Happy (early) birthday, YouTube. To celebrate the site’s 20th anniversary, we present: The InsideHook Guide to YouTube, a series of creator profiles, channel recommendations and deep dives about the viral, controversial, unstoppable video-sharing giant.
Back in the day, there were grease monkeys and gearheads, and then there was everyone else. If you didn’t grow up embedded in some facet of car culture, tinkering with vehicles with your dad on weekends, you were essentially at the mercy of whatever the dealership, mechanic or drive-through oil change shop sold you. Now, all the knowledge shared in garages across the nation has been packaged into easily digestible and — at least in the case of the channels below — entertaining videos for the edification of everyone who didn’t grow up with a wrench in their hand.
You don’t have to be a “car person” to take advantage of the wealth of automotive knowledge available to you on YouTube today. If you want to learn how to change your headlight bulb instead of paying some shop to do it for five times as much, ChrisFix has a video for you. If you want to know the basics of how a car works so you don’t get hoodwinked by some marketing nonsense when buying a new vehicle, Engineering Explained has you covered. But if it’s the details that excite you — like, say, the gas adjusting valve on a 1930 Ford Model A — you’ll probably find yourself canceling your Netflix subscription and watching Vice Grip Garage episodes every night from now on.
In other words, our guide to the best car YouTubers includes something for everyone. Below, you’ll find the list in descending order of obsession, starting with the channels every owner should bookmark and ending with the enthusiast channels for all you self-described gearheads. And just for good measure, we reached out to a few of the YouTubers to recommend their favorite channels, too.
General Car Knowledge
Best Channel: Engineering Explained
You can know how to change your own oil, install a turbocharger or even rebuild an engine, but do you know why that engine oil is necessary in the first place? How a turbocharger actually works? Why that engine even needed a rebuild? Mechanical engineer Jason Fenske knows, and he’s made a career out of conversationally explaining how cars work. That includes the aforementioned workaday examples, but also the ins and outs of the latest, greatest and most full-of-shit new vehicles on the planet: from the genius of the new Corvette ZR1’s V8 engine to the lies Elon Musk told about the Tesla Cybertruck. If you were never big on math or engineering, Jason will change your mind. They should show these videos in school.
Start Here: “No, Tesla Cybertruck Is *Not* Faster Than Porsche (While Towing)”
Engineering Explained’s Favorite Channel: “I’d recommend checking out Humble Mechanic; he’s a master certified Volkswagen technician that does an awesome job sharing all the knowledge he’s built over the decade-plus of time he spent in the industry, how to work on your car, and helpful tool reviews. Great variety of subjects!” — Jason Fenske
Is Your Car Flooded? Broken? Bricked? Rich Benoit Can Rebuild It.
The YouTuber known as Rich Rebuilds gained a following by fixing Teslas (and fighting Elon Musk’s company), but these days, any forgotten car is fair gameDIY Repairs
Best Channel: ChrisFix
ChrisFix is the YouTube gateway from car ownership to car obsession. For the last decade, if you’ve Googled how to do some sort of mundane repair or maintenance — say, replace your windshield wipers or clean foggy headlights — chances are one of Chris’s videos has popped up. But in that time, he’s also provided the next level of DIY knowledge, from replacing a clutch to a power-steering pump. Whether you own the enthusiast car of your dreams or don’t even know how many cylinders there are in the engine in your crossover, if you want to start working on your vehicle yourself, Chris is the guy for you. He hasn’t been as active lately, but he’s still churning out the best introductory videos out there.
Start Here: “How to Restore Headlights PERMANENTLY”
ChrisFix’s Favorite Channel: As someone who’s been in the game for over a decade, he’s got a lot of them: Tavarish, Cleetus McFarland, Adam LZ, Engineering Explained [see above!], Humble Mechanic, Jamie’s Garage, B is for Build and Annie X Moose Garage.
Standard Car Reviews
Best Channel: Doug DeMuro
THIS…is the most consistent car reviewer on YouTube. Doug DeMuro stands out from the hordes of people who review vehicles on the site for three reasons: 1) he’s been specifically dedicated to objectivity, and for a long time opted to review cars from owners and dealerships instead of the automakers themselves; 2) he came up with his own rating system whose name (the “DougScore”) belies its ingenuity and usefulness; and 3) he doesn’t simply focus on the marketing headlines that automakers want to promote (like horsepower and top speed), but instead digs into the things actual car owners want to know, like whether or not that giant screen is going to work and what it’s like sitting in the second row. Sure he’s a little eccentric, but you can’t say he’s boring.
