind of been on that whole journey of the car,
how you got it, where you got to.
A lot of the cars that we mentioned are limited to running cars.
And we speak about this video that you've just put out that's done very well,
talking about the depreciation and the kind of levels and all of them.
But it also brings into play the number side,
which you just said about the merch logo,
because many of the cars that are in here behind us talk about the SLS,
which you said that they didn't actually give an official number
on how many of those were made.
You've got the 675 LT, the GT8.
You've got the Speciale, just here, the XX.
Many of the lightweight limited edition cars have like a one of 500,
one of 800.
Do you think in any way any of those numbers are true?
Well, for many of the brands,
I know what the real numbers are.
Even to today.
And I don't want to specifically point out brands.
Because I don't want to get my stuff in trouble.
Everybody went mental, they're real, didn't they?
That you didn't actually name who it was you were talking about.
I didn't name the brand in question.
Let's say in the modern era,
despite their historic reputation for Aria not the worst,
but there are many brands who produce more cars than they say they are,
of course.
And I don't mean just a couple of extra prototypes.
I mean, significantly more.
You know, I think it's all relative.
You have to remember,
especially with small manufacturers, right?
They're businesses at the end of the day.
If they can, if they accidentally fall into a winning product
and they can make more revenue out of it,
preferably it's done without upsetting existing clients,
but it does happen across the board.
And it's not, I don't think it's just cars,
but cars are a very visible item because of the physical size
and because of how they get moved around, driven on the road,
go to service, et cetera, different specifications.
You can tell if a car manufacturer is overproduced.
You can't necessarily tell if a watch manufacturer has, for example.
So this is my own story rather than yours.
This cannot get you in trouble.
But I went to, I remember being very lucky enough.
I think I went to the Lamborghini Parade at Silverstone.
I think it was.
I was there that day.
The big event.
That's it. Huge event.
With the STO that you love so much.
And there's just certain days where you like look around, you go,
they made more than 500 SVs, didn't they?
Because there's like 400 of them there.
And you're like, this just isn't adding up
because there's all these other countries.
So I can imagine that they are kind of naughty with the numbers.
But is that not just not hugely illegal?
I would imagine so.
But I don't know.
At the end of the day, maybe it's just one of these things.
Everybody turns a blind eye.
Nobody cares.
On you go, right?
I don't think it doesn't affect your enjoyment of the car
at the end of the day.
Because you wanted to purchase a car.
You purchased a car.
You enjoy it.
I think with the latest crop of cars, take the SF90XX,
I'm sure, well, there are supposedly 799 coupes being made.
I'm sure there'll be a couple of prototypes over that.
But I think in the modern era, because again, like I said,
the unique specs, the manufacturer can't overproduce it
because they'll be called out immediately.
Does it still mean as much the limited numbers on these cars?
Because when initially a limited number car came around,
probably talking about those mid-2015, 16s,
when stuff was kind of coming out along that line,
there was genuinely a real like,
damn it, I think there's especially with Porsche in the UK.
There's way more people than the allocations available
to be able to buy them.
Is that being reversed a little bit now?
And especially with the fact that there's more of them available,
like Ferrari used to be what, one of 499 was a relevant number,
and that's one of 799.
Are they struggling to sell all those units anymore?
Well, the market's so much bigger.
Don't forget.
The market for purchasing a high-end collectible supercar
is massively bigger than it was 20 years ago.
I think a good way to relate to that is when I was a kid,
most people would buy a regular square CRT television,
£100, that's just what they had.
Now, most homes will have a massively more expensive big flat screen.
It's just a segment that wasn't there not very long ago,
and it's the same in a way with, certainly with hypercars.
If you look at multimillion-pound cars,
that segment didn't exist not that long ago,
so you can't really directly compare it because it was never there.
I think you've seen an increase.
I mentioned the V12 Limited Ferrari's 550-barcetta, 448 cars.
Next came the 575 Superamerica, 559.
Then the 599 GTO, 599.
Then the F12 TDF, 799.
Then the 812 Competizione, 999 plus 599 Convertibles, Aperto's.
So that number has grown massively,
but it is roughly in line with the increase in production
of not only Ferraris, but also supercars.
So does that mean it's watered down,
or is it still just as collectible?
You mentioned Porsche.
If you go back to 997s,
there were what, 500 GT2 RSs and 600 GT3 RS4 litres?
Could you imagine if Porsche released
the Limited Edition 911 now and only made 500 of them?
There would be uproar in the Porsche ranks about who got one
and who didn't.
It would be all sorts of chaos.
And there are stories behind that as well.
Didn't you...
I don't know if this was the reason behind it, so forgive me,
but didn't you buy your GT3 from the Netherlands?
Could you have got a UK allocation for a car like that?
Not easily.
I think with...
It's one of the reasons I like Ferrari,
is that they're very, very, very clear at a factory HQ Marinello level
over who gets what allocation.
There's always a structure to it.
Whether they publicise that or not,
they generally don't publicise it.
But behind the scenes, there will be a, this is our new car.
The customers who are going to get it have owned this one,
this one, and this one, and have this many other Ferraris.
And that's the rule.
And if you don't meet that rule, you're not going to get it.
Now, there is a problem with dealers in some countries
not necessarily declaring that to customers.
So there might be a push towards a specific customer saying,
oh, but if you buy this used 296 GTS,
maybe we'll find you an allocation
against what they can actually do,
because they don't choose the special cars
like the SF90XX.
That's allocated from Italy.
That's not allocated from the UK.
No, my dealer didn't say, yeah,
Tim's going to be able to get one of those.
Ferrari and Marinello said, here's his profile,
here's the cars he has.
Right.
Dealer, you can offer him a car.
And does the Fat Yorshmi 150 have anything to play in that decision?
And actually, it's the opposite way round to what you think.
There's always this misconception
that because you have a massive social media presence,
it's somehow easier to get a limited edition car.
But the reality is the opposite way,
because the manufacturer, if they give you an allocation
for a limited edition car,
need to explain that to every other customer
that didn't get one.
So it's causing them a headache.
