Regular Car Reviews

Cafe Society
1

Has anyone else around here been watching this YouTube channel? I honestly don’t remember how I came upon it, but I’ve watched almost every episode and love it to an unreasonable degree. It’s smart, scatological, crazed, loving, pathological, sometimes inside baseball on how cars are made, funny, angry, and almost always about the CARS!

Even though they can bring in subjects as varied as Alan Watts and anal eroticism to the discussion, in the end, the subject is a car that you would (or maybe just could) drive. It never devolves into the “Can three morons make a car into something stupid?” that Top Gear became after a few seasons with Clarkson as the star. It’s about the car.

Now, even though it’s about cars (and some not very notable ones, it’s regular cars, after all) It’s not a dry reading of figures with a few blurbs about it’s handling or road grip with some wheelspin porn (but yeah, there’s at least a few moments of wheelspin porn when appropriate). It always addresses the social and psychological impact of that car or that type of car. Sometimes it’s incredibly elegant and almost beautiful. Sometimes it’s short, frank and full of dick and poop jokes. Usually it’s a mix of both, and rarely is it exclusively one or the other. The performance of the car is irrelevant to who gets what. Sometimes a hypercar is pooped upon with a loving admission of it’s place in the world, sometimes a grocery getter gets the same treatment. Cars both venerable and best forgotten are often treated with the same eye.

Oh, and you usually get a couple of original, topical songs to open and close the episode. If you don’t, then they used prerecorded songs, or the stiffed us. Either way, it’s good.

So, where can you find this wonderful show without diverting your eyes from this post? Click on the spoiler box, and enjoy!

Why’s it spoilered? Because I have no idea what’s permissible at your work, and they can work pretty blue. Making sure streaming porn works is sometimes part of my job, sometimes the customer is cruel enough (or maybe nice enough, you can’t unsee anything) to set up a test video of some guy surfing. So, obviously, YMMV with the more crazed moments.

Their channel

2002 Toyota echo. Our narrator’s car, the first episode.

1988 Chrysler New Yorker - A lovingly harsh examination of a car that kind of deserves it, but was a success nonetheless.

2014 Civic Si - “Don’t let it be your automotive walk of shame”

SW20 Toyota MR2 A car that’s loved, but they know it’s flawed.

If there were a competition for the modern Shakespeare of cars, I’d pick them every day and twice on Sundays.

2

“Wheelspin porn”!!! Er, your YouTube car show tastes are far more … elevated … than mine.

I haven’t seen it, but from the way you describe it, it seems to be a show that focuses LESS on cars than any other shows that I have seen.

Let’s see, I generally watch AutoExpertTV, though it’s about Australian cars and their market. Consumer reports puts out decent videos on cars. Doug DeMuro does car videos that are pretty funny, though usually about cars he personally owns or drives. Fast Lane Car is pretty decent. EngineeringExplained focuses on auto engineering topics. AutoGuide.com is another I watch. And Fifth Gear, which is more or less a knockoff of Top Gear.

3

Yes, wheelspin porn. If you do watch Top Gear or Fifth Gear, you’ve been watching quite a bit of it. It’s not fast, it doesn’t tell you much about the car, and any kid doing donuts is largely doing the same thing, but car shows seem pretty fond of it.

I’ve seen most of the other shows that you mention, and they’re pretty dry in comparison. They’re a lot closer to MotorWeek than this show, in that those shows are reviewing cars pretty much purely as a product to buy. This show is interested in looking at the cars as psycho-social, historical and engineering entity, as well as a product. If you want to go buy one of the cars they’re reviewing, it supplies useful information for you, but that’s not what it’s focusing on. It’s a more complete picture of a car, and when I liked Top Gear the best, it was closer to this than the silly reality TV show it became.

Even when it does delve into things like wheelspin porn, it addresses the day-to-day realities of that behavior (unlike both TopGear and porn). For instance, when they’re discussing the tire shredding ability of a modified, LT1-equipped '95 Roadmaster, they mention that “the owner is done buying new tires for this” - he’s the guy who buys used tires.

The Cammaster - The discussion includes GM B-bodies; how/why we value some old things, but not others ; 20th century writers; and what’s involved when you put a manual into a car that wasn’t designed for it.

4

Here’s an article at the The Daily Dot that describes the show with more clarity than I ever coud:

and

And he does address in the interview that one of the things about car shows that he didn’t like about existing shows is that they became about the hosts, rather than the car. As a result, he’s an anonymous host. I didn’t even know what to call him before I read the interview, and that only supplies us with “Mr. R”. Sure, he’d also probably get fired for putting out the videos, but it’s still conceptually grounded. Most of the show is like that, even the parts that seem like non sequiturs thrown in for entertainment value usually end up having a function in the show’s argument.

5

One of my favorites for years. Sometimes you get deep philosophical musing, sometimes you get fairly-informed car information, also a lot of cultural reminiscing, and poop jokes.

6

I’m delighted that someone else here is watching it! They should probably use your description as their tag line.

7

I watch it, and usually enjoy it. Sometimes they can take a joke a little too far, or harp on it too long, but overall, it’s entertaining.

8

Check. He’s popular enough to be linked often by enthusiast sites such as Jalopnik, and he’s local, near to my hometown in the Greater Philadelphia Area (Pennsylvania, USA).

His best was “Regular Car Reviews Goes to Cars and Cofffee” – IMHO.

Been following him for a long time.

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9

I have found his videos amusing for years, and he has generated quite a following.

The RX-8 review, compete with Dr Suess rhyming is one of my faves.

10

This is one of my favorites, Which Corvette is Best Corvette?