Glad Sam from Seenthroughglass is getting good comments out of all this. He doesn't come across to me like the rest of the car youtubers. Him and Harrys garage are the only I bother following anymore
I agree, Sam and Harry seem like great honest guys. Harry for straight forward reviews and Sam for being creative with his content and not relying on the newest HyperCars for his content.
Truth be told Shmee as well. Guy deserves whatever he charges. Guy works like a mf, more than anyone on the car press industry and if he charges something is because they will make money out of it.
@@cutdepiefails6596 Nah, that man get's a new car more often than I change my undies. Have a hard time following that logic, but that just me. I'm sure he works hard and all, but it all seems superficial when he gets a new car every week or so.
Hugely proud to own a Litchfield Car, I've never owned something that is just so sorted from an engineering perspective. Its an absolute weapon and makes me smile every time i plant my right foot. It also feels amazing to support a company that are one of the good guys in the industry..
And this is exactly why we buy your pedals too, the sound is sorted (which it is on other deals to be fair) but the engineerings is just on another level. How engineering makes me smile is a deeper problem(!) but it does.
what a ridiculous move by Mr Jww managment team, of course this would blow up, it will be really interesting to see the consequences of such a badly planned move. All my support to Ian, and thank you Chris for exposing this.influencer's move.
"His management team" hahaha. It was him, he did it himself and now he hasn't got the balls to own it, it's pathetic. If he'd just put his hands up and admitted he was wrong everyone would have a lot more respect for him.
@@LCOF no one said there was a deal. The “management team” tried to broker a deal but litchfield said no. And your management team don’t ack without your approval so either way he would have known about what was happening if not all the details
Why should anybody be called out? It was an endorsement offer made in confidence. Business deals are turned down every day. Not everybody goes whinging about them on Twitter because they got their feelings hurt. Turning down the offer by saying no is all that needed to happen.
@C J B Firstly, you don't know if that's what happened. Secondly, there aren't many 'favours' in business. It has to be beneficial for both sides. Litchfield wouldn't give product to a TH-camr with no followers would they? I'm sure they were expecting to sell some kits thanks to the exposure.
Well done guys. Thanks for speaking about this. As an avid consumer of automotive content on TH-cam I appreciate knowing who is really worth their salt or not. Glad to hear Sam/Seen Through Glass is a genuine bloke. Not impressed with a certain JWW. Gives us all information to base who's videos we watch!
@@SWatchik Initial impression is he's just another posh boi like Shmee but then you watch his content and realize how humble and down to earth he actually is
Glad you called out this out, influencing itself is ridiculous I'm impressed you managed to get Dean Norris a.k.a Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad to play Iain too.
It’s now pretty clear it’s James (MrJWW). Shmee and Seen Through Glass have both come out and confirmed it wasn’t them. Chris said the person in question has stayed silent so far, MrJWW hasn’t said a word at this point. It’s going to be quite a costly experience for him I think.
I hope subscribers ditch the culprit, it’s the only way that parasites like that learn their lesson. Good on Chris for.exposing this as it shows the World what some of these “influencers” are really all about.
Not really surprising it's the most convenient excuse for him to get out of this hot water “oooh it wasn't me I swear I'm an honest businessman it was the ad agency I honestly didn't know any better....” uuuhuh ok buddy we believe you.....
Yep agree. Many many chief executives have resigned over issues that their employees have done. When you look at how anal he is over everything he shows. MVN, the bunker it is clear that he was behind the proposition. I cannot believe Lichfield was the only one and I hope others step forward as well. Times are tough industries don't need leeches like these.
Litchfield imported a 2005 Mustang for me, which arrived with the wrong spec of wheels. Ian sorted it out with minimal hassle. That's the mark of a good company!
Guys, what a brilliant video, 57 minutes of pure enjoyment. I love the stories from the old EVO group test days. Ian seems like a super guy and respect to Chris for calling out sharp practice from an influencer that must have been having a moment of madness when he made his business proposal to Ian on the Yaris upgrade deal. I for one can’t wait for the next Collecting cars podcast/video.
