Why Car YouTubers Are Going Broke (Everyone Is Selling)

0:00 Welcome back to the Graham Stefen Show and unfortunately

0:02 the car market in 2026 is absolutely You

0:06 have car prices that are falling at some

0:08 of the fastest levels that we have seen in years.

0:10 New car prices on the other hand cost more than they ever have.

0:14 Monthly payments are at record levels as well.

0:17 And that leads to this perfect storm that is causing videos like this.

0:21 It's titled Why Most Car YouTubers are quietly going broke.

0:24 Everyone is selling.

0:25 So, with that said, I want to comment on this because

0:27 I know quite a few people mentioned in this video personally,

0:30 and I want to set the record straight as soon as you

0:32 hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't done that already.

0:35 That's all I ask for and as a thank you for doing that.

0:38 Here's a picture of a Mini Cooper.

0:39 So, thanks so much.

0:40 And also, big thank you to Built for sponsoring this video.

0:42 But more on that later.

0:44 Let's begin.

0:44 More people are falling behind on their car payments.

0:47 And when that happens, lenders can step in and repossess those vehicles.

0:51 Experts say it's not necessarily a sign of economic collapse,

0:55 but it's definitely a warning sign that the economy is slowing down.

0:59 Look, here's what happened.

1:00 People bought and paid these absurd prices for cars between 2021 and 2023 when

1:06 all of a sudden a used car was selling for more than the new car.

1:11 So why didn't people just go and buy new cars instead?

1:14 Well, because they couldn't build them fast enough.

1:16 And so the used market was basically filling that spot.

1:19 People would go and they'd pay $70,000

1:20 for a pickup truck that was actually worth only $50,000.

1:24 Lenders were going and issuing these loans.

1:26 And then when the market corrected,

1:28 you have these people who still have this like

1:30 $60,000 balance on a pickup truck that's only worth $30,000.

1:34 And so what do they do when they can't sell the car?

1:37 They can no longer afford the payments.

1:39 They just stop making the payments and they try to give the car back.

1:41 That's what's happening more than ever these days.

1:44 A few years ago, Car YouTube looked like one of the safest bets on the platform.

1:48 Fast forward to today,

1:49 and a lot of those same creators are in very different situations.

1:53 Cars that were once called long-term keeps have been sold.

1:56 Entire collections have quietly shrunk.

1:58 Upload schedules have slowed down.

2:00 And in some cases, creators have openly admitted they came

2:03 far closer to financial collapse than anyone realized at the time.

2:06 Here's the thing.

2:07 A lot of this just had to do with everything being shut down.

2:09 And every single YouTube channel out there saw a triple increase in views.

2:13 I mean, my views went through the roof because everyone was locked up inside.

2:18 Everyone cared about finance content and you

2:20 could just sit there and make a video.

2:21 It's a lot of just artificial demand that never

2:24 would have existed outside of people being stuck at home.

2:27 And these car YouTubers benefited the most

2:29 from this because they were able to buy a car,

2:32 monetize it on YouTube during a time when views were

2:35 triple at the same time that the car that they

2:37 bought is now worth more than what they paid

2:40 because the used car market kept going up in price.

2:42 And so a lot of people just doubled down on their content,

2:45 they posted so much and by the time everything reopened,

2:49 they had made so much money or gotten so burnt out that when the views go down,

2:53 they don't have as much motivation to keep posting.

2:55 But we'll continue.

2:56 A lot of creators have since said that 2020

2:58 and 2021 were the most profitable years they've ever had.

3:02 And at the time, there wasn't much reason to think it would slow down.

3:05 The car market only made that confidence stronger.

3:07 Used and exotic car prices were climbing fast, and by late 2021,

3:11 [music] they were sitting about 21% above normal levels.

3:14 In some cases, supercars were actually selling

3:17 for more [music] used than they cost new.

3:19 Yeah, a lot of these car prices though didn't make sense.