So it causes them a headache.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are some brands
who at a dealer level could choose to do so
and allocate a social media personality a car,
but that will generally be at a dealer level,
not at the factory level.
Porsche?
No comment.
I've learned enough watching these videos now.
But there was something really cool in there
which enables me to ask this question,
is I was so lucky a couple months ago
to have Jay Leno in the back of my US van.
And just like the first time we ever opened the back doors
in a podcast for yours last year,
I was able to do the same in his collection too.
Your building is incredible.
It's large.
That place is on another level.
The scale of it just blew my mind.
But one of the things that Jay said in that video
was how the very thing that you just said
was one of the reasons you like Ferrari,
because it's how they allocate cars,
a kind of Maranello HQ level to whoever's the customer profile is,
is the thing that Jay hates about Ferrari
and is the reason that he says there isn't one in his collection.
So what do you think about that?
I have a very specific feeling on this
and I think it is down to the dealer relationship.
I also think time is relevant
because his bad experiences weren't in the last 10 years.
They'd been longer ago,
so they haven't evolved to where the market is now
and to how it works now.
I really think that it's difficult from the point of view
of understanding how these brands work.
And this is not a Ferrari-specific thing.
This is any luxury goods company, right?
When Ferrari have a car like the SF90XX
and these are trading for enormous premiums over list price, right?
And they know that they're producing something
that's very limited and very few people are going to have them
and most of the people that buy them are going to keep them.
They know that they're effectively literally printing you a check.
When they give you that car or the ability to purchase that car,
they are aware that they're saying,
hey, here's a whole lot of money.
So they're not just going to give that to some random person
who's never bought a car from them.
They have no idea who that is who just walked off a street, right?
That came into the showroom.
There's no brandies.
You're going to use that as like a reward for the loyalty
to your customers who have purchased the most cars
and been the most part of the brand.
It's not just even buying the cars.
The way Ferrari look at it is also who came to their events,
who participated in their race series.
What does that customer do?
Do they know who you are?
And this is an interesting thing as well.
I had a lot of people when I bought this 458 Speciale
and I was blindsided by this.
I didn't see it coming.
I had people saying you've clearly only bought that
because Ferrari told you you had to get a slightly older car
in your collection.
What?
What in reality?
Did that even come through a Ferrari dealer?
No.
And if you think about it,
me buying that privately had nothing of Ferrari's benefit.
To Ferrari, they would have much rather I bought an Amalfi
and ordered a new Amalfi.
That would have helped my profile.
And I find it fascinating to the people.
This goes back to what we said.
Somebody somewhere has once upon a time said,
Oh, a collector needs to have an older Ferrari.
So somebody's interpreted therefore that I must have bought
my 458 Speciale because Ferrari said I had to.
And it's like, this is so completely disconnected.
And I definitely think there's an element of understanding it.
I think Ferrari and this is part of Jay's perspective
had this traditional quite snobby perspective.
And I think that lingered for a long time.
The company is obviously very different now
to what it was in the past.
And for sure, when it's the, let's be real,
when you're a kid,
the number one supercar company is Ferrari.
Maybe you have a specific lean towards Lamborghini
or for most people, it's Ferrari.
And because of that, they are an immensely powerful company.
And it's certainly a challenge for any brand.
But like I say, even allocations for cars are done
with every car at a different level.
So from my understanding,
and I think we can share and talk about this 296 Speciale,
the coupes can be allocated by dealer.
They can choose who buys them.
So a dealer could say to an existing client, right?
Yep, you can have one.
A dealer could also say to a new client,
if you buy this car from our use stock,
you can have an allocation for one.
The 296 Speciale A, the Aperta,
which will be more limited,
the dealer puts forward to the factory.
Here are the 20 people we feel could be able to get one.
The factory says, right,
these are the three we'll allow you to offer one to.
Wow.
That's how it works.
And that's based on the factory looking at that person's profile
and where they fit.
And tell me if I'm wrong here,
but is the times changing to a point
that I've never bought a brand new Ferrari from a dealer?
My local dealer would be like Dick Love It Swindon,
huge building, great big dealership,
been in there since I was a kid,
and I've actually bought a couple of used cars from them.
I've had an 812 Superfast and a 488 Pista
and a 458, I think, through Dick Love It Ferrari Swindon.
I could have never imagined walking in there
and ever being saying,
I want an 812 competition.
There's no chance.
You've got no history.
There's no new cars like you're in La La Land.
But after hearing kind of what you said
and seeing the fact that Ferrari,
I believe, have some struggles that they're trying to overcome,
not financially, but just in terms of brand and design
and where do they go and what's coming,
do I have more of a chance of walking into Ferrari now
and going, I want a 296 Speciale,
and if you get a whatever it's called,
and if you give me one, I will then buy more cars for you.
Is it flipping is what I'm saying on its head.
If you give me that, I might then buy more cars for me
rather than them saying,
if you buy these cars, we might give you one of those.
Can I remind you of a very surprising thing
that a lot of people have forgotten?
458 Speciale, they couldn't sell them.
You got a discount off one of those.
Yeah, shock, right?
It's mad.
People forget that.
That's 10 years ago.
That's a 2015 car and the owner got a discount,
a five-figure discount off list price.
We've forgotten what normal is.
The last few years have made us completely forget
what normality is with these cars.
You should be able to get the car you want,
and we are returning to that because this bubble
where cars have been treated very much as an asset class
is still there, but people have been so wrapped
in the hype of it over the last few years
that it's distorted the whole market,
and it's meant that these new cars come out
and people go crazy thinking,
I'm going to get one because I'll make money on it.
As soon as that goes and the genuine buyers
buy the car who actually want it,
they actually hold better value anyway
because you've got rid of all those people
who didn't want it in the first place.
Do you think that the social media world
is also wrapped up in the fact
that that is so much better than that?
That is so much better.
But in reality, do you still enjoy your normal SF90?
I absolutely love my normal SF90.
Absolutely love it.
I don't enjoy how if I do any content with it
or anything like that, there's a big,
let's say, amount of feedback of how can you enjoy that car?
It's depreciated so much money, you've lost so much on it.