Because Chris would/will get sued for defamation. The problem Chris has now is if he causes a tangible financial loss and measurable costs to the Influencer he is digging a hole. Chris can't say he has suffered a financial loss himself due to the influecers agent quoting for work from a 3rd party. No one has lost any money at either Litchfield or Harris. The influencer would have phoned his lawyer and they would have said shut up and let us deal with it. Not post on Twitter then go on TH-cam to thrash it out with your mates. As much of a gaff the £25k Yaris will be for the Influencer. This could prove VERY expensive for Chris Harris.
Let's be honest and realistic here. With the details Chris gave there were only 2 UK people it realistically might have been - Tim (shmee) or James (jww) Every other UK youtuber/influencer with a GR Yaris is either too small, it doesn't fit their profile or have it on loan. Tim's gobby manager instantly said it wasn't Shmee and slated James. However it turns out that the Shmee lots only issue was the amount asked, not that something was asked. Chris knew EXACTLY what he was doing doing when he broadcast this. Things in the motoring journalism type business have moved on. You might or might not like the way it's moved, but it's a fact that it has. Oh and let's not forget Chris himself has tried to make changes to the automotive journalist way of life over the years. £25k was a silly amount to ask for But did jww (or whoever) think they would get that, or was it merely a somewhat cheeky starting point ?
@@fraserwright9482 - You've absolutely no understanding of libel so quit being the barrack-room lawyer . I say this as someone with an LL.B, an LL.M, and an M.Phil. I also run a respected legal consultancy for clients in the creative industry. JWW isn't going to sue Chris Harris for defamation of character. It's not possible because Chris didn't name him and nor could JWW be clearly identified from the Twitter post itself. The only person who did this is Shmee's manager. Chris Harris has nothing to worry about.
@@th3b0untyhunter but they can reasonably say that it was in fact Shmee's manager that specifically named the influencer, not Chris. He's just acted as the catalyst and has been careful not to say any names. My view is he's in the clear. Dodgy work on the part of the 'influencer' to (essentially) threaten legal action, which looks like leverage to get Litchfield over a barrel as part of damage control. This is in reference to an influencer's post where he says he wants to do an interview with Litchfield, while discussing 'legal' actions.
My biggest issue is this freeloader mentality among some of these Rich Kids of TH-cam. They already got everything for free at home and now they are expecting people outside their family circles to pay for their hobbies too.
ah your comment is pure gold, those rich kids got spoiled so much it's starting to ruin the car journalism but at least we got chris and harry's garage for quality mature content
That's exactly what I find most unpalatable to be honest. Chris claims to hate influencers, yet he posts the story on an influencer platform in order to influence people. He claims cars are not important and just a bit of fun, yet its his career and livelihood. Doesn't sit right with me. "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...."
The 25k, work on my car and pay me a slice of the revenues isn't a big shock. TH-cam car influencers in 99.9% of cases are born into extreme wealth. Their lifestyle and cars are bought by the bank of Mummy and Daddy whilst they disingenuously pretend that it's all down to their hard work and entrepreneurial skills. So it's no surprise that they're entitled and dishonest. I do agree that this blag is worse than others. The influencer in question knows his teenage subscribers aren't buying GR Yaris' or going to Litchfield so the sales pitch is fundamentally dishonest as well. He just wants free work that costs thousands and £25k in his back pocket for doing f*ck all. That's leech behaviour and shouldn't be tolerated in the car community.
And then who is going to be influenced by them? How many people can afford the cars they have? To me they aren't influencers, they are just people who show off their wealth
@@christiantava442 seen through glass summed it up. All of the uk car influencers are privately educated so can afford to do this and if it failed just go back to mum and dad
@@christiantava442 well thats the whole thing, the majority of "influencers" are actually smart, they use their wealth and platform to show off the cool shit they get and appeal to a young and impressionable audience and leech off of them for insane views
Actually a lot of vloggers get gifted cars by the manufacturers marketing department to create exposure for the brand across a reach of consumers in a day all the legacy magazines couldn’t reach in a year. When the time is over, they conveniently have to sell them, and move onto next freebie
@@carlb123 jeez why not live and let live - they are only trying to make a living. What’s the difference between an old school motoring industry journalist and those treading the boards of new media...
