How did Doug DeMuro build his empire?

There will always be a sense of accomplishment when one becomes successful in doing exactly what they love. That’s a feeling Doug DeMuro’s fans know all too well, as in just a few short years he’s gone from being a regular car enthusiast who shares videos on YouTube to becoming a big name in the auto industry and a successful businessman.

While there is no doubt about Doug’s popularity and achievements, there are indeed many questions about how he became so successful in such a hugely competitive field as the automotive industry.

So how did Doug become so knowledgeable about cars and what exactly did he do to grow such a huge audience online? Stay with us to learn all about Doug’s beginnings, educational background, family, past projects, current businesses, and everything else that resulted in DeMuro’s successful empire.

Doug’s start

Everyone starts somewhere and for Doug DeMuro it was a matter of having a great idea at the right time. Doug’s first feature film on an automotive-related platform was in 2009 when he wrote an article in Automobile magazine, owned by the MotorTrend Group.

While that was a good start for a 21-year-old man who loved cars, there was still a long way to go for Doug. He eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta and was soon hired at Porsche’s local headquarters, where he managed vehicle allocation. At the same time, Doug published several articles on the successful site AutoTrader.com

Despite having a great time with Porsche financially and professionally, Doug soon felt it was not a satisfying job. Back in January 2013, Doug risked everything by quitting his job and submitting an article to The Truth About Cars, receiving unexpectedly positive reviews for his hilarious style.

Keeping that good-humoured tone for the rest of his reviews on the site proved to be the right move for Doug, landing him a stable job as a columnist on the popular autoblog Jalopnik just a few months later. Doug also took advantage of his seemingly increasing popularity online to start his first blog PlaysWithCars.

Growing an audience and publishing books

Doug DeMuro’s time with Jalopnik was life changing. While he was certainly cultivating a loyal audience through his columns on various automotive-focused websites, it was Jalopnik where he penned the most famous reviews of his early career, earning features on other major platforms such as Business Insider and CNBC for his original and sharp Humour. At the time, Doug became known as the man who bought cars to write reviews, an out-of-the-box but successful method of making himself known in the field.

There was no denying that Doug had taken his career in the right direction at the time and reached the first career milestone when he published his first book “Plays With Cars” in 2013 followed by “From My Perspective” that same year. The following year, Doug “Bumper against bumper”, a book full of the best and most detailed car stories he had experienced at the time.

The first paperback copy is here! Purchase data https://t.co/NzwDfvVUMN! pic.twitter.com/cNxzxCg1go

— Doug DeMuro (@DougDeMuro) June 17, 2016

In addition to becoming a published author, Doug transcended the confines of automotive-focused online blogs to appear in major newspapers such as The Atlanta Constitution.

The Ferrari Adventure

Doug DeMuro’s early career was filled with several notable moments, but one, if not the most unforgettable, was his nightmarish yet entertaining year-long Ferrari adventure.

In 2014, Doug bought a 2004 Ferrari 360 Modena, a car he dreamed of owning as a kid, but which quickly became more of a disappointment than a joy. Although Doug needed a loan to afford such a luxury car, his main motivation was not to show off, but to test himself on the importance of owning a Ferrari.

Despite its initial positive attitude, the Ferrari proved exhausting to own given all the unsolicited attention it garnered from people all over the world. The car was also very expensive to maintain, costing it more than $1,000 per service season alone. In addition, Doug admitted that he misjudged the Ferrari’s lack of day-to-day drivability, describing it as a “toy to play with” in a Jalopnik column he wrote at the time.

Doug’s complaints about his Ferrari were startling, but entertaining to read, drawing the attention of platforms like Business Insider and BuzzFeed, who partially covered up his struggles with the car. In 2015, Doug sold the Ferrari 360 and claimed not to regret it, but it was certainly a brilliant moment in his career despite the difficulties it brought him.

YouTube channel and editor’s job

Doug DeMuro’s success on YouTube came suddenly and unexpectedly, at least from his perspective. Despite sharing car-related videos on the platform as of 2013, that content was initially intended to accompany his written pieces, not take center stage in his online presence.

Nevertheless, Doug’s career was filled with welcome achievements and this was no exception. In the middle of 2016, he noticed that his writing was not doing so well in terms of numbers, while his very rare YouTube content doubled and sometimes garnered three times more views compared to his very rare YouTube content. It wasn’t hard to do the math and realize that video content was the change his career needed at the time.