And that's not the point.
It's a car.
It's a car. It does what cars do.
And, you know, I calculate that car
has probably lost about 40% in four years.
As an outright sum, it's a lot of money,
and it's scary.
But as a percentage depreciation,
I can tell you it's nowhere nearly as bad as an AMG
or a McLaren that I've owned in the past.
So is it that bad?
Do we just not need to accept that that's what they do?
Do you think the world of cars
might have a few flips on its head
also influenced by Formula One coming?
Because Ferrari were obviously so strong
off the back of 2007,
and then we saw so many sick Ferraris
off the back of that, if you think about it.
We had LaFerrari, we had Speciale.
I think 430 Scud and 16Nm came just came after that
because the plaques inside the car
said, I know a little bit more than you probably think I do.
We had so many cool Ferraris after that.
McLaren at the minute, a top of Formula One.
And I believe that from a person, I love my 600LT,
but since then, there's not really been...
I'm not that phased by the 765LT.
I'm not phased.
The 765LT is like 5 or 6 years old now.
That's not a new car anymore.
I'm not that phased by a lot of stuff yet,
but do you think that Formula One
winning mindset, dominance, understanding
will have an impact on the brand again?
It creates a future generation of fans of the brand.
I think it's more in that direction.
I don't think we now see a technology transfer
from F1 to the road that we did 10 to 20 years ago.
There are many technologies that were in the early McLaren cars
that came directly from Formula One.
Carbon fibre tub,
rocker switches for the shift paddles,
torque vectoring by brake steer,
breaking the inside wheel again from F1
rather than having a traditional diff.
I don't think we're going to see many more of these kinds of things
because now F1 technology is just way out of line
with what a road car can do.
And the interesting connection for me
is I actually went very recently to the Audi
Formula One team livery reveal.
Went over to Germany for that.
And I was thinking and reading a lot of the comments
which were asking, you know, what's in F1 for Audi?
Even if they're able to build a winning car in some years,
huge branding, but it isn't a tech transfer
to a lineup that's basically heading to fully electric.
It's no added value in that way.
What's the connection?
And so obviously they're looking at it from a different perspective.
Maybe that's the business side of the value of an F1 team.
Maybe that's what value does come from the brand
if they're able to be successful in F1.
And I think it's quite interesting from that side.
You know, even if you look, Toto obviously recently sold
some of his stake, a part of his stake,
not the whole stake as some people have reported.
But at evaluation, which is enormous,
especially compared to how it started.
So the business of a Formula One team is a bit more complicated.
But I don't think it's any more focused on the transfer.
And let's talk Ferrari.
They've not exactly done particularly well in Formula One.
I woke up this morning watching the highlights
from Vegas Qualifier, which was last night.
So as we record this, all of us will know the result of the race,
but we don't.
Yeah.
But I imagine Norris won.
There you go.
There's my bonus.
39 points ahead in the championship
if Piastri's fifth.
We'll see.
Hamilton was P20.
Yeah, but that was an anomaly qualifying.
It was wet and it was...
Was it?
I mean, it hasn't been a good year for Ferrari anyway.
Like, there's no dispute.
It hasn't been a good decade for Ferrari.
Does that have an impact on the people buying 799
lightweight Harcourt Ferrari?
Has it stopped people buying?
Will it have an impact?
I don't think so.
I think that Ferrari haven't won a world championship
for the best part of 20 years.
I don't remember which year.
Was it 2007?
No, it was 2007.
So yeah, that was 19 years.
And has that hurt them in recent years?
If you think about the cars that have come out since then...
No.
It hasn't hurt anything.
They turn their SP3s.
They have no connection to Formula One or anything.
And yet they're...
They have won things like Le Mans stuff like that.
So they're not completely washed.
No, no.
And the 2063s have won a lot.
They've got a very successful Challenge Series.
You know, one of the biggest topics obviously is F80.
We haven't talked about it, but there's a lot of chatter about
is there actually the demand for F80s?
Oh my gosh, it's a...
You know, it's not the prettiest thing
and it's only got a V6.
How can anybody possibly want one?
But I reverse that into the fact that Ferrari have...
So I can tell you, by the fact that I've not been offered an F80,
it means there are at least 799 people with a lot more Ferraris than I have, right?
And all of those people will be in a position where they are lucky to have
a selection of LaFerrari Enzo F50, 812 cop, F12 TDF, 509 GTO,
Pura Sangue, Dodici Chilendry.
They've got garages with V12s and they've got a lot of different
styling and formats of cars.
And for each of them, the F80 is something different in the collection.
So to the actual buyer of that car who has a garage with 10 plus Ferraris in it,
it's something different to the others.
It's not trying to be that one car thing.
And I think what happened a lot with F80 especially with social media
and social media didn't exist in the same way back in like the LaFerrari day.
You know, an owner wasn't posting a picture commenting their opinions on it then
like they would now or a fan.
Very, very different.
People didn't have the platform in the way they do now.
Any buyer of an F80 themselves, it's an additional car.
They're not looking at it of do I get an F80 or do I get a W1?
And that's my only car in my garage.
That's not the mindset.
However, you mentioned earlier that the results of say Formula One might
drive desirability later down the line.
The people commenting, especially a lot of the young people commenting on
social media.
An Instagram feed is the equivalent of a poster in a kid's bedroom
from all those years ago that people refer back to.
So do you think occasionally in producing cars that maybe don't make the
community as happy that could actually have a long term effect on the brand?
I think it's impossible to predict.
You know, just keep throwing out cars and seeing what happens.
Well, there's two or multiple different perspectives here.
Go to the F40.
Nobody thought the F40 was pretty at the time.
Now they're two and a bit million, right?
And incredibly high demand.
Whether people liked it or not then has little impact now.
That's one perspective.
Another perspective is the design topic.
And obviously I'm very spoiled because I work with all these brands.
I meet the heads of design at each of these companies, including Flavio Manzone
and the team at Ferrari.
And I've got to know them quite well and speak often with Flavio and also with
Carlo Palazzani, who's responsible for the exterior design of quite a few of
the models here and now a lot more.
