---
title: 'Here''s How I Got Started Reviewing Cars'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=RFDtNkx84Xo'
video_id: 'RFDtNkx84Xo'
date: 2026-06-29
duration_sec: 1274
---

# Here's How I Got Started Reviewing Cars

> Source: [Here's How I Got Started Reviewing Cars](https://youtube.com/watch?v=RFDtNkx84Xo)

## Summary

In this video, Doug DeMuro shares the detailed story of how he transitioned from a traditional job at Porsche to becoming a successful car reviewer on YouTube. He describes his early obsession with cars, his freelance writing work for Autotrader and Jalopnik, and the pivotal moments that led him to create video content, including buying a Ferrari 360 to build an audience. The narrative concludes with his eventual pivot to car reviews and the founding of Cars & Bids.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to the origin story** [0:00] — Doug introduces the video, stating he wants to recount how he started reviewing cars because his previous video on the topic is long gone.
- **Early obsession with cars** [1:46] — As a child, he pored over Consumer Guide, creating detailed notebooks of trim levels, features, and powertrains, even developing a formula to determine the best-value car.
- **Early car-related jobs** [2:55] — His first summer job in college was a driver for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, followed by working as a lot porter at a Ferrari dealership and later as a salesperson at a Saturn dealership during the recession.
- **Working for Porsche and deciding to quit** [3:46] — After college, he worked at Porsche in a cubicle job but realized he didn't want that life. He quit at age 24 to pursue freelance writing about cars, having already been writing for Autotrader on the side.
- **Writing for The Truth About Cars and Jalopnik** [7:27] — He started writing unpaid for The Truth About Cars, then was eventually accepted by Jalopnik through their Kinja platform, where his humorous, long-form columns gained a following.
- **First suggestion to try video** [10:03] — A viewer emailed Doug suggesting he try video. He had not considered it before, but this prompted him to make his first car review video (Cadillac CTS-V) in summer 2013.
- **Buying a Ferrari 360 to build a video series** [12:22] — In early 2014, he bought a Ferrari 360 with a loan co-signed by his parents. The car cost $80,000; he put down $40,000 of his life savings. Finding insurance was a struggle, but the resulting video series on ownership costs was a huge hit on YouTube, where exotic cars were rare.
- **Realizing video could be a career** [15:46] — In 2015, he received a YouTube 100,000 subscriber plaque, and by late 2016 he made $20,000 in one month from ad revenue. That convinced him video might surpass writing as a career.
- **Pivot to reviewing other cars** [17:05] — Around mid-2017, he shifted from making content only on his own cars to reviewing a different car each week (e.g., Honda Civic Type R, Land Rover Defender), which became his signature 'quirks and features' format.
- **Launching Cars & Bids** [18:30] — To diversify income beyond YouTube, he launched the online car auction site Cars & Bids in spring 2020, which later received a large investment in 2022.

### Conclusion

Doug's journey from a car-obsessed child to a successful YouTuber and entrepreneur was a risky, lucky, and hard-won path. He emphasizes that it required immense effort and a willingness to bet on himself, but it worked out due to timing and persistence.

## Transcript

This is Doug DeMuro, and today I'm going
to tell you the story of how I got
started reviewing cars. I realized I
haven't told this story in years on my
YouTube channels, uh and the video it's
in has long gone. So, I might as well
explain how it all began.
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Okay, so how I got started reviewing
cars. One of the reasons I also want to
tell this story is because every time I
go on a podcast, someone else's podcast
or videos, they always ask me, you know,
how did it get started? And I I want to
kind of be able to direct people when
they ask me this to this video where I
say, "Hey, here's what happened."
However, I realized that I launched my
More Doug DeMuro channel 8 years ago
with this video.
>> How did I get started reviewing cars,
making YouTube videos, writing about
cars, whatever? So, today I'm going to
tell you.