On the other hand, that year Doug became editor-in-chief of Oversteer, a blog born out of AutoTrader.com that allowed him to explore his creativity in creating automotive content without any limitations. That also paved the way for other ideas to come in Doug’s way as he stopped reviewing cars he owned to talk about his friends’ cars in his videos and started getting great comments from his YouTube subscribers. The substantive change was prompted by repeated complaints from the public about Doug’s “boastful” attitude, as he admitted in a video from 2018.

That was the definitive beginning of Doug’s highly successful career as a YouTube creator, but more great things will come his way in the coming years.

His most memorable cars

Doug DeMuro is one of the few lucky people in the world whose job requires him to drive and test a lot of cars just to have something to talk about. The beginning of his career was marked by the cars he bought and constantly reviewed, such as the infamous Ferrari 360 that he owned for a year and which gave him his first wave of internet virality.

Over the next few years, Doug bought a wide variety of cars that he wrote about for as long as there was a reason, such as a $45,000 priced Aston Martin Vantage that he used daily for a few months. The car turned out to be a great purchase for its thousands of dollar warranty, unlike the Ferrari, but he eventually sold.

When Doug changed his content to focus on other people’s rides, he got his hands on several great cars. Some of the most famous and popular are the Bugatti Chiron supercar, although reviews of more mainstream cars, such as the 2002 BMW M5, also became very popular on his channel.

His growing experience with a wide variety of cars led him to create the DougScore, which he uses to categorize and compare cars regardless of their type, use, manufacturer or time on the market. To date, hundreds of cars have been tested under the DougScore and it is one of his most popular inventions.

Stardom & Television

As admitted by Doug in a video from 2018, for a few years he didn’t believe his YouTube content was more than a hobby. He didn’t realize it had become a full-time job until he went to Minnesota in his Aston Martin on his cross-country trip in 2016 and hundreds of people showed up for him.

Thinking he had a future in the field, Doug’s online audience only increased with time, slowly but surely gaining a following who remained loyal to him even after he rebranded his content as common and affordable cars. In 2018, he opened his secondary channel More Doug DeMuro, which allows Doug to connect with his audience in a more personal, in-depth way.

Today, Doug has 4.6 million subscribers on his primary channel and over 750,000 on the secondary channel, but his success doesn’t stop there. In 2017, Doug debuted on TV in the episode “Larger Than Life” on the highly popular car show “Jay Leno’s Garage”. A second appearance on the show came in 2019 when Doug was invited to judge Leno’s McLaren F1.

Enterprises

While Doug DeMuro continues to actively share reviews on his YouTube channel, he’s already turned the page on other aspects of his career. For starters, he parted ways with a regular Jalopnik columnist in 2016, and a few years later his AutoTrader.com blog suffered a similar fate.

The reason for leaving the platforms that gave Doug his first traces of internet fame is quite reasonable. On the one hand, creating regular YouTube content became Doug’s main focus around the time he left Jalopnik, while he left his AutoTrader.com column just as he started working on Cars & Bids, his no-car listing auction website. mentions. built before 1981.

Doug told about his reasons for starting such a particular company Top speed it was all about expanding his access to great cars that he could talk about: “I love doing those videos. So it was this perfect opportunity to review these cool cars that I still want to do, and still make financial sense,” he said.

Plans for the future

According to reports from 2023, Cars & Bids customers had spent more than $230 million on car purchases since the website launched, and the growth seems unstoppable. Early that year, the company founded by Doug DeMuro sold $37 million worth of stock to US-based investment firm The Chernin Group, impressively taking Cars & Bids to the next level.

Despite selling much of the company to investors, Doug is still deeply involved with the company and has no intention of parting ways with the project, as he confirmed in an interview with Forbes in 2023.

Looking back at the early years of Doug’s career as a nine-to-five employee at Porsche, then coincidentally as a columnist and YouTuber, it’s really impressive how far he’s come to become a thorough businessman.

Nevertheless, while Doug DeMuro will certainly continue to build his auto empire for the foreseeable future, there is no doubt that he is the same old, hilarious, and highly creative man who charmed his internet audience so many years ago.