And it's really interesting when you talk with the guys and you understand
more of what they're trying to do.
Take, for example, the 849 Testarossa, which has been very critically received.
It's fair to say.
I put a picture of that on screen for our viewers if you haven't seen that car
yet as well.
There are a lot of opinions on the design and I'm avoiding my own opinion on
this topic.
But what I find so interesting is they're not looking at this.
We must make something that's super nostalgic and it looks like the cars
we've always made.
They're thinking, how do we make a car that in 20 years was revolutionary
ahead of its time and looks completely unique to anything else?
And F80 is the same story and lots of these cars are similar.
They're also thinking to our collector who has an SF90XX, we don't want the
new one that follows, you know, the vanilla model of the next generation
to just look like a slightly watered down XX.
We want it to have its own character and its own identity.
So that's why it's something radically different.
I think a lot of confusion and I'm the first to admit Ferrari naming leaves
some questions.
849 Testarossa, people hear the name Testarossa.
They think of the 80s car with the slats down the side and Miami Vice and
that wedge shape.
But they forget in the 80s when the Testarossa came out, how could they
release something like that that looks nothing like the legendary 250
Testarossa with its racing success and that smooth curvy body shape, right?
Testarossa isn't that.
Testarossa is the red head, the red cam covers on the engine.
Testarossa is the mindset of the car.
It's supposed to be iconic and different.
And I, I mean, I wasn't around in the 80s when the original car came out
to be able to know.
Sounds like you were.
I was locked in.
Like an embryo, just looking out.
You know, I think it's a mindset thing.
So we're in a time right now where there is a lot of nostalgia in the car world
and actually Flavio told me this and it was so true.
It was like a revelation when he mentioned it.
If you go back to those kinds of times or even in our era, 458 speciales,
we were so excited about every car that came out, right?
They were getting faster.
They were getting cooler.
They were getting noisier.
They were getting more dramatic.
They were just getting better in every possible way because the industry
allowed that to happen.
Today, we are petrified about what comes next because it's going to be quieter.
It's going to be a bit less good.
It's going to be a bit less good is a great way to describe it.
So this whole industry has gone in 10 years from being so excited about what's next
to how does a manufacturer make that next product exciting?
Does that make the likes of the 675 LT, the SLS, even the XX?
Does that make them a lot more valuable in the future?
Do you think you can predict that those cars are going to go to the moon?
I don't think we have any idea.
It depends so much on the industry, whether future generations care.
There are so many things you can look at, antiques, old watches.
There are different segments, right?
Where there's very little that you could probably have predicted at the time
that would make that, let's say, a good investment for the future.
So I think with cars, it depends on unknowns.
I think we're in this bubble now where people have been like invest, invest, invest,
and the 458 Speciale is a wonderful example because if you factor in inflation
and if you factor in the running costs, servicing, maintenance and all of that,
I've bought this car with a massive discount from you.
Inflation alone, £250,000 in 2015 is £340,000 in today's money with the Bank of England inflation calculator.
Which is where the likes of auto trader and car gurus, et cetera, think 458s are.
But I found it very interesting in your depreciation video of saying
just how different stuff might be trading too.
Oh, trading prices. It's so difficult when you look at asking prices.
When you have a massive pool of cars, right?
When you're looking at a new or a three-year-old three series, there's loads of them.
So you can get a very realistic price point.
They trade at what they're asking or roughly, you know, maybe there's a small margin.
When there's five of a car, just because somebody stuck,
if I stuck my SF90XX online for 10 million quid,
doesn't mean someone's going to pay me 10 million quid for it.
That's not how it works, right?
It will only sell if the market is, if it's right, if it's right for the market.
Now, I had a lot of people in one of my, in my recent video on this sort of topic,
asking me about the Zenvo.
It's impossible to say what the Zenvo is worth because there's not been one that's traded.
I mean, that's back.
I know what it's worth because I've had private offers and I'll keep them to myself.
And I'm not unhappy about it, but in that way.
But it's not something that you can just look at some sales record and say, yeah,
this is what that car is worth.
You don't, no idea.
Is it insane to you?
Was there ever a point that even with the channel's growth,
you didn't think that you would be able to justify buying a hypercar for the first time?
And how hard is it to make a hypercar financially make sense on the channel?
It's very difficult because if we go very briefly into the business side of a YouTube channel,
you're not going to get substantially more views.
You will get more views just because a car costs more money.
If the content is good.
So maybe five years ago, it was much more the case.
But my channel is very much about supercars.
The tagline for the channel is living the supercar dream.
It has been, I think, since maybe 2012, 2013, a long time ago.
And I've tried to stay very true to that.
And I think it's part of the appeal of the channel is giving the real insight into these cars.
And even if it hurts to say how much an SF 90 is depreciated, you know, it's honest, it's transparent.
And that's the goal.
I think that obviously you want to have like a halo position, almost like a shop window.
You might put something really interesting in the window of your high street shop.
Not because that's what you're trying to sell, but because it gets somebody's attention to come in.
You know what I mean?
It's almost even the same with any halo products, even if a football team has a superstar.
It's of course they're going to play, but it's also a halo product to get more fans buying the t-shirts,
the football shirts and coming to the games and whatever it is.
So I think that for me, the Zenvo very much has filled that spot.
It's meant an opportunity to participate in some really high level events, which has given a new arm of content.
It's also grown my personal network, which has led to more opportunities and things both within and outside of the YouTube world.
It's meant, even I'm going to say more faith and trust from manufacturers and from private collectors,
because there is a mindset once you own and experience a car of that value and you know what things cost.
If it goes wrong, if anything happens, you have a different level of respect for it than somebody who's just jumped in never driving it before.
It's a real thing because you start to realize, oh, if I, you know, if I did squeeze through that gap,
if I caught something on the edge, that's six months and a hundred thousand to fix it, you know, that's insane.
But it's similar with the SF90XX.
The front splitter of the SF90XX terrifies me because it's one piece going from the headlight all the way around underneath and up to the other headlight.
If you caught that, I don't know. I'm sure that's 50 grand.