3:21 And a lot of these car YouTubers had

3:23 the relationships and the allocations ready to go

3:26 to be able to basically pick up a lot of really cool cars at MSRP.

3:30 I mean, imagine buying a Ferrari SF90 in 2021 for $500,000.

3:36 And the moment you take delivery, it's worth a million dollar.

3:40 So you've just made $500,000 buying a car.

3:44 And then you could make videos on the car.

3:45 You probably make another $100,000 doing that.

3:47 And then you could sell the car, roll it into another one,

3:51 and start the process over again because you got another allocation.

3:53 I mean, there are so many ways to make

3:55 money during that time that were just not normal.

3:58 It's never normal to be able to buy an allocation like that and double in price

4:02 overnight when now look at the prices have crashed through the roof on an SF90.

4:06 But you lost a lot of money unfortunately doing that.

4:09 Once lockdowns ended, car YouTubers felt the impact almost immediately.

4:13 At the same time, the easy money environment disappeared,

4:16 advertising budgets were cut, sponsorships slowed down,

4:19 and creators who had built everything around

4:20 constant growth suddenly saw their income drop.

4:23 So, I got to say from my own experience just

4:25 being in all of this, 2020 was a fantastic year.

4:29 2021 just as good.

4:30 2022 you started to know things go down as the market was going down.

4:36 2023 just in terms of numbers.

4:39 That was the first year where all of a sudden

4:41 you would have a lot of brand deals [music] pull out.

4:44 People were not spending money.

4:46 Ad revenue was down.

4:47 Views were [music] down.

4:48 And yes, you had the the the anomaly every now

4:51 and then of just like one creator just pops off,

4:54 a video ends up doing really well, but overall 2023 for a lot of creators went

4:59 down anywhere from like 20 to 80% in revenue.

5:03 Supercars, insurance, storage, maintenance,

5:05 and travel don't get cheaper just because views go down.

5:08 On top of that, the car industry itself pulled back on marketing,

5:11 which meant fewer sponsorships for manufacturers [music] and related brands.

5:15 One of the biggest warning signs came

5:17 in early 2022 when Jeremy Clarkson's car focused platform,

5:21 Drive Tribe, shut down after major cuts to automotive marketing budgets.

5:24 If a company backed by some of the biggest

5:26 names in car media couldn't survive that shift,

5:29 it showed how serious the change really was.

5:31 Look, you cannot compare traditional media to a car YouTuber.

5:34 there there's no way because with a lot of these guys that I have worked

5:38 with and that I have seen their entire team

5:40 is usually just either themselves or them and like

5:43 one or two other people max and for them to create a video unless they're going

5:48 and buying like widebody kits and like purchasing

5:51 $100,000 cars they're production cost is very low.

5:54 A lot of them edit themselves and so their cost to get out

5:57 a video could just be a day's worth of their time like 30 bucks.

6:02 So for a lot of those people,

6:03 they could still do just fine on YouTube and not have the high overhead.

6:07 This is weighing them down.

6:08 Shme 150 has openly talked about how the co era money surge

6:12 created an artificial car bubble

6:14 and how depreciation eventually returned to normal.

6:16 Honestly, this is where things get really

6:18 interesting because when the big purchases slow down,

6:21 it's the everyday ordinary spending that starts to matter a lot more.

6:25 Talking things like travel, rent, recurring expenses, and so on.

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7:47 Enjoy.

7:48 Thank you so much.

7:48 Now, let's get back to the video.

7:50 So, my car as per the spec video I did back at the time

7:52 and I've owned it now for a couple of months shy of 4 years,

7:56 but it cost me £465,000.

7:59 That felt like a bargain.

8:00 Some decent mileage with it.

8:01 The best part of 10,000.

8:03 It would hit the market for something like 265.

8:07 So down about £200,000 from new, which is horrific.

8:12 Look, I think it's highly misleading they're using

8:14 Shmei in front of like a hyper car

8:16 behind him as an example of a YouTuber who loses money because I got to say,

8:20 Shmei's collection, very well curated, very well bought.