>> I haven't revisited this topic since
then, and that channel is long gone. So,
I feel like I should actually explain
the story of how I got started reviewing
cars at least one more time. So, here is
the basic overview of how it all got
started. Many years ago, when I was a
small boy, actually that is kind of the
start of the story. I remember when I
was a kid, I would pour a little kid, I
would pour over uh at the time it was
Consumer Guide, not Consumer Reports,
but it was this different thing called
Consumer Guide that would give every
car's trim levels and exactly what
features were in each car and then the
the power trains and I would go through
all of it and try to figure out exactly
which cars had the best value, like the
most features, best I even had a
formula. If it had like X number of
features in each class divided by the
power, like you
that was that was the car. I remember I
was so obsessive and I would make these
these big long notebooks full of like
exactly all the trim levels and
everything and I would handwrite even
though no one was reading it except for
myself. And I was obsessed, absolutely
obsessed. Uh and of course never really
thought it would turn into a career, but
as the years went on, I kind of never
really lost my love of cars. I was into
other things and I kind of considered
working in other fields, but I never
really did. I've always basically every
job I've basically ever had has been in
the car space. Um starting with you
know, my first real summer job, the the
first year I was in college, I was a
driver for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. When
like a car was at the airport, but
someone had booked it at a different
location, me and another driver go pick
it up and drive it that location, then
we get a call, now this car is at this
one, you got to go to this one and that
was my job. I worked as a as a lot
porter at a Ferrari dealership, so I
would clean the cars and move them
around and get gas for the used cars and
bring the cars to customers if they're
requesting it. I mean
I I have always always always spent my
world in the car world. In fact, my
senior year of college,
um I took a job as a salesperson at a
Saturn dealership and this would have
been like late '08, early '09, right
when the recession was taking hold,
right when Saturn was being extinguished
as a brand. That was an amazing learning
experience. People could smell blood in
the water, they'd come in asking for
crazy deals. That was that was that. I
worked for Porsche. Like I the car world
was kind of in in blood. And a couple of
weeks ago I did a video on this channel
about what I did when I worked for
Porsche and I kind of ended that video
by saying that the pay was relatively
low, the work was hard. I I just decided
at 24 I didn't want to work in a cubicle
anymore and that's how the next this
version of my career got started. And so
we can kind of pick it up there. I quit
my job. I had I had all my life had
worked up to
you know if you if you go to a certain
level of school you're you're in a
competitive enough level of high school
and college your whole world is like
trying to get into the best college,
trying to do as many activities as
possible in high school so your resume
looks the best. That was my whole world
and then get into the best college, do
the best you can in college so that you
can get the best job. That was sort of
like my entire world and my parents
world and everything back then. And so I
get this job, I get hired by Porsche.
And all my other my colleagues, my my my
fellow classmates when I was in college
had done got a lot of them had gotten
these really stupid jobs, you know,
laughable kind of things that weren't
you know, they were 21. I mean it was
like you know, not anything real and I
was I'd gotten hired full-time by
Porsche and it was so cool. And then I
quit. And that was a crazy decision. But
I truly believed that I had within me
the ability to create um
to to to do to write about cars as a
job. And at the time I didn't quit
completely with nothing. At the time I
was freelance writing about cars for
autotrader.com. And I was actually doing
that on the side of my working for
Porsche which was definitely not allowed
at Porsche. I had a I had another job.
So I had my full-time job at Porsche and
then at night I would go home. I would I
would work from at Porsche from 8:00 to
5:00 every single day. I'd drive home
and then I'd sit at my computer and bang
out articles, content for autotrader.com
like should you buy your lease at the
end of the lease or you know, new versus
used or or that kind of thing, compiling
our long-term test notes for hours. I
mean I I there would be days when I'd
wake up at 8:00 a.m., work till 5:00,
commute home, 6:00 sit down, work until
midnight, go to sleep and do it all over
again. That happened a lot. There were
entire weekends where I would spend
working writing. It was a grind, but
like when I was when I quit Porsche, it
meant that I had an income. I had the
writing income was going on. And so I
was like, you know what? If I'm doing
this part-time already and I'm enjoying
it and I'm making good money from it. I
was actually making more doing freelance
writing than I was working for Porsche.
I was like, if I'm doing this enough
already, maybe I can quit my day job at
Porsche and become a writer about cars.
And it was insane. I mean, it was a
totally insane decision because I had
worked so hard to get through college
and get a job just like the one I was
quitting. But I just decided, you know
what? I'm writing, I'm making good
money, I'm doing this, there is a career
here. And one of the things I learned as
a freelance writer early on when I was
freelancing for Autotrader was that if
you're a good freelance writer, you
could actually be pretty successful in
the car space and in a lot of spaces.