You mentioned a minute ago that you even have been lucky enough in building your network to know people like the head of design at Ferrari and
I've got all these amazing concepts.
But when you get into a brand like Zenvo, which is low numbers, it's a bit more boutique, right?
It's a boutique supercar brand.
It's on a lot of smaller scale.
The cars are incredibly a lot of money and they're normally a thousand horsepower and crazy and nuts.
You typically then get to meet the founder, the boss of the company and build a bit of a relationship.
So let's get on to the Hamilton Collection Conings Egg debate that's just been all over social media,
which for anybody that doesn't know is essentially a collector from America that I'm pretty sure that you visited before.
He's very vocal and social media makes a lot of videos.
Posted a video just out of the blue, I think it was.
Annoyed at Conan's Egg and then the boss of Conan's Egg, Christian Von Cohn,
literally filmed a video basically going back at him and the whole world went,
Whoa, conflict.
Yeah, drama, drama.
I definitely think before getting into that fully with a company like Zenvo,
one of my favorite things about Zenvo is knowing the whole company and not just like you said from the top level.
Lucky to know those, you know, Jens, Angela, Pushkar, the team right at the top,
but also through design, Christian and Frederick at Zenvo spent a lot of time with them.
Down to the guys who come and work on the car, Miquel and Lofty, for example, at Zenvo.
I've met them many times and I love understanding their perspective on it
and telling them about what I use the car for as well.
So I really, really enjoy that boutique company.
And the reason I mentioned this as well is because it ties completely in to Steve's issue with Conan's Egg.
What would I understand of it?
And I'm in a strange position because I know Steve and his team at Hamilton Collection very well.
I've probably done 10 videos together, done loads of drives with the guys.
I also know Christian and a lot of the people at Conan's Egg very well
because obviously I've been filming videos with them for, I don't even know, more than 10 years.
I think the first time I went to the Conan's Egg factory was probably 2013, something like that.
I've probably been basically every year for something since, so I know them all very well.
But I also know the previous owner of Steve's Regera that he was talking about.
I also know the dealer that sold that car and the dealer he sold all of his new cars from.
I've filmed multiple times with him, so I'm like, I was seeing all of this happen.
I was like, why are you guys not on the telephone?
What was it?
So effectively doesn't know.
Effectively, Steve posted a picture very meme-like.
That Steve, if you know him, annoyed at Conan's Egg because he bought a Regera 18 months ago
that's had a few issues along the way.
His yes go has taken longer than he initially felt it should arrive.
And his Jamira, which was released back at the beginning of 2020,
has obviously is a long way from materializing.
And this is why I mentioned about Boutique Company.
Talk about the Jamira first.
Kearny's Egg are so aggressively forward with their technology.
They go so far into the future that a car like the Jamira,
you might remember it was originally introduced with this tiny friendly giant little three-cylinder engine
that it was going to have and still be massive power.
And of course, that brings challenges about it.
So they introduced the yes goes power plant, the V8.
And most customers obviously lent it that direction.
So then they're kind of redeveloping it.
So, you know, yes, it's six months in, but they have running cars now.
And, you know, the cars will start going six months, six years.
It's a long time to wait for a car six years.
You know, Pagani released Utopia, delivered the first one within 12 months.
Ferrari introduced F80 last October.
The first customer cars are done.
So the industry has become normalized.
It takes about a year for a car to arrive.
But Conan's Egg with their technology, it takes longer.
Small company, how much testing can you do?
You need the miles on the cars to discover what's wrong with them.
So that's the Jamera side.
Similarly, Regera, it has this thing called Conan's Egg Direct Drive.
Effectively, no traditional gearbox.
You mash your foot down.
It stays at high revs and you accelerate all the way from 0 to 400.
Crazy. I've been so lucky to be in a Regera.
It just goes...
It just keeps going.
It goes and it's very, very fast.
But the reality is once you get to that level of technology,
whether it's the Zenbo, whether it's the GMAT 50 that's here for my friend,
whether it's a Regera, these cars are really at the forefront.
They're really testing new things.
And they don't have Volkswagen level testing budgets.
So they do go wrong.
Problems do happen.
And if you like to drive your cars hard, they spend more time at workshops.
And I often joke.
It's funny to say this on video, but basically the more expensive a car is,
the more goes wrong with it.
It's normal.
You know, your £30,000 Renault 5 electric car is just going to run.
Just going to go.
But your £3 million or whatever, that's going to be at the shop every month or two.
But do you think that, as you mentioned,
that part of the enjoyment of owning the crazy car is connecting with the brand,
the people and everybody involved in it.
So do you think that's almost like Steve doing that to a brand like Conan's Egg
and the people is almost like deleting an optional extra pack
that you're not no longer going to have this amazing relationship?
We don't know what happened behind the scenes, right?
Like you said, Christian went and made a video after Steve's picture.
And I think you talk about Regiras and I'm not in any way trying to knock
Conan's Egg as a company for this because I know a lot of the people that work there.
But Regiras have not been the world's most reliable car, right?
But none of these very high-end cars necessarily are.
I think Bugatti are probably the number one for this.
Bugatti are the number one for cars, but they still have issues.
They're not like I've been on rallies where there's been a problem,
you know, car has to retire from the event.
But Regiras were particularly difficult and a lot of Regiras.
And it's been interesting watching some of the comments coming in,
but from what I know from my experience and what I hear people talking about
and my own times I've gone to drive cars.
Listen, there are many hypercars I've gone to drive and film a video with
and the day's been cancelled last minute.
Really? Many, many.
But because there's no content, there's no storyline,
there's no video that tells you it didn't work, right?
So if you're like your average, I say your average,
if you're a supercar owner, you've got one special car in the garage at home,
you join like supercar driver, you're going to go to the coffee meets
every other morning, you're going to enjoy them in the car.
If you're someone that thinks screw it, instead of having five cars,
I've got one garage space, I'm going to buy a hypercar.
Do you think that guy is getting to many of the coffee events regularly?
I think you just have to be prepared that you'll start your day
and you might not get home.
I think it's the same with lots of these cars.