@@Rosso456MGT - I wouldn't have issues with car influencers if they were just honest but the vast majority aren't. Most of them are born into extreme wealth and their lifestyle and cars are bought by the bank of Mummy and Daddy whilst they disingenuously pretend that it's all down to their hard work, ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills. This is just fundamentally dishonest because they're selling a TH-cam dream that's largely unachievable. I'd just respect them a lot more if they said "yes, my family is rich and I'm very lucky to drive all these cars and subsequently make good money via Google AdSense." Also, there's a massive difference between a traditional motoring journalist and an influencer who says "give me 25k, work on my car for free and pay me a slice of the future revenues" so you can have some promotion via my TH-cam channel. What's made worse is that the influencer in question knows his teenage subscribers aren't buying GR Yaris' or going to Litchfield so the sales pitch is fundamentally dishonest as well. He just wants free work that costs thousands and £25k in his back pocket for doing f*ck all. That's leech behaviour and should be called out. I've run a very successful business and have done so for 11 years. I loathe companies and people within business who oversell, sell fake products/services and/or purposely take advantage of other businesses because they think they can. It's like me promising a potential client that I can create a fuck load of value for them when I know I can't and still taking their money. It's unethical and you deserve to destroy your reputation if you do that and that's now what's happening to the influencer in question.
@@Jimbo8012 you are off the mark with statements around TH-camrs being born being RICH! you could say some youtubers are born with a greater opportunity than others. that would be fair. The hard work, business ethic, personal challenge that all successful YT creators have been faced with is being disregarded in your statement. If you 'own a successful business' you should know the effort that takes to get there. You make a lot of ill informed assumptions in your rant above and I loathe people who do that rather than seek balance in judgement and know facts before slating people. Your final statement isnt justified either as you really don't know what's deals offers or options were on the table and you are basing you statements on the HOPE that Litchfield is telling the full truth which, he categorically isn't! You can see it on his face, he isn't sitting comfortably in this interview. What he is doing s simply selecting the suitable parts of a rich tapestry of context and framing a story which positivelymarkets him and his business - I believe that to be the truth. The fact he's gone out to the masses on the back of that makes him the one who is dishonest and unfair and no-ones hard earned reputation should be damaged as a result!
@@TheJonaire - In your case, a teeny tiny amount of knowledge is a very dangerous thing. You made a ranting and completely ill informed comment about Litchfield in the comments below without any understanding of basic accounting and how businesses file with Companies House. You accused Litchfield of being worth only £20k and yet you didn't realise that they've multiple companies offering different services and holding companies to minimise Corporation tax exposure. Just 1 of their companies has net assets of over 1 million. I've not personally taken a car to Litchfield but know many who have and loved the work they did. They've an exceptional reputation in the industry for a reason. JWW on the other hand... Quite frankly, I don't need condescension and lectures about how I should know how hard it is to get a business off the ground from a random TH-cam idiot who's prepared to die on a hill for JWW.
@@Jimbo8012 funnily you should mention a little bit of knowledge is dangerous, your guilty of it exercising you 25pence worth! I happen to work in a jurisdiction which doesn't pay Corporation tax where the wealthy really know how to be tax efficient and whilst I am not an accountant and don't have my own business I do have a slightly greater knowledge than you've assumed. Im prepared to be a good person and not spit out distain to someone they've never met, I've merely voiced the other side of it which has more validity than your limited one-sided view has to offer!
Love the Iain Litchfield story, great stuff. Never rated Mr JWW from the moment he did a series with a Mclaren F1 road trip and overdubbed it with music!
Noble story had me chuckling in fits and takes me back to being young. Priceless. Thank you. And takes me back to my gone but never forgotten Spec C...
Having worked on several projects with Iain many years ago, I have nothing but good things to say about him. We have been asked by the latest crop of "TH-cam Influencer" to supply fully prepared Motorsport shells for zero, like it's a given. No chance.
29:00 so Aston Martin bought one of the first R35 GTRs in the UK from Ian Litchfield because they were so impressed with how it drove they wanted to essentially reverse engineer it? That's amazing.
