The Ledger
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DeMuro: Automakers Secretly Add Horsepower To Review Vehicles Via 'Press Finish'
“There is an option code that most automakers have but hide from their window stickers called press finish, and there is dispute about what that is. Some automakers, there is absolutely no question that press finish adds power. Absolutely no doubt, like they've…”
DeMuro: Porsche Digital's Online Car Auction Site Marqued Is Fledgling
“Porsche has a business right now an auction business called marked that they're running and as a, from Porsche digital, and it's fledgling to say the least.”
DeMuro: Creator affinity converts marketplace traffic far better than ad spend
“You can't just throw money at trying to get an audience. It's not that easy. And having an audience where people love the dude who's at the top and are fans and want to be a part of his business, that makes it even easier to like convert them to real traffic a…”
DeMuro: Analog Exotic V12 Cars Will Appreciate Rapidly As EVs Dominate
“As cars start to become more electric, more, sort of, the all-electric cars sort of have a similar shape because of aerodynamics and fuel range Gas-powered, old-school, wedge-shaped, exotic V-twelves are gonna be, like, the cars that continue to go up.”
Ferrari Refused Long-Term Battery Support for the Hybrid LaFerrari
“Ferrari has already said that the technology is old, all the plug-in stuff, we don't want to be any part of the LaFerrari.”
DeMuro: High-end video production traps creators and limits content volume
“The really expensive DSLRs hanging off of drones, you can do that stuff, but it slows you down and it limits the amount of content and you can do. And then you end up hating your life. Then three, four years down the road, you're kind of married to that. Your …”
DeMuro: Content Creator Merchandise Is A Hamster Wheel, Not A Business
“So many of my fellow content creators sell merch, but I feel like that's just sort of the hamster wheel. Like you sell merch, you do your videos, you sell merch, you do your videos, but that's not a, that's in my mind, that's not like a business. Like, yes, it…”
DeMuro: Almost 30 online car auction copycats launched and failed
“We, I would say, 30 other auction, car auction, online car auction sites popped up in the last couple years, and 29 of them have failed, or 27, and the other three are barely hanging.”
DeMuro: Car enthusiasts will resist future modeled on Tesla Model 3
“I think the model three is kind of the preview of where cars are going to go in the future. And I think car enthusiasts will be dragged Kicking and screaming into this world.”
DeMuro: Electric Vehicles Eliminate Driving Dynamics As A Purchasing Differentiator
“All electric cars pretty much drive the same. And so nobody really cares that much about the driving experience.”
DeMuro: Cadillac Super Cruise is the best driver-assist system in the business
“Cadillac's self-drive, driver-assist technology is called Super Cruise, and it's the best in the business, no question.”
Enzo Ferrari Hated His Customers and Sold Road Cars to Fund Racing
“Whereas Enzo very famously, he just wanted to race and he hated his customers, his road car customers deeply. It wasn't his thing. He just wanted to race. He only sold road cars to kind of finance racing.”
Doug DeMuro: The Cayman GT4 RS Is the Best Modern Porsche
“Yeah, I feel that way. But it's controversial because the nine 11 is the Porsche.”
Porsche Moving Past the 911 Mirrored Jaguar and Mercedes Trends
“And the Jaguar E-Type had just been replaced. That was the big competitor. It was another sports car that had been replaced by the XJS, which was now a V eight comfortable automatic transmission car. Mercedes-Benz did the same thing with the SL class. It went …”
Porsche Shifted Its Pure Sports Car Focus to Mid-Engine Models
“Now the nine 11 is kind of playing more of a luxury car, like touring car role almost, where, you know, with the special colors and the stitching and all that, and it seems like the more Porsche has focused more of its sort of true sports car efforts on those …”
Doug DeMuro: The Carrera GT Is the Greatest Driving Car Ever Built
“The Carrera GT, in my mind, is the greatest driving car ever built.”
The Next Generation of Supercars Will Likely Be Fully Electric
“The next crop of supercars will probably be full electric, and so that transition, I think, is going to be more controversial.”
Fuel Economy Regulations Made Independent Supercar Automakers Impossible
“None of those companies are independent anymore. It's not really possible either because of the way that regulations are structured especially fuel economy. You have to spread out your fuel economy over your corporation.”
Doug DeMuro: Launching the Electric Taycan as a Sedan Was a Mistake
“It was a mistake, for sure. Yeah, I think probably because development started about when they started Mission E. And that was in 15, and sedans were still a big part of the market. But most brands now that are coming out with electric cars as their first car …”
Porsche Will Eventually Make All Models Purely Electric
“It's, the future is electric. There will be electric versions of all these cars, and probably within our not so distant lifetimes, they will be purely electric.”
Doug DeMuro: Korean Car Brands Still Lack Emotional Customer Attachment
“The Koreans have been around for 25 years, and there's no, like, emotional attachment to any of those cars, even the older ones.”
DeMuro: YouTube Creator Views and Monetization Are Down Due to TikTok
“Every YouTube creator will tell you their views are down and it's not as monetizable.”
DeMuro: Dealers commonly sold Ford Broncos $20k to $30k over sticker
“I mean, say they were selling Broncos for 20, 30,000 over sticker. That was like a common thing. These dealers were, have been living incredibly large over the last couple of years.”
DeMuro: Enthusiast car buyers use cash far more than expected over financing
“We thought financing would be a bigger thing than it is. I think that it is a big purchase, but since we're selling mostly enthusiast cars, I think that A lot of people, we found more people are buying with cash than you might expect, even for higher value car…”
DeMuro: Drivers can travel hands-off from LA to SF in a new Cadillac
“You can be totally hands-off in a new Cadillac. You could drive from LA to San Francisco completely, 100% hands-off, except when you have to go and refuel.”