Listen, I don't want to single out any particular brand or any particular model,
but many brands you know of and you really like,
there are times when I have gone to film a video and I have not got back with the car.
It's happened more often than you would think.
Or maybe even not even been able to start.
There was one car, I'm not going to say what it is, I'm sorry to be very boring,
but there was one particular car I flew to, car had an issue day over back home,
flew to again, car had an issue day over back home, flew to again,
car had an issue, we rescheduled it to the next day, a hypercar.
From a bigger, a more well-known, more higher production number manufacturer than Koenigsegg.
And that happens.
And it's frustrating, but it's also kind of life with these things.
So I think with the Steve and Christian thing,
I wish the guys had just got on a phone call because this isn't something for the public.
You know, the public doesn't understand when they see this what's happening between,
you know, Christian says, for example, Steve hasn't paid for the car,
but why would Steve pay for the car?
Because the invoice might have only just been sent, it's not due yet because the car's not finished, right?
Regiras.
There are other owners who posted about how I know Regiras are the most reliable cars in the world,
but if you happen to know, said owners maybe have an investment in the company,
so obviously they're going to talk positively about it.
It's just a, you lose the context online.
So this to me was a silly thing and I would love to see the guys make friends,
sort it out and do it privately, not on the internet.
Being there done that with public, public spats over stupid things,
it's not worth it for anybody.
I really hope to bring you some more inspirational guests soon.
Tens of these.
How many of those collections are from legitimate money?
Versus illegitimate money.
Like it's a genuine question.
I like this question.
Of course, high value, easily movable assets.
Invite the wrong money.
Of course.
Now don't get me wrong.
There are a lot of very legitimate collectors.
I think the easiest and simplest way to answer it is if you Google the person,
you can't find anything.
There's probably something suspicious going on because it's hidden.
Listen, I don't think this is specific to cars, artwork, jewellery,
these kinds of topics.
If somebody's trying to move money around, keep it secret.
It's a fairly easy thing to do.
Ship it from here to there, register it in this country,
do something this, that and the other and boom,
you end up with a car that you've cleaned the money through, right?
So of course they do attract ill-gotten gains.
Have you ever had like an authority ask you a question about someone or a collection you've ever been to?
I don't think I have.
No, never.
I have pondered if that would happen for sure, but it's never happened.
I've found myself in situations where I've worked out something doesn't feel right.
Of course, being around so many of these events and you don't really know what to do.
I try my best to, if I know or if I have a feeling that somebody is there's something wrong,
I'm hardly, I'm not going to put that person on video because the last thing I want to do is bring attention to something suspicious.
I've done the same thing with podcasts, funny enough.
So you can completely rate, but who are we to make that, you know, we're not the FBI,
we can't research somebody.
We're not able to, you know, I have once or twice film videos with collectors or with private owners
who have turned out to be involved in something untoward.
If a collector invites me to film their garage, if I send back, here's the questionnaire and here's the background checks
that you need to fill out for me to come and visit.
They don't want to let me come and visit.
Nobody would.
So you can't share that content.
My content is always about the cars, about the cars, not the people.
So that's why I try and make it.
Sometimes it's, you know, collaboration, of course, case in point, sitting right here, us together.
But it's about the car and ultimately I try and keep it that way.
And that's why there's very little promoting even who the owner is or what their business is or anything to do with them
because it's not really about that.
And I, you know, the last thing I want to do is risk entrapping a viewer into something that's at the end of the day going to cause a problem.
Have you ever been threatened as a result of a video you've made?
More times than one?
I have definitely had some situations.
Oh, this could be a scoop for you in a half.
I did have a situation where I filmed a video with an owner.
We walked around together in the video, covered up one or two things, photo thing with his name on, etc.
And then he walked out of the room.
I filmed my video, said farewell.
That was that.
When I uploaded the video, screaming on the phone, lawyer threatening to sue me, I had no permission to film the video, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
When we had walked around together staging the camera angles, it really made me think that that's not the kind of, that's not the reason I do this.
I don't do this to deal with that situation.
I wanted to do this to share something really cool, his unique collection of cars, get people inspired by cars, share something knowledgeable and informative about them.
And that really frustrated me because there was never any malicious intent from my side.
I have no idea what changed.
But we're talking, you know, film one day, upload the next day.
So it was literally 24 hours after I've walked out of the garage where I was invited to film a video.
I'm getting screamed at for filming a video.
And, you know, of course, there have been a couple of things like that, but you never want that situation.
Why would you?
At the end of the day, I always believe that the coolest thing about the automotive world is how it brings people together, how it is.
Like, it's so passion driven that everybody from any walk of life in any country, any background can bond over a shared love of cars.
So it should be entirely positive.
And that's always the message I try and show on the channel.
And that's actually, I'd love to just mention on a personal note that I once went to a Virginia water car meet with my dad when I was 17, I think it was.
And you both took our cars and that was the first time I ever ever saw you in the flesh.
And went up to everything.
And now I'm in the back of the van speaking to all the guys used to go and do that.
And that is because of cars.
It's because of a shared passion of cars.
So the reason I got so excited about mentioning that is because I also want to get into briefly the reunion trip you've just done with Sam, Paul said, because that was so cool.
I feel like there was a resurgence of people that might have even slipped into not even watching that much YouTube anymore that came back for that trip.
It was very nostalgic.
And this goes also to what I said about the design of new cars, nostalgia at the minute in any industry, seeing collaborations, all products bought but brought back.
And in the YouTube world, redoing something we did 10 years ago was really fun.
And I look at a lot of the things I used to do.
We mentioned about the 15 year ago road trip in the Aston.
And I remember that day very well.
I came in a car next egg.
Actually, I came with Jens, who is now the boss of Zembo.
So it's funny how things go around in circles because that was quite a long time ago.
And you probably remember Passens, Agira RS was there that day.
That's what I was filming mostly.
But I decided or I had suggested two or three months ago to Paul, Supercars of London, Sam, seen through Glass and Seb Delaney.
Wouldn't it be cool if we did a 10 year anniversary run of the trip that we did back in late 2015, which for me was, I want to say, some kind of peak YouTube from my personal experience.