Excellent video, very interesting. Stand out comment for me was Ian's comment of 'we like to follow the customer' so if they move on from say a GTR to a Porsche or McLaren we want to still be able to offer them something. This shows real business acumen and is what sustains a successful business. Good on you and I wish you continued success. Modifying a car isn't my thing but I know many are into this and clearly this is a good place to go.
Where’s the pride in building your own car gone? I’ve got a built Litchfield GT-R and I’m so proud of it. Even more so of the fact I’ve worked hard for it myself. Such a shame we live in a world where those who can afford to spend a lot of money on parts expect everything for free. Loss of role models in the modern age
A great video from collecting cars. Glad sean through glass and harry's garage got a mention. Those two along with car throttle seem to be the only car channels I enjoy watching these days.
Iain is a top car enthusiast along with his dedicated team, Neil at Litchfield has always looked after my GTR-R35 requirements and looking forward to some tweaking on my M3 Competition this year also.
Ah the promise of "jam tomorrow", I learnt very quickly in business that such people need to be told that any discount or payment is given upon them delivering something of value to myself.
I am a big fan of Chris Harris and Collecting cars and don’t know Litchfield from Adam but it’s interesting that this particular deal has been called out in the way it has been. Take a listen to Yianni and JWW discuss this on ‘Stereo’ - there is always two sides to every story.
The audacity to ask for a free suspension kit + 25k is infuriating, but to then also want a future sales percentage of the kit is hilarious! Who the hell do they think they are!? Litchfield do all the development work for the kit and manufacture it and some tosser approaches them and wants to be paid to have it on their car and take a cut of every other sale. Crazy.
The Type 25 was one of my dream cars growing up! 415bhp, 0-60 less than 4 seconds and 175mph top speed i think it was. Never managed to see one in real life though. If i ever manage to buy a Hawkeye STI, it'll be going to Litchfield!
Great seeing Iain, had one of his JDM Forester STis, still the most capable fun all rounder I ever had and the after market service was superb, was always like a kid in a sweet shop whenever I went over for services.
Great podcast/video 👍🏼 I hope Litchfield gets even more publicity from it, fantastic products and from a genuine car enthusiast! I’m already looking on the litchfield website and classifieds for my next litchfield modified machine....😊
It's not a cool or not cool case. The problem is how they asked, like they are entitled to it. 25k and rev share is quite common in any industry, the thing is, you are not given these type of ammounts like this. 25k means you will bring a lot of business in, think +200k worth of sales, with rev share is even a bigger ammount. The problem is the disconnect between value and measurable objectives from said influencers and what they are asking. Business will pay as long as someone gets them results. Hell influencer could even asked 1M and if he was to bring 5M or more in sales, I'm sure Ian would gladly pay up.
Id never heard of litchfield, now I have. I am also in no position to buy anything from them! Fascinating insight into Mr litchfields back ground. Very enjoyable podcast/video....thing.
Mark my words, these sort of deals are discussed in the utmost confidentiality. I would not be surprised something serious is in the works for the rebuttal. The deafening silence so far speaks volumes.
Traditional TV and print media have rules around these kinds of transparency issues. They might not always be followed but the rules are there. The internet and social media platforms are so far, significantly less regulated. How that will evolve, how it should evolve, is a topic of our time ... and it's scope runs much wider than the issue of motorcars alone ... In the meantime, transparency earns respect.
'paid for reviews' has been a thing since forever, my dad worked for massive sales companies and they was always approached by companies asking them to rave about their products if they were given freebies or cash in fact what hifi employees look after whatever company looks after them at christmas :)
Great Chris puts focus on this, a lot people don't know this youtubers gets cash to tell nice stuff about different products. Now days you never get any real feedback. Also youtubers are not journalists most of them. This days we really miss independent journalism
Chris acknowledges the conflict of interest around this. It’s not like Top Gear pays a penny for sitting in featured new cars other than their own production costs. It’s a spectrum of blag; magazines were prolific offenders. this reported blag appears to be at the current outer limits of the market (and it is a market like any other). People want free content, TH-cam is a very rich resource, little in life is “free”. I’m glad that Iain and Chris have highlighted this episode to provide some insight into some of the drivers for “free” content. I find it hard to distinguish the difference in car magazines, tv programmes and TH-cam. All are “influencers” whether they are self aware or not. Only difference is the platform, same audience. This is an example of plain greed.