Now, in the world of AI and in the world
where a lot of writing has switched to
video, I don't know that that's true
anymore. But back in 2009, '10, '11,
that was pretty true. It was very hard
to find writers who would meet
deadlines. It was hard to find writers
who would output the level of content
that I could. I could write five, six
articles every single day, three, four,
500 words and have them be really
high-quality content in addition to my
day job. I was just a machine back then
of of just effort, effort, effort,
focused work.
And so I quit my job and I started
really looking for writing gigs. And it
was pretty easy to find them back then.
There were a lot of places that wanted
writers. And not a lot of them paid all
that well, but because I had Autotrader
as like my big paying client, I was able
to take some writing gigs for some
companies, some blogs that had big
reaches but didn't necessarily pay well.
And so I started with this website
called The Truth About Cars, which was a
blog. I don't even know if it still
exists, but back then it was like a sort
of a secondary car blog. And they said,
"Look, I sent them a couple samples and
they said, 'Look, you're a funny writer,
you're great. We can't pay you, but if
you If you to write, we'll take your
stuff.'" And so I would write two or
three articles a week there, columns.
And after a few months, I finally got up
the nerve to send my stuff to Jalopnik.
Now, Jalopnik was, at the time, no
longer, but at the time it was the car
blog. And regardless of what anybody
said about the fact that it was a bunch
of teenagers blogging about cars, there
was no doubt that it was the number one
most read, most respected car blog on
the planet. So, I got up the courage to
send my stuff to Matt Hardigree, who was
the editor at the time of of Jalopnik.
And he had already read a couple of my
pieces from The Truth About Cars, and I
sent him some stuff, and he said, "Hey,
we'd love to publish your stuff." And at
the time, Jalopnik and all of the Gawker
Media properties had this cool thing
where it was called Kinja, where you
could write your own posts. And if they
liked them enough, they would share your
own Kinja posts live on the actual blog.
It was a brilliant idea. It was a way to
turn their audience, who often wanted to
write their own posts, into writers, and
to get some of that content themselves
without paying for it.
And so, they said, "All right,
why don't you start doing this Kinja
thing?" And so, I started, and they
would share the the Kinja posts on the
main page of Jalopnik, and they would
blow up. And before too long, I had
gotten a following. And I have to say,
one of my earliest followers,
and one of the biggest uh supporters
early on, was Matt Farah of The Smoking
Tire, who I remember, in my Truth About
Cars days, commented on one of my Truth
About Cars articles and wrote, "This is
incredibly funny. This is awesome. You
You know, I love this piece. It's great.
It's well written."
>> [sighs]
>> And I remember, like,
you know, when you're a little guy, and
a big guy says something like that to
you,
and I should do this more. And now that
I'm thinking about it, as a big guy now,
that's like the coolest thing that you
can possibly hear. Like, I was just
like, "Oh my god. Like, Matt Farah says
it's good enough." I would post my stuff
on Jalopnik, and the audience is saying,
"This is good stuff. More, more, more."
And I would I had this kind of thing
where I because Jalopnik wasn't paying
me, I I doing like boring news articles
for a day. I was doing all that for
Autotrader. I was instead doing like
these like long-form humor columns that
actually I thought were pretty funny.
And and the audience seemed to as well.
In fact, I still think that I'm a better
writer than I am a video person, but the
world moved on to video. So, I had been
writing for Jalopnik for uh probably 18
months. At some point they finally hired
me, but on a on a freelance basis. Like
I was getting paid per article and not
all that much. And after about a year
and a half, um
I got an email
from a viewer. And the viewer said in
his email, "Hey Doug, love your video.
Love your articles on Jalopnik. Think
you're funny. Have you ever thought
about video?"
And I hadn't.
It's crazy to imagine now, but back then
it was it was kind of 50/50 whether
video was going to be the big medium or
blogging was going to Blogging had
already been a disruptive medium
compared to print journalism at that
time. And back then print journalism was
still hanging on pretty well, and
blogging was just starting to gain
excitement and credibility. Blogging was
the new space. And of course, now video
has come and kind of disrupted blogging.
And now short-form has come and
disrupted video. But regardless,
blogging, writing about cars, seemed
like the thing to be doing. And and this
guy suggested video. And honestly, I had
not considered doing video until he made
the suggestion. And so, I get this email
and he makes the suggestion. I think to
myself, "Huh, videos. I should try
videos."
And that was the summer of '13.
Uh and I was 25 and
I had nothing to do. I'm a 25-year-old.
I just quit my job. I had ended my job
in January of '13. So, I guess it had
been like a year. Maybe it was like the
end of '13. I had been employed with
Jalopnik.
