Illustration by Sean McCabe
The handheld camera pans across the rear of the one-of-one 1995 Lotec C1000, a twin-turbo Mercedes-Benz–V-8–powered screamer that claimed Bugatti Veyronesque velocities a decade before Ferdinand Piëch’s lunatic vision wound up in the garages of the world’s biggest wigs. A juddery burnout launch cuts to a shot of the car at rest. Instead of the half-expected, hyper-caffeinated, Speed Channel–style voiceover, we’re greeted with a low-key, “Hey, everybody, how’s it goin’?” reminiscent of 30 Rock’s ageless and genial page, Kenneth Parcell. Welcome to saabkyle04’s 1000th YouTube video. As of this writing, his clips have been viewed 29,608,661 times.
Known to his friends as Kyle Lindsey, the 22-year-old pharmacy student at North Carolina’s Wingate University grew up around cars. Following his father Bill’s seven-year pro-baseball career—including a year in the Majors with the White Sox—the Lindseys settled in Florida. Bill got into the car business and, in his spare time, built a ’48 Ford for Kyle’s grandfather. After the family relocated to sleepy Reidsville, North Carolina, where Bill operates a dealership called Car Connections, Lindsey found himself bored and, in his words, “decided to take my camera and make these random videos.”
In late 2009, some of his clips were accepted into YouTube’s revenue-sharing partner program. A few months later, he settled upon the winning format—a thorough, no-nonsense overview of practically any sort of car one could think of, from econoboxes and full-size vans to lunatic specials like the Lotec and a gullwing Mercedes 450SEL by Sbarro.
“Basically,” elaborates Lindsey, “I like to think about myself as the purest automotive enthusiast you can find. With zero bias. There’s always something about a car where I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty neat!’ ” He accepts no payment from the dealers where he shoots his clips but includes the names of the stores as a thank you for allowing access. And no matter the relative cheapness, expense, rarity, or ubiquity of the machine, every vehicle subjected to a walk-around is treated to the same 10-to-20-minute formula. In fact, he got cagey when we asked what his favorite car actually is, responding only, “In all honesty, I don’t know if I should say.”
Besides the vehicle-to-vehicle consistency, the astounding thing about Lindsey’s oeuvre is the sheer size of it: This is the place to go to confirm period correctness of a 2005 Mitsubishi Fuso FE145 turbo-diesel’s steering wheel. When we spoke, he’d just uploaded his 1085th video—an ’88 Oldsmobile Toronado. And that volume is starting to pay off handsomely for him. What started as a payout of about 30 cents over three months in late 2009 has blossomed into revenue regularly cresting $5000 per month. Lindsey says his best month so far was June of this year, when he earned $6600. Not bad for a hobby he characterizes as “stress relief.”
So what does a man who’s seen everything drive? Lindsey recently sold his 2010 Hyundai Genesis coupe and picked up a 1965 Ford Fairlane 500 and a 1995 Buick Roadmaster. After all, a guy who balances a full college-course load, a part-time job, a breakneck video-production pace, and a girlfriend doesn’t need a sports car. He needs a place to relax.
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