8:25 He is doing very well.

8:27 And I don't think he is in any sort of financial ruin whatsoever.

8:31 Not even close.

8:32 I mean, Shmei's entire production is some

8:35 of the most efficient that I have ever seen.

8:38 I mean, it's just him walking around with a camera.

8:40 He's he does a lot of his own edits, and he buys his cars very smart.

8:44 My guess is he's probably sitting on a ton

8:47 of equity in these cars that he purchases at good prices.

8:50 And yeah, he's not at any risk of financial ruin here.

8:53 For many creators, the math stopped working.

8:55 Buying another supercar was no longer a content investment.

8:58 It was a risk.

8:59 unexpected repairs, five-f figureure insurance bills,

9:02 and steep depreciation started eating through [music] profits.

9:05 Even creators like Hooie's Garage have admitted spending around $50,000

9:09 in a single year just to keep their cars running.

9:12 I had $50,000 into this Porsche.

9:15 $50,000 into a car that looks like absolute trash.

9:18 It is in total terrible condition.

9:21 When revenue drops and costs explode at the same time,

9:24 even the most successful car YouTubers [music] are forced to slow down,

9:28 sell cars, or rethink everything.

9:30 Yeah, but with Hooie, that's his entire content strategy is buy the worst

9:34 car out there imaginable in the entire country,

9:37 fix it up, find problems along the way, and every problem,

9:41 even if it cost him like $10,000,

9:42 I bet he could turn that $10,000 into either a break even

9:45 or a slight profit by the time he makes a video on it.

9:48 you get a sponsor in the video, you put some time into it.

9:51 It's like with me, with a lot of my properties,

9:54 sometimes I'm like, "Hey, if if I have an issue with a property,

9:57 at least I can make some of the money back just making a video about it."

10:00 And over the last few years,

10:01 that's exactly what we've been seeing across automotive YouTube.

10:05 Sometimes it happens publicly, sometimes it happens quietly,

10:08 but the pattern is hard to miss.

10:09 The lifestyle built around non-stop

10:11 supercar upgrades simply isn't sustainable anymore.

10:14 Take Shmei 150 for example.

10:16 He's often seen as the gold standard of car YouTube with one

10:19 of the largest and most carefully curated supercar collections on the platform.

10:23 But in 2023, he released a video openly breaking down

10:26 how much money he had actually lost on his cars.

10:28 Here's another thing that a lot of people

10:30 don't consider is that there is a celebrity

10:32 pedigree associated with certain YouTuber cars just

10:37 because they have so much attention on them

10:39 that someone would both pay a slightly

10:42 higher price because it's their car or they

10:44 pay a slightly higher price to be able to meet them to pick up their car.

10:48 So, I'm just saying usually with these you get about a five

10:52 to 15% boost in value purely because it was their car.

10:56 Same with Doug Demiro.

10:57 By the way, I noticed the cars he reviews sell

11:00 for a little bit more than the cars he does not review.

11:02 So, just the fact that Doug Demiro reviews your car,

11:05 I think it's now worth more because it was in a video.

11:08 Even Shmei himself has said that the co era money surge

11:11 created an artificial bubble and that things are now returning to normal.

11:15 Since then, he slowed down his buying and sold off parts of his collection,

11:19 a noticeable shift from the rapid expansion of earlier years.

11:22 Part of that though is that the bar has now gotten so high

11:24 in terms of supercar content on YouTube that you either need to drive like

11:28 a $6 million Bugatti to get any attention whatsoever or you just have

11:33 to get back to the basics because people are tired these days of like,

11:37 oh, I just bought a $750,000 car because both that's

11:42 not as impressive as it was like 10 years ago.

11:45 And also, it's like there's so many people doing

11:48 that now that you have to like be unique,

11:50 come at it with your own spin, which I think Hooie's Garage does really well.

11:54 Buying these cars that used to be like $200,000

11:57 new and now you could buy them for 40 grand.

11:59 It's like everyone wonders about that.