Another tremendous point made in comments below is that this behaviour and market will only push up the cost to genuine punters. So we have already rich people making money from content anyway, pushing up the cost of semi-affordable hobby interests to make themselves richer. And this is to provide a potentially dishonest, biased opinion. As said above: pure GREED.
I'm not really sure it was "wrong" as I would imagine that these management teams are doing this for many influencers and some companies may actually agree to demands. It's cheeky at its worse, companies can say no. Possibly the worse thing is the timing within a time of high financial stress and business pressure. The risk is that if you get too cheeky like in this situation, you end up with reputation damage.
Not sure I agree. Chris you seem to have ascended into an ivory tower which you've built just doing a more 1990s version of exactly this? Nobody is forcing anyone to watch or say yes.
I don't think any of the automotive TH-camrs refer to themselves as "influencers" and I think the use of the term here is particularly cynical. It is a deliberate attempt to demean and distance what automotive TH-camrs do from what Harris does/did. TH-camrs have a full-time job of arranging, scheduling, travel, filming, editing and promoting the content as Harris himself knows all too well. Many of the TH-camrs have invested considerable time and money in building their audiences and push out high quality automotive content on a regular basis, which many of us enjoy. Some are exceptional at it. Let's not shit on all of them because it is cool to do so and/or one of them has stepped out of line with regard to what is deemed to be an unacceptable blag. On that, it was nice to hear Iain give a shout-out to Sam from @SeenThroughGlass. Love his channel and the @BehindTheGlass podcast too.
Critiquing my own comment, and upon further consideration I realize that definitely pulled an "influencer" move by saying give me stuff, plus stuff, plus more stuff or we'll work with a competitor. It took me a day to get there. I think my confusion arises from considering what is modern "publishing" in the automotive world and further, what is the acceptable distance between who is paying and who is getting paid. A quick example would be; if you are writing for an automotive magazine the money you are being paid is coming from subscriptions, advertising and stand sales and this distance affords you some plausible deniability. "I was unaware, at the time of writing, that Subaru paid $25,000 to advertise in the same issue that I wrote about how good they are". TH-camrs are self-publishing and that gap has all but vanished, but we still want high-quality content. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Regarding Chris's comments about Naim and Focal ... I met Chris Harris when he came for a look round Naim a few years ago - he was being shown round by Jason Gould and I was introduced to Chris as "This is Phil - he's into cars too - he has a TVR" ... I could have died at the time as to him that would have been like someone being introduced to me as "This is Gerald - he's into HiFi too - he has a set of Bluetooth speakers for his iPhone..." but to give the guy his dues he actually stopped and asked me which TVR I have (I have a Chimera) and commented that he rather enjoyed the Chimaera when he drove it. I had hoped that Jason could swing me a run out to Chris's gaff if Jason got to go out and install the Naim kit for him but that didn't come off... :-D
Being in America, I'm getting this episode much later than people in Britain (I'm waking up to it.) So if there has been any movement on the initial topic, I'm unaware of it. Recently I watched Chris's interview on Remove Before Race. They had a fantastic conversation about the role of influencers in todays automotive world. As Chris so deftly stated then (and was repeated in this video) watching these so called "influencers" all review the same car in the same way on the same day is quite monotonous. There's a few of them that have been labeled with that word that I think is unfair. For instance I think James aka Mr JWW, Sam at STG, and Archie Hamilton get a break from me because they are either race car drivers, are attempting to become a race car driver, and/or review older, "modern classics" instead of showing off how many brand new supercars they own. Having any one of them go to any shop, supplier, or manufacturer and ask them for money to use their kit is extremely pompous and is degrading to the whole spirit of the automobile hobby. I'm not sure if this is a generational thing and like Chris said I don't want to sound like a crabby old man (Chris and I are about the same age) but I think this is one of the problems with social media. We grew up in a time when we couldn't wait until the next car magazine arrived so we could get home from school and just devour it at night. Now we are constantly bombarded with new stuff everyday. I think some of these "influencers" need to step back and think about why they started their platforms in the first place. I remember getting R&T, C&D, etc, reading it 3 or 4 times in the first day, then giving it to a friend. As we got older, we continued that sharing with books, specific techniques, parts and even entire cars. There was never a monetary gain in our "you help me and I'll help you and in the end we are all the better for it" attitude! Again, most of us are tired of the horsepower wars, the "one-upsmanship" between social media platforms, and the barrage of reviews on the same car at the same time. Some of these guys need to slow down, step back and think about why they got into cars and realize that when we are all doing positive things and helping each other out, everyone gains. Rant over. As usual, absolutely fantastic episode again today. Thank you lads for the great insight and conversation. Looking forward to the next one (but the next one doesn't gave to be 5 minutes from now.) Cheers boys!
