The biggest petrol heads and car channels on Youtube in 2018

This selected list is focusing on English speaking Vloggers and Automotive Channels, not car brands like Ford, created on Nov 8 2017 based on SocialBlade subscription rankings.

1. Top Gear

The infamous BBC TV show, founded by Tiff Needell (who left to start his own show “Fifth Gear“) and Jeremy Clarkson (who got kicked out after a scandal involving him punching a producer but is now running his own Youtube Channel “The Grand Tour“) back in 1987 has managed to move their huge international fanbase over into the Digital Tubes of the interwebs. Some say that the current cast around Chris Harris (who spun up his Youtuber career early on Autocar and /DRIVE), “Friends” star Matt LeBlanc and Rory Reid simply doesn’t live up to the jolly fun times around the British trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond anymore. However, the content is A+ in quality and frequency and you’d be a fool not to subscribe to this great grand veteran of all car shows.

2. Motor Trend Channel

MTC is a really well crafted, if not the best Youtube Car Review Channel, with lots of sub channels, a highly entertaining to watch hosting crew who really understand everything from stock performance cars, tuning, building, (drag-)racing and pretty much ANYTHING that car lovers love. Their infamous World’s Greatest Drag Races is breaking view count records in this segment each time they release a new one. Diving into this super-channel is like going down a never-ending gold mine of car videos.

3. Jay Leno’s Garage

Former night show host Jay Leno always had a knack for fast, odd and crazy cars (and bikes, and machines..). He put a substantial amount of his TV earnings into his garage which grew big already long before Youtube. He started a Youtube channel soon after realizing that this is a perfect match for his passion and talent (cars & words, he’s a motor mouth after all!). His concept is straight forward: showcasing his own and others cars, having a nice talk-show-esque chat in front of the subject but with no clapping audience and the whole shabang from his olden days, and then taking them for a spin around his L.A. neighbourhood. His brusk yet charming New York style of interacting with his surroundings is by itself fascinating enough to hit the subscription button, no doubt.

4. /DRIVE

Drive is a NBC show co-hosted by Chris Harris, the charismatic small London guy and Matt Farah, a huge American teddybear who runs The Smoking Tire on the side. Like Motor Trend Channel, /DRIVE has sub channels around different topics along with some sponsored content. Some of their videos appear on NBC first, but who cares, even the non-premium content like the Koenigsegg videos is good enough to keep you glued to your laptop for many hours.

5. 1320video

These are the bad boys, like the real life Fast & Furious. The amount of speed tickets they would get if caught by simply counting their races on video, not to mention the street fights they get into in the process, would accumulate to several life-long felonies (when it’s off the drag strip). It’s brutal and oh is it fun to watch. They cover anything with absurdly über-tuned engines racing each other until the turbos are spitting fire up to bizarre quarter milers, all with the same thing in common: a LOT of burnt tires and fuel. And yet: everything street legal. Well… whatever street legal means in the U.S. these days. Nuts!

6. Shmee150

Car spotter Shmee, aka Tim Burton, plays in the same CarVlogger sphere like his mates from SupercarsOfLondon and SeenThroughGlass. His distinctive “Britishness” however is what helped him break the Million subscriber mark faster than others. His reviews are nothing special, however, he keeps managing to get his hands on a lot of very nice collectors items like the £1.1m Zenvo TS-1 GT and is even allowed to ride around in them! Although he has no camera crew and does it all by hand, he catches the vibe of these cars and related events pretty well and is constantly interacting with other big Tubers, whether it is for more clicks or not: he does it all right and can live off it pretty decently. Cheers with a cup of tea to Tim!

7. Vehicle Virgins

Loved and hated: VV is the American Counterpart to the British Shmee150, basically doing the same all along: hanging out at car spots, driving and tuning their own racers while constantly pointing out the price tag that comes with maintaining such cars. But VV really is that hard working “from-zero-to-hero” Car-Youtuber who basically started to build a loyal fanbase with his own used M5 that he was more busy fixing than driving. He quickly gained traction once he became a big blip on Googles mighty radar and has ever since taken off, now being able to drive around in a pretty sweet Lamborghini Huracan. Oh, and never mention the pork!

8. Doug DeMuro

Doug specializes in reviewing either extremely expensive and fast cars like the 918 Spyder or odd and slow stinkers like the East German Trabant 601. His style is very distinctive: he calls car owners on Youtube to allow him to review their cars – and he seems to have an infinite supply of willed owners. First he does a walkaround while painstakingly pointing out the irks and quirks of the even most expensive examples. That alone has often comedic moments, when for example discovering useless dead weight in a weight-trimmed AMG. Next comes the ride and his empathetic way of describing the driving experience is on par with Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear, hands down. I love Doug!

9. Eric the Car Guy

Eric is weird mix of an artist, welder and redneck (no offense!), and he has amassed quite a followership with his channel. However, he recently felt that the process of making videos was “becoming a chore” and that he wants to focus on building his cars so at the moment there is not much new content coming from him. Having said that, going through his older videos is still a lot of fun and can keep you hooked on the screen for hours. Very charming and charismatic dude!

10. JP Performance

The one exception in this list in terms of language goes to the German Channel “JP Performance” which is hosted by former TV presenter Jean-Pierre Kraemer, a charismatic car tuning company owner who is famous for turning any car into a super stylish and efficient (well, a German, what do you expect) rubber-destroying street rocket. His dedication to cars and tuning goes so far that he is investing all earnings from Youtube into his company and team and is currently building some sort of Tuner Fun Park in his home town Dortmund. Great guy!

Honourable Mentions:

1. RegularCars

Mr. Regular and The Roman are taking a slightly more comedic approach to reviewing cars, mostly focusing on 90s Japanese imports to 50s giant street cruisers, sometimes even Motorbikes. While there are a few Supercars in his repository, it mostly covers more affordable, “regular” cars, the emotions and history that came and went with them, all wrapped in bizarrely hypnotizing, really well written monologues about the reviewed subject. The review that had me rolling on the floor was (and still is) the Crown Victoria Police Cruiser (video below) and the BMW E30 M3. Car comedy doesn’t get any better.

2. Car Throttle

For some reason this channel did not appear on SocialBlade ranks despite having 1.8 Mio subs which would place it well in the higher part of the top 10. Founded by Adnan Ebrahim but mostly hosted by Alex Kersten, this channel is a real charmer, very British in it’s nature and yet highly professionally produced by a really cool young team. It’s fame status is pretty high as they have been seen with Top Gear hosts and even managed to put their hat with logo on Jay Lenos mega-head. Nevertheless, the reviews are fun to watch, especially the Awesome Affordable Cars series.

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