Start Here: “Here’s Why the 2020 Chevy Corvette C8 Is The Hottest Car of the Year”
Entertaining Reviews
Best Channel: Throttle House
Say you want to learn about cars, but your Netflix-addicted, TikTok-addled brain is tempting you to binge TV shows and scroll comedy clips instead. Then Throttle House, hosted by Thomas Holland and James Engelsman, is for you. Their standalone reviews and comparison videos (and occasional off-the-wall excursions) come across like episodes of a buddy comedy with slick cinematography. After you’ve watched a few episodes, pressing play will start to feel like you’re catching up with two of your good pals — two good pals who love cars as much as you, but just have way better things to say about them.
Start Here: “2024 Toyota Land Cruiser Review // Idiot Proof”
Throttle House’s Favorite Channel: “Lately I can’t stop watching 4WD 24-7. Those Aussies seem like they are having the most fun out of anyone in the car space on YouTube. It has the perfect balance of adventure, cars and humor.” — Thomas Holland
Pure Entertainment
Best Channel: WhistlinDiesel
You probably won’t actually learn anything from Cody Detwiler’s increasingly popular (8.39 million subscribers and counting) channel, WhistlinDiesel. Instead, after watching one of his videos, you’ll leave with a different sort of satisfaction: that you’re relieved of the desire to build something incredibly stupid. What if I put a muscle car on wheels meant for a horse-drawn carriage? What if I put a Nissan Skyline GT-R on top of my other Nissan Skyline GT-R? What if I built a homemade monster truck and slapped a jet engine on it? You never have to answer these questions — or risk your body or bank account in attempting to do so — because Detwiler has already done it in his viral videos that take cues from Jackass, MythBusters and Pimp My Ride, thrown together with erratic TikTok-era editing.
Start Here: “Hellcat on Horse & Buggy Wheels Goes to Town and Does Burnouts”
Step-by-Step Restoration
Best Channel: Sarah -n- Tuned
How many people can possibly be interested in 30 videos chronicling the restoration of a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle? What about 70 videos (and counting) restoring and adding a V8 to a 1974 Toyota Celica? As Sarah -n- Tuned has shown, there are hundreds of thousands of viewers happy to spend their free time binging these builds. The real interest here doesn’t lie in the specific vehicles that she works on, but the intimate detail in which the former U.S. Air Force mechanic documents the process. Interested in taking on a restoration project of your own but not sure if you have what it takes? Sarah offers the real-life inspiration you need, stripped of the unrealistic expectations found on other YouTube channels where a restoration goes from start to finish in just one video. And if you like her perspective on autos in general, she does car reviews too.
Start Here: “It’s Alive! // 2UZ V8 1974 Celica”
Electric Vehicles
Best Channel: Rich Rebuilds
To be clear, Rich Benoit works on more than just electric vehicles. He proved as much in the most aggressive way possible by putting a V8 in a Tesla (no, really). But he made his name by repairing his own Tesla Model S seven years ago — before many people even knew about Tesla — and helped lead the charge for Elon Musk’s EV outfit to finally sell parts to owners and provide DIY repair guides. These days, he’s still buying totaled EVs and bringing them back to life (like a flooded Audi E-Tron he essentially stuck in a bag of rice), but also throwing in modern McLarens and custom electric Mini Coopers. There are lots of YouTubers who work on just gas cars, and there is a growing number of electric-specific channels, but no one offers the full scope of automotive potential in as entertaining and informative a package as Rich Rebuilds.
Start Here: “We Fixed Our Flooded Electric Car by Submerging It in 4200lbs of Rice”
Rich Rebuilds’ Favorite Channel: Like us, he’s also a fan of WhistlinDiesel.
Classic Car Tinkering
Best Channel: Vice Grip Garage
We live in a disposable age, where people would rather throw things away than fix them, and where companies would rather sell you something brand new than repair the thing they sold one, five or 50 years ago. Derek Bieri of Vice Grip Garage seems intent on single-handedly changing that narrative, at least when it comes to rusted-out old heaps. Every week he releases a new TV-length episode (generally in the 50-minute to two-hour range) where no jalopy is too old, too busted up or too broken down to fix. He’s worked miracles on 1940 Chevrolet Coupes and 1968 Pontiac Bonnevilles alike (oh, and much sexier cars, like ‘78 Corvettes) and will give you hope that old-school cars and the old-school wrenching that goes along with them will never truly die.
Start Here: “Barn Find Anniversary Corvette Parked 37 Years! Will it Run and Drive Home?”
Vice Grip Garage’s Favorite Channel: Little Grip Garage. “It’s my 12-year-old son who started the channel when he was 10. He’s been flourishing on his own and I’m so proud of him. This is the first time I’ve ever promoted his channel. I want him to earn it. He does everything from content creation, wrenching and editing. He’s becoming a great problem solver, exuding patience and having fun along the way. Love you, son!” — Derek Bieri
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