Retailing of marketing services 101. Tell the customer (Litchfield) what you can do for them, the features, advantages and benefits of what that is and the projected return. Show evidence of past successes for similar clients. Then tell them the price. If you miss the first bit out expect people to look at you like you're a bit arrogant.
Well said, Chris! Great conversation and influencers who are in most circumstances not influencing anyone should stop feeling entitled to money and products.
I think it is brilliant that you fellas are bringing attention to this. All it does from my perspective is make finding reliable, honest information using youtube or other websites etc more and more difficult to know whether they are exactly that. These "shills" seem to be commonplace in many industries these days
What about a BMW 240? Can these benefit from the Litchfield treatment not being an M car. To clarify would the suspension parts fit due to the different tracks.
Chris Harris seems like a top lad. Even though he's a big budget presenter now, at heart he is a journalist that couldn't be swayed by the big dick energy of the car world.
Edward Lovett - For christs sakes stop *****NG around with your mobile mid podcast - is the Mrs really that much of a bunny boiler? Chris doesn't do it so if he doesn't you certainly shouldnt.
I can remember going to a very large annual car show where I met Karcher .. certain people told me that JJW is nothing all a front, acting as if NVM is his company etc . The guy has lost a lot of respect amongst fellow car enthusiasts.
Great video again, proper honest journalism from CH again. It maybe 'old scholl' but at least it's honest. Having discovered the perpetrator, that's 1 TH-cam channel i've unsubscribed from...always did think his content was a too biased and lacked real depth.
Excellent, telling him where to go.I’ve used them from the offset for my Nismo, they are professional,Super good service and more importantly the car comes back in perfect condition, unlike main dealers.
I'm sure most people fully support Chris on the main story in this podcast. I think he's done the industry, and us, a massive service by making this public, and has done so carefully with a lot of tact. It's absolutely worthy material that should be in the public domain. I don't think the individual concerned has helped his cause (at all) with his initial response - clearly trying to make out he's the victim of all of this. It does come across as arrogant and out-of-touch - with some vague mention of consulting with his legal advisers. He's either drafted the whole thing himself or used Prince Andrew's advisors - it's a really poor statement. I think if he'd come out and said this is the first time (if that was true) that he'd worked with the particular agency (that's employed by him) and apologised, he'd get some flak - but it would be accepted as a mistake. But he hasn't - so it's very difficult to believe that the said agency representing him has not done so on a number of occasions (or even on a regular basis) making it even harder to believe that James doesn't know how they operate or what sort of "deals" they get (or try to get) for him. If he'd just bitten the bullet and said this was wrong, should never have happened, and apologised for the behaviour of the "external agency" that he employed (on the understanding that they'd represented him in a good, professional manner) it might have been better. Instead the whole thing comes across as "Me, me, me!" Saying that in the past, he's often worked with, and helped brands for free, throwing cyber-bullying into the mix. and so on - hasn't really helped him. With just about every "influencer" posting content on a car with only 700-1,000 of them coming to the UK, and a mere fraction of these likely to be further modified (and even then, the likelihood that numerous modifiers/tuners would have such business spread amongst them).... the £25,000 fee, through to the share of future business on the product isn't even a business proposition. It just shows a complete lack of understanding of James' value, the industry in general, and profit and loss. Most people will just see it as greed.
