Since the slow collapse of Twitter began, I've used Instagram and YouTube more to fill my scrolling time. After mostly avoiding these platforms for years, I've noticed a stark shift in the way people talk about cars. Browsing through recommended content, I'm struck by how often the price is front and center, rather than any other interesting attribute about the cars themselves.
That kind of content does a disservice to the cars we love, and the subculture that we created.
It would be naive to pretend that value has never tainted automotive enthusiasm. How many decades have Barrett-Jackson auctions run on TV? However, investment has never been the primary focus for most hobbyists (and certainly not for me). Cars, after all, are distinguished from the rest of investment-grade collector items by their usefulness. A Picasso can't take you to the grocery store. It can only be admired passively, whereas an E-Type is both sculpture and conveyance.
This utility also changes how cars become valuable. Where the worth of traditional "investment" art is derived from the person who created it—a Picasso painting is worth hundreds of millions in large part because it was created by Picasso, and he is dead and cannot create more art—classic cars often gain notoriety and value for the trophy collections they’ve accumulated.
Take the 1962-1964 Ferrari 250 GTO and the subsequent 1964-1966 Ferrari 500 Superfast. Both cars are rare: 36 GTOs and 37 Superfasts were made. Both cars were the pinnacle of their kind at the peak of Ferrari’s dominance. Today you can get a 500 Superfast for chump change relative to a 250 GTO; The going rate for the latter is north of $50 million, and a Superfast can be had for a couple million bucks.
The reason for the price difference comes down to the cars’ accomplishments. The 500 Superfast never raced, but the 250 GTO dominated European endurance racing during the early 1960s and built a tremendous reputation, not just as a race car, but as one of the greatest-handling sports cars of all time. From this prowess came its modern-day value. In other words, it’s worth a lot because it won a lot.
In spite of the eye-watering sums a Ferrari 250 GTO commands, it’s not uncommon to see one running wheel-to-wheel racing at vintage events like the Goodwood Revival. That is, after all, a race car’s purpose; Why own one if you won’t use it?
Well, perhaps you’ll skip the racing if you simply want to flex. Despite the fact these cars are engineering feats that demand to be driven, I continually see content that emphasizes their monetary values over… pretty much anything else.
Take this video of a pair of 250 GTOs parking for a photo. It emphasizes the cars’ cost (£100 MILLION NEAR CRASH) as its clickbait hook. A brief look through Instagram’s recommended videos reveals that most clips of the 250 GTO lead with its price, sometimes even in comparison to other markers of wealth such as private jets. This has spread to automotive photography videos, car show content, and even, seemingly, the car owners themselves—the buyer of the last regular-production Bugatti Chiron didn’t cover the first digit of its seven-figure purchase price.
Price is the hook to keep people engaged and impressed. Some of this is likely influenced by the extravagance popularized by YouTubers like Mr. Beast (who has produced a $1 vs. $100,000,000 car video of his own). In the automotive space, there are creators such as SupercarBlondie (with 17 million Instagram followers) who focus on the broader aspects of the luxury lifestyle (jets, mansions, fashion) and how it pairs with and complements expensive cars. Some, such as Daniel Mac (with 3.3 million YouTube subscribers), blur the line even further, asking supercar owners directly how they earned their wealth.
The wealth-flaunting mentality has bled into the cars themselves; Look no further than the oversaturation of the hypercar market, which has normalized seven-digit price tags and four-digit output numbers as bragging rights, without much mind paid to the actual function (or physical existence!) of the cars themselves.
Perhaps the largest portion of the blame can be laid on Instagram itself. Escapism and narcissism have been found to be positively correlated with heavier Instagram Reel consumption. Narcissism and social comparison (of one’s appearance and status) are strongly correlated to Instagram usage and luxury-good seeking, as well as to impulsivity in shopping and a desire to seek out trendsetters.
While Instagram’s algorithms are largely a black box, making it impossible to know whether the app encourages this attitude explicitly, heavy Instagram usage itself is a predictor for materialism and identification with influencers. With an audience that is more vain, materialistic, and narcissistic come more flashy, wealth-focused videos.
For a better understanding of how social media—and chasing an audience—works, I reached out to Matt Farah, the host of The Smoking Tire. The Smoking Tire’s YouTube channel has over 1 million subscribers, and Farah also owns Westside Collector Car Storage, a high-end storage and car care facility in Los Angeles, so he knows both supercars and internet audiences well.
Despite Farah’s popularity and access to expensive cars, he’s avoided wealth-first clickbait titles and captions on his videos, and instead continued to center the cars (and people around them) in his work. Farah said he’s had his channel studied by a social media analyst, whose recommendations for higher engagement were simple: more drama, more negativity, and most importantly, more wealth.
“Apparently videos and Instagram clips where people talk about what things cost, how much money they made or lost, how much they spent… have some of the highest engagement rates on the entire internet,” Farah explained.
Whether it’s the black-box algorithm or the nature of vanity is irrelevant. It’s clear that creators have gotten the message: Money talks.
By remaining focused on the cars, though, Farah is leaving engagement and views on the table. Why? His explanation was simple: “I have the very tiniest bit of pride. I don’t want my brand to be talking about money, drama, or being negative all the time.”
I understand why Farah doesn’t want to be associated with grindset-first money culture. In the same ways negativity and drama aren’t conducive to a healthy community, a wealth-centric mindset is another outright obstacle to enjoying any grassroots hobby. It’s compounded in the automotive world because cars are not just art objects, and even the most ostentatious, rare, and important models still have an underlying purpose: to drive. Some of the rarest cars I’ve written about are daily driven by their owners, who understand that the experience of using their car is a big part of actually enjoying their car. And insidiously, the more that a car’s value—and therefore their investment potential—is emphasized, the less we, the mere mortals that make up the bulk of the hobby, get to see them in use.
Hagerty insurance research found a negative correlation between vehicle values and miles driven. Even Gordon Murray sold his McLaren F1 because owning it became “untenable” due to the skyrocketing price of insurance and maintenance. To reduce a car to a price tag not only reeks of rich guys buying street cred, but it fundamentally separates a car from its purpose. If a car is an investment first, and a vehicle second, why bother taking it out of a hermetically sealed storage bubble?
Part of the fun of grassroots automotive enthusiasm is the melting-pot nature of the hobby. You can see and hear some of your bedroom-wall cars at a C&C, parked right next to someone’s daily driver. You’ll probably see everything from ratty Miatas to a 911 GT3 with break-in miles at a local track day. This is the automotive culture we deserve, and I refuse to let the status obsession of Instagram change that.
