I discovered Doug Demuro around late 2014/early 2015, when he had about a quarter million subscribers. Not like I found him under a rock, but you know what I mean. At first, I wasn't impressed. Most of Doug's early videos were just him conducting various social experiments with his Ferrari 360. He came off, to me at least, as some Philly suburb guy who managed to find a heavily depreciated exotic car and wanted to flaunt it, which turned me off.
Slowly though, the focus of his videos shifted to car reviews, placing particular emphasis on their unusual "quirks and features". As time went on, the videos got longer and more in-depth, and starting in summer of 2017 he implemented a "Doug Score" to track how well each car performs in both "weekend" (or "enthusiast") and "daily" categories. Each video follows the same general format: "THIS", intro, quirks and features, "see how it drives", and Doug Score.
What sets Doug apart from a lot of other car YouTubers is his no-frills, no-nonsense production. No annoying dubstep, no 10-minute vlogs that go nowhere, no begging for likes and subscribers. It's just a guy and his camera, talking about the car he's reviewing that day, and exploring every nook and cranny of it.
When it comes to shows like this, the presenter and how they present everything carries most of the weight of the how enjoyable the final product will be. Top Gear UK series 1-22 is my favorite TV show, not because of the cars necessarily, but because of Jeremy, James, and Richard. Those 3 guys are the backbone of what makes the show work. It's like Rush; Rush IS Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart; without all 3, they're not Rush anymore. Their chemistry and humor made everything so natural and fun. Watching an old episode of that show makes you feel warm, like you're hanging out with friends. Once they left, the show completely fell apart, and I started watching The Grand Tour instead.
Doug emits a similar vibe, albeit with a very different sense of humor. He's a tall, gangly, nerdy guy, but he owns it. He makes some dumb jokes and throws in some dumb music cues, but it's still charming in a delightfully awkward way. You can tell he has a love for the automobile, but also a geeky fascination with weird cars. His geeky, G-rated sensibility has spawned various "Doug is the type of guy" jokes. His enthusiasm is contagious, though at times it can be hard to sustain a viewer's interest in 30 minutes of paging through the owners manual of a 1990s minivan. His audio quality is inconsistent, which may be a result of the camera he uses. Despite the lack of production value, Doug's content is thorough, relaxing, and sometimes ironically funny. He's YouTube's favorite car geek for a reason, and he's covered a wide enough variety of cars that anyone even remotely interested in cars will stumble across one of his reviews for a car they're looking for.
Slowly though, the focus of his videos shifted to car reviews, placing particular emphasis on their unusual "quirks and features". As time went on, the videos got longer and more in-depth, and starting in summer of 2017 he implemented a "Doug Score" to track how well each car performs in both "weekend" (or "enthusiast") and "daily" categories. Each video follows the same general format: "THIS", intro, quirks and features, "see how it drives", and Doug Score.
What sets Doug apart from a lot of other car YouTubers is his no-frills, no-nonsense production. No annoying dubstep, no 10-minute vlogs that go nowhere, no begging for likes and subscribers. It's just a guy and his camera, talking about the car he's reviewing that day, and exploring every nook and cranny of it.
When it comes to shows like this, the presenter and how they present everything carries most of the weight of the how enjoyable the final product will be. Top Gear UK series 1-22 is my favorite TV show, not because of the cars necessarily, but because of Jeremy, James, and Richard. Those 3 guys are the backbone of what makes the show work. It's like Rush; Rush IS Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart; without all 3, they're not Rush anymore. Their chemistry and humor made everything so natural and fun. Watching an old episode of that show makes you feel warm, like you're hanging out with friends. Once they left, the show completely fell apart, and I started watching The Grand Tour instead.
Doug emits a similar vibe, albeit with a very different sense of humor. He's a tall, gangly, nerdy guy, but he owns it. He makes some dumb jokes and throws in some dumb music cues, but it's still charming in a delightfully awkward way. You can tell he has a love for the automobile, but also a geeky fascination with weird cars. His geeky, G-rated sensibility has spawned various "Doug is the type of guy" jokes. His enthusiasm is contagious, though at times it can be hard to sustain a viewer's interest in 30 minutes of paging through the owners manual of a 1990s minivan. His audio quality is inconsistent, which may be a result of the camera he uses. Despite the lack of production value, Doug's content is thorough, relaxing, and sometimes ironically funny. He's YouTube's favorite car geek for a reason, and he's covered a wide enough variety of cars that anyone even remotely interested in cars will stumble across one of his reviews for a car they're looking for.