12:00 Like I look at Bentleys all the time on Facebook Marketplace and I'm like,

12:04 "Oh, there's a Bentley for $22,000 for like a 2006 Bentley GT.

12:10 That's fun." It's like, imagine I could buy a Bentley for 22.

12:13 I I could drive a Bentley around Las Vegas for $22,000.

12:17 Cheaper than a Honda Civic and I'd buy a Bentley.

12:20 You know what's that like?

12:22 Or like a really cool Mercedes S-Class AMG and like

12:26 it's $150,000 new and I could buy it for $25,000.

12:30 Like that's cool.

12:31 I'm always curious about that.

12:33 So, I think more of that because it's just unique.

12:35 Then there's Hooy's Garage.

12:37 Tyler Hoover built his channel around buying questionable

12:39 cars and dealing with the fallout, usually with humor.

12:42 But recently, that joke stopped being funny.

12:44 In early 2025, he revealed that he owed around $500,000 in back taxes,

12:49 forcing him to sell off a large part of his collection almost immediately.

12:53 So, about a month has gone by since I

12:55 walked through and said goodbye to all of those cars.

12:58 And in the meantime, I had a guess on how much taxes that I owed.

13:01 And it turned out I guessed very, very wrong.

13:04 I owe about double what I thought over over $500,000.

13:08 So, I'm going to have to sell a lot more cars and have sold a lot more cars.

13:14 For a channel with over a million subscribers,

13:16 it was a clear reminder of how thin the margin really is.

13:19 Yeah.

13:19 But with Hooie though, I mean, he is uh he is a true car fanatic.

13:24 Like, I thought, okay, this might be a bit of an act.

13:27 Maybe you're exaggerating for the camera.

13:28 No.

13:29 No.

13:30 When he sees a unique car, he buys it.

13:32 like he bought a Fisker Karma.

13:34 I remember like just spur the moment uh

13:37 when he was in Vegas during Barrett auctions

13:39 and I'm like really it's a cool car but he's like yeah I just can't help myself.

13:43 I was going to save the money but I saw Fisker Karma and bought it.

13:47 So yeah with with Huie he just genuinely likes cars.

13:51 This is his passion and when you watch

13:52 his channel you're just along for the ride.

13:55 You do not know what's going to come there.

13:56 Even Salamandrin, once one of the flashiest names in car YouTube,

14:00 eventually stepped away.

14:01 Despite having income outside the platform, he sold off nearly his entire

14:04 hypercar collection and temporarily stopped uploading.

14:07 He openly admitted that having millions tied up in cars no

14:11 longer made sense once the cost stayed high and the returns dropped.

14:14 When someone at that level decides the math

14:16 isn't working anymore, it says a lot.

14:18 Yeah, but Solomon also had uh family issues with stalkers.

14:22 Like I remember seeing his early videos back in the day

14:24 and for for those that were not around in 2016 car YouTube or 2017 car YouTube.

14:32 My gosh, Solomand Alejandro was the guy for cars.

14:36 Like you have no idea.

14:38 He would get mobbed at car shows.

14:40 Hundreds of people just surrounding him and people would find

14:43 his address and show up and like all this sort of stuff.

14:45 and he had a family and he was

14:47 worried about his safety because people would just be

14:49 like randomly appearing and waiting for him to leave

14:52 and see what type of car he was driving.

14:53 I mean, it was just it was wild.

14:55 It reminds me of that Jake Paul house.

14:57 Like, it was just a different era back then.

15:00 And uh yeah, so he stepped away, took a different approach to things,

15:03 but that was not like a financial thing.

15:05 Viewers are starting to realize that the image of limitless wealth

15:07 was often held together by debt sponsorships and temporary revenue spikes.

15:12 That illusion worked during the boom.

15:14 Once the money slowed down, it couldn't hold up anymore.

15:17 Some of that also is purely because the cars are worth a point where

15:21 it doesn't make sense to keep anymore because the car has become so valuable.