Because that was when I was lucky to buy basically all at once.
The 675 LT Coupe, a 981 came in GT4 and Ferrari FF Blue Crew, the Blue Crew.
So I had my first limited series supercar, my first Porsche, my first Ferrari, and it was 12 days, all three cars.
And immediately took delivery of the LT and the FF.
Well, picked up the FF in England, took delivery of the LT having trucked it over to south of Germany, drove them to Italy, drove them to Monaco, flew back home,
picked up the GT4 and said to the guys, would you like to come for a run down to Monaco?
It's funny, actually, I was reading with Paul back our message chat history.
It's funny, isn't it, how these things stick around so you can go back 10 years.
And it was me being like, you've got to do this, come on, go full time, get involved and do YouTube.
And back then, obviously persuaded the guys to come down.
And we stayed at Seb's place. Seb had done a lot of work with me prior to that.
So this time around, it was like, well, we're literally going to do the same thing, aren't we, guys?
We're going to go to the same places, the same hotels, the same rooms, the same stops and end of the same place.
And it was really fun as well.
It was really fun to do it.
And it was even more fun to see how much the audience enjoyed it.
Is that the definition of living the supercar dream?
I think so, going on a road trip with your friends.
What can get better than that?
See, to most people that are lucky enough to get into a sports car
or any car that they're passionate about from any level of motoring
has the ability to get on a road trip and do that with their friends
and go somewhere called, even if it's UK based, you know, like the NC 500
or somewhere in Wales or whatever, it's an accessible thing to do.
As is going to many car shows.
So going to Goodwood Festival of Speed, going potentially to SEMA,
which is further afield, although it's a bit harder to get into SEMA.
Going to Monterey Car Week, personal favorite over the last few years.
We mentioned Geneva from the past, not like that's really a thing anymore.
But in your experience, if you were to only pick two or three that you could do next year,
that if you were your average living the supercar sports car dream person
should go and do, what would they be?
I think generally the really big over the top events like Car Week
are almost too complicated for that.
Oh, really?
I think it's too hard to it's very expensive and it's hard to really enjoy the car
in the traditional sense.
I think that my favorite thing to do with cars and especially with friends
is to go on a road trip always.
I will always pick that over anything else.
Goodwood is a personal favorite event just because there's so much going on.
You know, it's an amazing mix of cars and people, historic race cars,
brand new hypercars, the show stands.
You can go look at everything from old Formula One cars through to the latest
electric catchback, whatever floats your boat.
My personal favorite at Goodwood was actually Lozante.
I'm not very good at saying it.
Sorry, Andy, because I know Andy 74.
Andy Bruce watches these videos.
Lozante.
Yes, Lozante.
Luckily, I just messaged Andy and then I found myself on the balcony of the stand
and then suddenly one was going up the hill in front of me.
I was like, this is so cool.
I think Goodwood this year, 2025, was one of the peak times I've been for me.
I just thoroughly enjoyed it more than others.
What about if you were to go further?
If you had to pick one of the US events, what would that kind of be?
I think the thing that we forget from a European perspective is the size of the
United States.
Whether you're in the Northeast at Dream Ride in Connecticut or whether you're at
something taking place in Miami or something in Texas or something in
Monterey, there's a long distance between these places, right?
Going from the Northeast to California is like driving from London to Athens or
something.
So if you suddenly said what car events are over the whole of Europe, it's a lot.
Obviously, car week is amazing.
I don't get me wrong, but it becomes more amazing the more connected you are, the
more events you're going to, the more people you know, the houses and that kind
of stuff, which is a very big part of it.
Obviously, from a car spotter's instinct, I'm still a car spotter at heart.
Going standing at the side of the road is my favorite thing in Monterey.
Just watching all the cool cars driving past.
I've been to many different places and do you know what I always think with
events, the best memories and moments I have is the stuff that I didn't overhype
and over plan.
It just happened to go to something and just with a cool group of people, nice
cars, good weather day and just enjoyed it.
So it's very hard, I think, to say you must go to this event, that event.
You know, I particularly enjoyed last year.
I went to RetroMobile for the first time I've been for ages.
It takes place in Paris in February, not America, but there is actually about to
be one in New York, which I'm sure will be amazing.
As the name suggests, RetroMobile is mostly classics, mostly big dealers putting
on amazing presentations of the cars they're going to sell, but there's also
an RMS auction, a lot of other stuff going on.
And I really enjoyed it because there's not much else going on in February.
You know, what car events are we going to here?
Geneva is no better.
Yeah, so it brought a lot of people together and there's a lot of atmosphere.
It felt over the whole of Paris with different events happening.
And I think it's the same in the US.
I went to Moda Miami last year.
Moda Miami was an amazing couple of days based at the Biltmore Hotel and Coral Gables,
again, an auction, but also show field concourse, a driving segment,
a bit of rally, lots of friends around with nice cars shipped in for the occasion
because the start of March in Miami is a pretty nice time to be there.
You know, it's not hot in the mid and it's not got any hurricanes like the summer.
So I would take being there that time of year any day of the week.
No cars for Freddie to buy at that point.
Yeah, so I really, really, really enjoyed that event last year.
And we'll hopefully be doing it again.
I like mixing it up a bit.
You know, I keep a massive list of events myself that like you can probably imagine around this time of year.
We've already started for next year.
We just write out everything that we did the last couple of years.
What are their dates for next year?
So that we've got this whole picture and overview.
Do you go?
And it's massive to revival.
Haven't done for a long time.
Because that for me is one that I properly enjoyed this year was getting dressed up with my partner, Ed and going to revival.
It was just like, there's something about that.
There's something that I think makes it just it's a bit like the XX version of the SF 90.
I feel like there's something about revival that people just have to experience.
I'm going to give you a slightly different perspective.
For me, going to a car show is what I literally do for my job to go film a video.
And I tend to focus on modern cars.
And there isn't really a content storyline for me normally around revival.
If there was, I would certainly go.
But on a day off, I'm not going to go to a car show.
If that makes sense.
Does that mean that you've lost the love compared to what you had at the beginning for what you do?
