Doug DeMuro: How a guy from Colorado became one of the most popular car YouTubers
Words by Robert Percy
THIS… is an article about Doug DeMuro. That was pretty obvious the moment you saw the title. I just wanted to regurgitate one of the timeless, meme-worthy phrases that he’s become known for. Doug DeMuro has gone from being a little-known car writer on the internet to becoming an absolute phenomenon in the world of cars. His main YouTube channel has around 3.5 million subscribers, he regularly gets over a million views per video with his most popular video ever, a review of a Bugatti Chiron, getting 13 million just on its own and has even grasped the appeal of James May and Jay Leno.
Doug has driven everything from the rarest hypercars to some of the cheapest and worst cars ever made. This has all been done without having to write emails to manufacturers to ask for press cars, rather borrowing cars from dealerships and viewers. He doesn’t tend to go to media days either. In fact, he’s fairly averse to travelling, preferring to spend the majority of his time either in his home area of San Diego. Pretty impressive, right?
You’d think that the Denver, Colorado-born journalist would have achieved this with top-notch cinematography and in-depth knowledge of all the cars he tests, plus a fair bit of powersliding. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Doug DeMuro’s videos are incredibly basic and haven’t really changed at all in the entire 6 years he’s been regularly uploading on YouTube. His videos tend to be single camera affairs with no fancy sound, music or visual effects. He even still edits his videos using iMovie, and uses the pre-loaded sound effects.
The only real change as of late has been cutting out the vast majority of the DougScore (we’ll get to this later) portion of his videos, something which actually slightly annoyed some fans when they noticed that he’d made this change. So, with the weird and kooky way he does videos compared to all the other big car YouTubers including insisting on low budget production and not bothering with the politics of asking for press cars and going to media days, why is he so popular? I think I can answer that question and it all comes down to one factor; Doug himself.
As soon as you watch one of Doug DeMuro’s videos you can see his appeal right away. Regardless of what car he’s testing, whether it’s the latest hypercar from Bugatti, Ferrari, McLaren or Lamborghini, a cosseting luxury cruiser or even just a regular old hatchback, there’s a constant theme that runs through all his videos. That theme is the oodles of character and personality Doug seems to have at all times.
Standing at well over 6 ‘3 or 6’4 tall, depending what mood he’s in, the dorky looking 31 year old eagerly tells you about the “quirks and features” of whatever car he’s testing, spitting out his catchphrases that at this rate have become almost as meme-worthy as anything The Rock would have said in a promo in on Stone Cold Steve Austin or Triple H in 1999, while sprinkling his best dad humour in for good measure.
In the smaller cars and 2+2s there’s always that hilarious anticipation of whether he’s actually going to be able to fit his gigantic, lanky frame in the back seats (spoiler alert: he usually doesn’t). Then there’s the DougScore, his own personal scoring system that has accidentally become one of the most important ratings car YouTube, to the point where he keeps a publicly accessible spreadsheet on his website of the scores for every car he’s ever tested.
The reason why his minimalistic, almost home video approach to YouTube works is because his personality is the driving factor of every single video he has ever made. Doug doesn’t need fancy production values, car industry connections and celebrity guests. All Doug needs is himself in front of the camera and a car with enough quirks and features to keep him entertained. Doug is one of the rarest breeds in journalism; a personality journalist and one without an excruciatingly annoying personality at that too. Well, that is if you enjoy his dad jokes and obsession with quirky cars, anyway.
There are plenty of other ‘personality’ YouTubers in the car world. Plenty of them are great at what they do. None of them, however, have even come close to the level of success that Doug has on the platform. Seen Through Glass has 475k subscribers. Paul Wallace (Supercars Of London) has around 820k subscribers. Even Shmee150, one of the biggest car YouTubers in the game, has a million and a half fewer subscribers than Doug does! The only person who seems to come close (in the English-speaking world, at least) is Supercar Blondie at around 3.45 million subscribers, but that’s still around 600k less. None of them seem to get the incredible amount of views Doug does either.
I guess there’s maybe an important lesson to be learned in the unlikely success of Doug DeMuro. That lesson is to just be yourself. You can do all the fancy camerawork and editing you want with as many powerslides as you can muster and that’s great, but that kind of presenting style is not for everyone. The politics of the automotive journalism world where you have to constantly badger left and right to be allowed press cars and get spots on media days isn’t for everyone either too.
You don’t need to be some kind of hotshot racing driver or a slick wordsmith to be a motoring journalist, or indeed any kind of writer, journalist, presenter or anything else in the entertainment industry. All you need to be is yourself. Let your natural personality shine through and people will endear to you. That is exactly what Doug DeMuro has done and that’s why the entire internet, including the entire Motordiction team, absolutely loves him.