DeMuro: Public Information Ended the Production of Bad Cars
“Every automaker has realized information is too readily available to people to just make a bad car anymore. People aren't going to stand for that. They just won't buy a vehicle.”
DeMuro: Solo YouTube Business Ran At Roughly 90 Percent Net Margins
“Except for travel. There were a few things. I was paying an editor. My best friend, like read, reads my emails, so I pay her. And there was some travel, but the, it was, the expenses were, yeah, I mean, I was, we were probably 90% net.”
DeMuro: Cars & Bids auctions 30 cars daily at 85% sell rate
“I mean, we're selling basically 30 cars a day or we're auctioning 30 cars a day. We have about an 85% sale rate. And so, and the average transaction value, I don't know, but you could figure it out very easily just from looking at the site. It's somewhere in t…”
DeMuro: Chernin Group Invested Roughly $37 Million In Cars & Bids
“They threw in like thirty seven million or something like that. And some of that was secondary. And then there was additional that they kind of threw on our balance sheet to help us grow.”
DeMuro: Content creators must build external businesses beyond YouTube and TikTok
“The advice I give to all my creator friends is you need to do something. You need to do something. YouTube is not enough. TikTok is not enough. You need to take your audience and go do something.”
Audi Was an Undesirable, Second-Tier Brand Before Ferdinand Piëch's Turnaround
“At that time, Audi was a joke. Audi was not what it is now. Like, now you view Audi as a legitimate competitor to Mercedes and BMW. Back then, it was more like how, Saab would have been treated like it was a absolute second or third tier brand that no one coul…”
Porsche Contract Manufactured the Mercedes-Benz 500 E in Zuffenhausen
“Porsche built a Mercedes Benz, which was called the 500 E. It was a midsize sedan. Mercedes didn't have the capacity or didn't really want to do it.”
Porsche's Brand Strategy Relies on Marketing to Children Decades Before Purchase
“It was always a weird aspect of the brand that like you actually weren't necessarily only marketing to like adults. You also had to market to like people who would cultivate this passion that you knew that would become a thing later when you weren't even in an…”
A $70,000 Audi RS 3 Accelerates Faster Than a Porsche Carrera GT
“You know, a new Audi RS three, which is just an Audi high performance Audi sedan that you can buy for 65, 70,000 dollars. It's faster than this car zero to 60.”
The Porsche Cayenne Turbo Engine Is Shared Across VW Group Brands
“The engine in the Cayenne turbo, which is the best Cayenne is in the Lamborghini Urus, an Italian car, the Bentley Bentayga, a British car, but Volkswagen owns all of these. It's in the Audi RS six and the Audi SQ seven.”
Doug DeMuro Predicts a $2 Million All-Electric Porsche Supercar Soon
“I suspect, in the next couple years, they will come out with a, the next supercar, which will be, you know, look like this, and they'll only make a thousand, and it'll cost two million dollars, and it will be fully electric in two zero to 60 in one and a half …”
Automotive Switching Costs Will Rise as In-Car Software Grows
“Less than, that is, that's gonna become less true, I suspect, with all the tech that's in cars, but yeah, I agree. Up until this point, it certainly hasn't been a thing.”
DeMuro: YouTube ad revenue reached $21,000 in December 2016
“And what happened that month was I made 21,000 dollars in ad revenue.”
DeMuro Scheduled Top YouTube Uploads To Capture Quarter-End Ad Surges
“And if you go back through my videos throughout 1819, 20, 21, my best stuff was always updated, uploaded like at the last month, the last two weeks of each quarter and the last month of the year. And I never really talked about that, but that was always someth…”
DeMuro: YouTube channel is approaching two billion total views
“People can make fun of me and they do all the, all they want to, but like I'm closing in on two billion views.”
DeMuro: Cars & Bids charges buyers a 4.5% fee capped at $4,500
“We take four and a half percent of the final sale price from the buyer. So there's no fee for the seller. The buyer pays us four and a half percent and we cap it at, A 100,000 dollar car. So 4500 dollars. And so if it's a 200,000 dollar car, we still only take…”
DeMuro: Cars & Bids accepts only 40% to 50% of submitted cars
“Yeah, we only accept enthusiast cars, and in fact, we only accept about 40 to 50% of the cars that are submitted to us.”
DeMuro: I Pay My Own Way to Automaker Press Events
“I've always made this big holier than thou stance that I don't accept anything from the automakers, including plane trips and hotels. If I'm invited to a press event, I pay my own way and stay in a hotel at my own cost.”
In the 1930s, 2% of Germans Owned Cars Versus 30% of Americans
“Apparently only two percent of Germans owned a car versus 30% of Americans by the 19 thirties.”
British Industry Inspectors Rejected the VW Beetle as Commercially Unviable
“The British saw the plans for Volkswagen, for the Beetle, and said, no one's gonna ever want to buy that car. It's crazy to think about now, and it gives you an idea of how the British would operate their car industries, constant missed opportunities, but they…”
1970s Emissions Rules Throttled 8-Liter Cadillac V8s to 150 Horsepower
“Cadillac had like eight liter V eights that made like a 150 horsepower. I mean, it was embarrassing stuff because they had to put so many Emissions controls on that by the time you actually got the power out, it was a disaster.”
Former CEO Peter Schutz Confirmed the Legendary 911 Wall Line Story
“When Peter Schutz retired, he moved to Naples, Florida, and the general counsel at Porsche and Peter Schutz were neighbors in their homes in Naples. And I, one day, he went over to his house and asked him, you know, is the story real? Did it happen? And appare…”