Not at all.
It's just that it changes what the day is like.
And we touched on this a little bit earlier.
It means now going to a car show is that I will be.
Dragged into a lot of things, not necessarily unhappily about it.
But you know, brands and people want to show their products and that kind of things like, oh, can you come here?
Can you come there?
Can you do this?
Can you do that?
Lots of conversations with passersby, which is wonderful.
And I really enjoy it.
But it's not what got me into going to car shows when you're just a private individual walking around a car show looking at stuff.
You know, I can't go and have like a quiet day at a car show.
But it hasn't because I've got like this friend that I grew up with called Brad and fishing.
And his dream was to be like sponsored by a fishing brand and win competitions and make the thing that he loved doing, which is car fishing like his full time job.
And he's of a level of talent and know that he could do that.
But he chooses not to now because he was like, now that I can do that, it's actually ruining the enjoyment of the thing for me.
Have you had that with cars?
The thing I enjoy the most with cars is just going for a drive somewhere cool without the camera on.
So I still love the cars and I still love the driving and the travel and going to different places.
But the reality of having a big platform and reaching a lot of people is that you lose and this goes for the whole of your life.
The thing that you lose that comes with that is the privacy element.
So you lose the ability to just be a person blending off into the background, right?
And it's I'm not I don't I'm not complaining about it.
I'm not saying that I don't like that, but it really changes how you do it.
You know, in my early days running around London car spotting, I was just me with a camera running around London.
If I do it now, I can promise you because occasionally I do go into London.
I can't get the shot because right when I want to film something, somebody will come up and start talking or, you know, maybe want to take a selfie or something.
And I always try and oblige, but it means I can't film.
It's the same at Goodwood. It's the same at any big event.
I can't go to that event and like do what I used to do purely because of the interaction.
If I if you knew how many times we're mid filming something and somebody just comes up and starts talking in the middle of the video and whatever.
It always gives me a little chuckle because you only know me because you know that I make videos and you've just walked into a video.
So I always it gives me a little laugh to myself.
I think that on Beat Meets Food sometimes. It's the favorite channel of mine.
You know what's happening there.
Yeah, you completely didn't think about it.
And like I say, it's amazing to me and it's so cool hearing the stories and, you know, meeting people all across the world.
Like it's it's it's one of the coolest things about doing this as a job and a business and a career or whatever you want to call it.
It's that global connection and talking to so many different people and understanding so much about the world as well.
But it does make it incredibly hard to do these events in the way that I used to do them when I was just doing it because I enjoyed it.
Which means that you've had to adapt over time.
So what is the final adaptation?
Because I know you've spoke to me a few times about the fact of when is the end of Schmi 150?
Do you go out with some Tim Scott style video?
Tom Scott style video where you're in the SF 19.
It's got weather balloons on it and you're taking it up and driving some are moving with it in the outer layers of space.
Or does it continue and continuing to continue the more you find new things to do?
Do you even know the answer to that yet?
I definitely don't.
I have a massive project underway at the moment that I've hinted a little bit towards in my videos this year that I've been working on something.
I haven't revealed it yet.
And then by something I don't just mean another car because that's that wouldn't consider that a massive project.
And that will keep me busy for a few years on the channel, like content wise and video wise and storyline wise.
But you have to constantly evolve, right?
You have to do something for a period and then you go on to do something else.
And I think if I look at my content over the years, gone from car spotting to owning some luxury cars to doing lots of manufacturer press drives,
focusing more on road trips to moving more into my collection and the collection of others to now a little bit more behind the scenes life with these different cars.
Because you constantly have to change and you keep it interesting by doing so and you keep yourself interested by doing so.
And therefore, if I can keep myself interested, I'm going to keep going.
So do you think that if we pull up on the same day next year and open the back doors and click roll on the cameras, that it will be this that we see?
Next year? Well, a couple of different cars maybe.
Do you think it'll be here?
Wait and see.
Tim, thank you for joining me for the second time in the back of my van studio.
I'm sure that there's lots of clips that we've annoyed people of all over social media and answering the actual question about the brand again.
However, other than that, the everything that you give us an insight to and your whole story to now is the true epitome of road to success.
So thank you so much for joining me and telling your story again.
Thank you.
About this episode
Shmee150 joins Benedict Fowler to discuss the intricacies of car collecting, spec choices, and the evolving automotive landscape. They dive into the challenges of building a supercar collection, the impact of social media on car values, and the significance of car shows. Shmee shares personal anecdotes about his experiences with various brands, including Ferrari and Koenigsegg, and reflects on the balance between passion and business in the automotive world. The conversation also touches on the future of car events and the importance of community among car enthusiasts.
12-cylinder
Beast of the Green Hell
collectible
Festival of Speed
Geneva Motor Show
hybridized
Koenigsegg
limited edition
limited numbers
limited series
Aston Martin V8 Vantage
Audi RS4
BMW 6 Series
BMW M3
Ferrari 365 GTB/4
Ferrari 458
Ferrari 550 Barchetta Pininfarina
Ferrari 575 M Superamerica
Ferrari 599
Ferrari 812 Superfast
Ferrari F12tdf
Ferrari F40
Ferrari F50
Ferrari FF
Ferrari LaFerrari
Ferrari Testarossa
Lamborghini Murcielago
Lamborghini Veneno
McLaren 600LT
McLaren 650S
McLaren 765LT
McLaren P1
Porsche 911
Tata Motors Aria
Original notes
Check out Tweak: https://www.tweakuk.com/
In today’s episode, we sit down with Shmee150 for a deep dive into the evolution of modern car culture, the rise and fall of iconic motor shows, the realities of owning limited-run supercars, and the behind-the-scenes moments that shaped one of YouTube’s biggest automotive channels.
From the chaos of sprinting through Geneva with a camera, to the viral “Ronaldo Bugatti” drama, to why Ferrari’s F80 and modern limited-production cars are so misunderstood—this conversation is packed with insight for enthusiasts, collectors, and creators alike.
Whether you’re fascinated by supercar markets, YouTube strategy, or the future of car events, this episode delivers real value from start to finish.
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