And this guy suggests video, so I make a
video. My very first video was my famous
Cadillac CTS-V
review. I didn't know what video could
become.
But what I did know is that I could put
videos at the end of my articles. And
so, people could read my articles and
then there could be a video as like a
companion piece that would go there. And
credit to Jalopnik because they weren't
really paying me all that well, they
gave me a wide birth as to what I could
do. There was never any dictation like,
"You should do this. You should do this.
You shouldn't write about this." It was
like, "We're barely paying this guy.
We're lucky he's contributing, so let
him do whatever he wants." And I did.
And boy did I. Um I did that Cadillac
CTS-V video and then I just kind of went
off to the races. And
throughout all of I guess it was 2013 to
2014, I started making content with this
Ferrari that I had bought. Um and that
was really kind of an important moment
buying the Ferrari. In early 2014, I
debuted this Ferrari 360 that I had
bought.
And it was undoubtedly the scariest
thing that I had ever done. I had quit
my job to write about cars in this
uncertain environment where I'm not
getting paid all that well and I decided
to go buy a Ferrari 360. And it was very
difficult to do that. I couldn't find
anybody to insure me.
I didn't have enough money to buy the
car outright. And so, what I had to do
was I took out a loan and I begged my
parents to co-sign on this loan, which
they did. Now, I've mentioned this in
other videos and people are like, "Oh,
your rich parents helped you." My
parents put up no money. A lot of people
don't know what co-signing means. But
basically what it meant was my parents
would be on the hook for if I defaulted
on the loan. But the reason my parents
were But they didn't pay anything. I put
the
Literally all of my life savings went
down on this loan as the down payment.
It was an $80,000 car. I got a $40,000
loan, a little less, and I put down 40
grand, which was at the time all of the
money that I had.
Basically. And um bought this Ferrari
and my parents co-signed. And I think
the reason they're were to co-sign is
because had such a down payment that it
was hard to imagine that a default would
end up in a situation where they would
be on the hook for anything. My parents
are very traditional.
Um they did they would never have like
really supported this career trajectory.
I am shocked that they co-signed on that
loan. They were always very skeptical of
this career
that I have. Um and but they did do it
and it was it was a blessing um because
I couldn't have take gotten a loan
otherwise. Again, it was all my money
but without someone's help who had a
credit I had never financed anything
before. I was 24, 25. I'd never bought
anything with credit. Um and so I
couldn't I couldn't get financed without
them. And so that that happened and then
after I bought the car I couldn't get it
insured. Um and I I remember spending
days on the phone in my apartment in
Atlanta with insurance companies trying
to find someone who would insure it and
I finally found insurance through a
company called American Motor.
Um which I got so lucky with. But
anyway,
I had to register in Montana. Like I was
grasping at the thinnest of straws. But
the thing that that video that car did
was it allowed me to create a YouTube
series that people really wanted to
watch. These days on YouTube everybody
has Bugattis and Koenigseggs and it's
not unusual to have YouTubers who have
Pagani's and other crazy cars. But in
2014 there was no one on YouTube who had
access to an exotic car like a Ferrari
360. YouTube was a medium for teenagers
and nobody had a car like that. And so
the fact that I was there, some regular
guy was doing video series on his
Ferrari 360 and the ownership costs and
the maintenance experience and you know,
potholes and living with it and parking
and and how practical it was, that was a
huge deal on YouTube back then. It is
hard now to really explain to young
people how just a Ferrari 360 could have
been a huge deal. But on YouTube at that
time, aside from Salomondrin who had a
crazy car collection and was on YouTube,
no one else on YouTube had cars like
this. I was like the guy who was
teaching like a young dad that yeah,
maybe it was possible that you could buy
a sports car, a Ferrari. I did those
videos for a while, eventually sold the
Ferrari and bought an R32 Nissan Skyline
and a Hummer, and I had kind of the same
sort of content play with those cars.
And I still remember to this day, it was
2015, like mid-late 2015, and I remember
I was obsessive about tracking the
metrics for my articles because I
thought that being a writer was in my
future.