Lots of them do it. Shmees manager slated Jww but later messed up and admitted actually his issue was the amount asked not that an amount was requested in the first place.
Ridiculous way to be treat - Iain is a true gent. Litchfield helped me out with my F80 crankhub on short notice last July. Fair play to you for putting this out there for all to see
I think this highlights the problem with the social media world and you are correct to bring this issue up. Half million subscribers worldwide is not a large percentage of the population, yet these people think they are "MEGA STARS" caught up in their own perceived self importance. They think they can ask / deman huge sum to promote a products from hard working people. when in fact it's the hard work of others that lets them be where they are on these platforms. "Tail wagging the dog springs to mind" They seem to have felt the real world and are living in a fantasy bouble of celebrity, they are just small fish in a very large pond.
True thinking about all these youtubers with brand new BMWs that we know got a special deal that isn't given to customers, make a video before selling on the following month, there's zero transparency.
That MrJWW is almost as iterating to watch as that overly overt Shmee character. As with Chris Harris and Harry Metcalf and even Petrol,Ped, you can tell the difference between those who are already wealthy kids with a TH-cam channel,hobby, compared to those who have learnt a craft from the bottom to the top.
What a great episode that was 👏👏👏 Read many comments surrounding this, lots saying Chris shouldn’t of shared this information, I believe wholeheartedly he should of and as per the summary the little man won. I took a shot at said 25k influencer who attended a Supercar Driver event last year with his production team, very clever editing and little to no thanks to the event organiser would of had you think he had organised the event. He immediately blocked me on Instagram for speaking my mind and stating he should of given credit to Supercar Driver for organising such an incredible event. Not one to wish anyone bad, some of the comments towards him have been dreadful, hopefully he will learn a lesson from this day forwards.
Glad Sam from Seenthroughglass is getting good comments out of all this. He doesn't come across to me like the rest of the car youtubers. Him and Harrys garage are the only I bother following anymore
I agree, Sam and Harry seem like great honest guys. Harry for straight forward reviews and Sam for being creative with his content and not relying on the newest HyperCars for his content.
Truth be told Shmee as well. Guy deserves whatever he charges. Guy works like a mf, more than anyone on the car press industry and if he charges something is because they will make money out of it.
@@cutdepiefails6596 Nah, that man get's a new car more often than I change my undies. Have a hard time following that logic, but that just me. I'm sure he works hard and all, but it all seems superficial when he gets a new car every week or so.
agree even tge is annoying now with crep chief notify
same here
Anyone who refers to themselves as an influencer is a complete 🔔🔚
"complete asshole " they need to be called
Influencer 😂😂😂
More like twat
If they influence they are an influencer. Therefore Harris is also one.
Hugely proud to own a Litchfield Car, I've never owned something that is just so sorted from an engineering perspective. Its an absolute weapon and makes me smile every time i plant my right foot. It also feels amazing to support a company that are one of the good guys in the industry..
And this is exactly why we buy your pedals too, the sound is sorted (which it is on other deals to be fair) but the engineerings is just on another level. How engineering makes me smile is a deeper problem(!) but it does.
what a ridiculous move by Mr Jww managment team, of course this would blow up, it will be really interesting to see the consequences of such a badly planned move.
All my support to Ian, and thank you Chris for exposing this.influencer's move.
1 + 2 doesn’t = 4
He says it was someone working for his management, don't believe a word of it, Rj in Oz
"His management team" hahaha. It was him, he did it himself and now he hasn't got the balls to own it, it's pathetic. If he'd just put his hands up and admitted he was wrong everyone would have a lot more respect for him.
These comments haven’t aged well 😂 it WAS one of his agents. There was never a deal for £25k plus all the rest mentioned here.
@@LCOF no one said there was a deal. The “management team” tried to broker a deal but litchfield said no.