15:24 It's not necessarily like an oh, I'm running out of money.

15:27 It's just like, hey, my car that I bought for 200 grand is still

15:29 selling for $600,000 and I'm not getting the views from it.

15:33 I'm not getting the benefit from it.

15:34 I've driven it a few years.

15:36 There's no more value for me to get from this car.

15:38 Let me sell it, make money from this, and put it in something else.

15:42 That's a lot of it.

15:43 Others have leaned into cheaper project cars and restorations,

15:46 which cost far less than a hypercar, but often connect better with viewers.

15:49 Anyway, channels like Taverish and B is for Build,

15:52 proved that you don't need a seven figure garage to keep people interested.

15:56 Taverish, I mean, this whole video is basically just this AI thing.

15:59 It's interesting because it's uh well written, but Taverish, I mean, come on.

16:05 Tell me you don't watch Tavarish.

16:07 Tell me you're not a real person without telling me you're a real person.

16:11 Come on.

16:12 We are getting rid of a lot of vehicles

16:14 and some of them are going to absolutely shock you.

16:16 I think there's like legitimately going to be like

16:18 six or seven cars left after everything that goes.

16:21 There are so many cars coming.

16:22 It makes sense.

16:23 Again, it's just because people have gotten so used to it.

16:25 Everyone now has a hyper car.

16:27 Everyone has a Koigse egg.

16:28 Everyone has this like, you know, 300 SL Carrera GT hyper thing that goes fast.

16:36 And it's just people have become numb to it at this point that we want to get

16:39 back down to like honest style vlogs

16:42 of like everyday cars that people can relate to.

16:45 It's always a pendulum like it's swung

16:47 to hypercar conse all that sort of pagani stuff.

16:50 It's going to swing back to like you know buying

16:53 a damaged Toyota Supra and we're going to drive it.

16:56 That's all it is.

16:57 Or an RX7.

16:58 Let's get that car, soup it up a little bit,

17:01 go fast and sell it and buy a S2000 Honda.

17:04 And finally, a lot of creators have had a lifestyle reset.

17:08 Some moved out of expensive cities,

17:09 cut back on teams, and stopped chasing constant upgrades.

17:13 Others have become more open about costs, losses, and mistakes.

17:17 Something you almost never heard during the boom years.

17:19 And honestly, that transparency has helped because

17:22 people connect more when [music] it feels real.

17:24 Honestly, a lot of this just comes down to what people are watching.

17:27 If people wanted to see hypercar content, trust me,

17:31 everyone would find a way to buy a hypercar.

17:33 The reality is the hypercars no longer get the views and the attention

17:37 they once did and so people revert back to whatever the audience wants.

17:41 Like if you guys have a specific recommendation

17:43 for a video or a style or whatever, I'm down.

17:46 I just want to make content that people enjoy and want to watch and get

17:50 excited about and as soon as I see that people don't enjoy the content anymore,

17:54 I'm either going to scale back on that or I'm

17:56 going to try something different that people want to watch.

17:58 I mean, it's all about at the end of the day the viewer.

18:01 What does a viewer want?

18:02 The viewer is like number one.

18:03 The viewer is the holy grail.

18:04 It's like the viewer and then the algorithm.

18:07 And you got to make both of them happy.

18:09 If you can make both of them happy, you do well.

18:11 Then I'm happy.

18:12 So that's all it really comes down to.

18:14 So overall, no, they're not going broke.

18:16 They're actually doing quite well.

18:18 It's just they're not buying the cars anymore

18:19 because it's just it's not what people want.

18:22 But let me know what your thoughts are down below in the comments section.

18:24 I will do my best to read and reply to as many of you as I can.

18:27 Thank you again for watching.

18:28 Also, do remember to check out our sponsor, Built,

18:31 cuz you may as well get something for nothing

18:33 if you're going to be spending the money anyway.

18:35 Just like, you know, with cars too,

18:36 just you may as well get rewarded for doing what you're already doing.

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18:40 Thank you so much and until next