And [snorts] then,
one day,
uh I got a plaque, a YouTube 100,000
subscriber plaque in the mail. And I had
paid almost no attention to what was
happening for me on YouTube because I
was so focused on writing. And then, the
plaque came and I started making a
little bit of money in '15 and in '16,
and I it hit me at some point in
mid-to-late '16, wait a minute, maybe
the video thing might do better than the
writing thing. The end of '16, I
remember there was one month at the end
of '16 where I made like 20 grand in a
month. And it was December, which was
always the biggest month. I didn't know
that at the time. I didn't know about ad
spends going up at the holidays and at
the end of the quarter and all that
stuff. I just happened to put up some
popular content in December of '16 that
blew up and I made like $20,000, and I
was like, oh my god. Like, this could be
something. And I also remember in
January I put up also good content, and
I only made like $6,000, and I remember
thinking, okay, well, maybe it maybe
it's not. And I I've since learned that
January is the worst revenue month on
YouTube, and I should have not put up
good content then. But I didn't know any
of that stuff. Throughout '17, then
things kind of started to grow. And um
uh I initially throughout '15 and '16 I
was doing content on my own cars. In
'15, again, it was that Hummer and the
Nissan Skyline. In '16, it became an
Aston Martin V8 Vantage. There was a
Dodge Viper that was mixed in there,
too. I did a lot of content on those
cars, but at some point in '17, I
started to realize that doing content on
other cars actually was better because I
didn't have to buy the car, I didn't
have to maintain the car and take that
big risk, and most importantly, uh I
could do varied content. And so like I
could do a Honda Civic Type R one week
and a Land Rover Defender the next week
and this and that. And it started to hit
me in the middle of 17, early middle of
17, that it was better to do content on
car review content on a different car
each week. And by like mid-late 17,
early to mid-18, I had pretty much
stopped doing videos on my cars at all
and had pivoted almost completely to the
car reviews and specifically the quirks
and features format, which kind of
became what I was most known for. And
then beyond that, when the rest of it is
is sort of more modern history, but I I
was never really satisfied with YouTube
being my only means of income. Um it was
never clear to me that that was a
long-term strategy because I was always
concerned that something bad was going
to happen with YouTube that I would, you
know, that they would change the
algorithm or that they would send views
to new creators and get rid of me and uh
I was never really convinced that it was
the right way to go. So even though with
my 17, my 18, my 19 were massive years,
was making a ton of money, I was always
searching for like a better way to do
this that wasn't so beholden on YouTube
and eventually that's I launched Cars
and Bids in the spring of 20
um and now the rest is like really
modern history. Obviously took a big
investment in Cars and Bids in '22
uh and and kind of I'm at this point
now. But
that's that's how it went down. Um I I
still remember uh to this day
uh
it was December 8th, 2012, was the day
that I decided to quit my my Porsche
office job that I had worked so hard to
get uh after like 3 years, I decided to
quit and go and write about cars. And I
remember it was one of the scariest days
of my life, one of the scariest feelings
of my life
uh doing that. And also the biggest bet
of my life, right? On myself and on the
ability that I could go do this and and
I did and it and it worked out. Um I
don't necessarily suggest that everyone
try it. It worked for me. I was young. I
was 24. I had no mortgage. I had no
kids. I had nothing to answer for. And
it turned out I was sort of entering
some burgeoning spaces. The the the
blogging space, the video space,
obviously the car the online car auction
sales space. Those things were sort of
growing up with me and I got lucky at
that. Um but there were some tough days.
I remember some, you know, there was
crying. There was
screaming. There was There was sadness.
There was depression. There were There
some of my early comments, um people
stuff people would say to me almost made
me stop.
Um
There were tough days.
And it's amazing looking back on it now
thinking about just how tenuous it was
and just how that string of things like,
you know, Autotrader to Truth About Cars
to Jalopnik to, you know, making videos
to
my own cars to car reviews to Cars and
Bids, like that string could have been
broken or easily. If If one of those
things hadn't worked, if one of those
things the timing had been wrong,
there's a lot of luck involved, if I'm
honest. And it was a lot of effort.
Um but it worked and I'm so happy now.
And it and and it worked out great. And
and um but that's how it started. Uh it
it was a huge risk. It was crazy. The
decisions that I made looking back on it
15 years ago were crazy. Leaving my
cushy job at this company I worked so
hard to get at, trying to trying to
create a job that basically didn't
exist, like humor writing about cars and
and um and then just sort of lucking
into video content. It was all hard. Um
and but that it that's that's the origin
story. That's really how it all started,
how it all began, and how it got to
where it is.
Uh and if you've ever wondered, now you
know.
>> Mhm.