From Car Throttle to Donut, countless YouTube creators are fleeing. But is this a new trend or a tale as old as venture capital?
Where people once got their car news, reviews, and opinions from a few recognizable media empires, today, that’s all changing. An explosion of YouTube channels has been seeing momentum as brands that aren’t just covering car culture but defining it.
This has caused no shortage of consternation for those older, established brands, but lately, even upstart car YouTube channels have had troubles. They’re suffering through a phenomenon playing out across countless “Why I Quit” videos that have collectively served up more beef than the combined discographies of Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
Many of the world’s most popular creators are fleeing the channels they helped make famous. They’re going solo, often not long after those former channels received high-dollar acquisitions. According to endless ponderings and pontifications from YouTubers, influencers, and commenters, profit-minded venture capitalists are sucking the life out of some of the internet’s most popular channels.
Private equity certainly has been blamed for destroying some of our most beloved things over the years, from RadioShack to Toys R Us, but is there something special afoot here in the world of automotive media? Or is this just a new chord added to a familiar and unpleasant tune?
Early momentum
Much of the talk lately has been about Donut Media, a YouTube channel launched by Matt Levin in 2015 that’s been shedding talent left and right. Boasting nearly 9 million subscribers, Donut has had numerous one-off viral videos over the years, but its ongoing series “Up to Speed,” hosted by James Pumphrey, has been a consistent hit. Donut Media was acquired by private equity firm Recurrent Ventures in 2021.
But this trend, such as it is, reaches far beyond that one channel. It’s a little tricky to say exactly when this all kicked off, but according to Tiernan A.I., former technical producer at Donut, the canary in the coal mine was Alex Kersten.
Kersten was a major contributor at Car Throttle, an automotive website that launched in 2009 and, since kicking off its YouTube channel in 2011, has grown to over 3 million subscribers.
But Kersten left the site back in 2022, after a decade there, to launch his own YouTube channel, Autoalex Cars. Two other popular hosts, Ethan Smale and Jack Joy, also left Car Throttle quite publicly in April of this year.
“I feel like that was kind of the first big one, where it was someone who not only left but is also publicly expressing some of the reasons why they left,” A.I. said.
Kersten’s departure came three years after Car Throttle was acquired by Dennis Publishing, which, at the time, also owned major British motoring publications Auto Express and Evo. In 2023, Car Throttle was acquired again, this time by Crash Media Group.
“Then there’s sort of like this slow percolation until you get the situation at Hoonigan,” A.I. said. Hoonigan, the brand made famous by Ken Block, was acquired by aftermarket wheel company Wheel Pros in 2021, itself backed by the private equity group Clearlake Capital. Two years later, after pruning away much of the enthusiast-minded content that formerly defined Hoonigan, Wheel Pros rebranded itself as Hoonigan.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/7/24214600/car-youtube-quit-donut-car-throttle-hoonigan