And your management team don’t ack without your approval so either way he would have known about what was happening if not all the details
25k is now going to be forever known as a JWW..... " 50k for that, that's two JWW's "
James Whata Wanker
How do you know it is JWW? Lots of TH-camrs in UK that have added the GR Yaris.
Yeah its definitely Mr JWW, but he isnt a bad guy. I can only hope we can write this off as a MASSIVE miscalculation by his management team.
@@velvetjones1856 his instagram post apologized for it
@@alexlam24 I don't follow Instagram. He needs to do it on TH-cam too where he has 609k subs.
This is the problem with social media. It's one big advertising platform, nothing else.
that and for the ordinary user, self-congruation and showing off
How else do you think they’ll pay for their content? It’s a full time job for some of these people.
@@TheHBW44 it isn't the advertising. It is people giving glowing reviews to things they've been paid to say that for. So not genuine
Lovely to hear Iain Litchfield's story.
I think it's important to call these folks out when this happens. Trying to protect them only enables them.
Why should anybody be called out? It was an endorsement offer made in confidence. Business deals are turned down every day. Not everybody goes whinging about them on Twitter because they got their feelings hurt. Turning down the offer by saying no is all that needed to happen.
@@yetidh9 that's not a business deal lol chdist.
@C J B Firstly, you don't know if that's what happened. Secondly, there aren't many 'favours' in business. It has to be beneficial for both sides. Litchfield wouldn't give product to a TH-camr with no followers would they? I'm sure they were expecting to sell some kits thanks to the exposure.
Well done guys. Thanks for speaking about this. As an avid consumer of automotive content on TH-cam I appreciate knowing who is really worth their salt or not. Glad to hear Sam/Seen Through Glass is a genuine bloke. Not impressed with a certain JWW. Gives us all information to base who's videos we watch!
Sams content is top and its great to hear he is sound. Always seemed more genuine than the rest
@@SWatchik Initial impression is he's just another posh boi like Shmee but then you watch his content and realize how humble and down to earth he actually is
Glad you called out this out, influencing itself is ridiculous
I'm impressed you managed to get Dean Norris a.k.a Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad to play Iain too.
Schraderbräu
It’s now pretty clear it’s James (MrJWW). Shmee and Seen Through Glass have both come out and confirmed it wasn’t them. Chris said the person in question has stayed silent so far, MrJWW hasn’t said a word at this point. It’s going to be quite a costly experience for him I think.
So it should. Bought reviews leads to everything turning to shit.
I hope subscribers ditch the culprit, it’s the only way that parasites like that learn their lesson. Good on Chris for.exposing this as it shows the World what some of these “influencers” are really all about.
James blaming his third party ad agency is disgraceful. They were operating on his behalf and he should take the blame.
Yes, should but his hand up and take it on the chin
Not really surprising it's the most convenient excuse for him to get out of this hot water “oooh it wasn't me I swear I'm an honest businessman it was the ad agency I honestly didn't know any better....” uuuhuh ok buddy we believe you.....
That is the issue these days though isn't it. People don't take responsibility for their decisions or mistakes. It's always someone else's fault.
Yep agree. Many many chief executives have resigned over issues that their employees have done. When you look at how anal he is over everything he shows. MVN, the bunker it is clear that he was behind the proposition. I cannot believe Lichfield was the only one and I hope others step forward as well. Times are tough industries don't need leeches like these.
@@philipwalker1243 with that beard it’s clear he has no chin or class for that matter.
Litchfield imported a 2005 Mustang for me, which arrived with the wrong spec of wheels. Ian sorted it out with minimal hassle. That's the mark of a good company!
I would love to hear more life stories from these car engineering people who we all hear about but never meet. it's really cool.
And that's a Doug score
Guys, what a brilliant video, 57 minutes of pure enjoyment.
I love the stories from the old EVO group test days.
Ian seems like a super guy and respect to Chris for calling out sharp practice from an influencer that must have been having a moment of madness when he made his business proposal to Ian on the Yaris upgrade deal.
I for one can’t wait for the next Collecting cars podcast/video.
Funny how people are now calling out Chris for throwing Mr JWW under the bus, when Chris never named him. They're the ones outing James!
I’ve given some thought to this and I’m afraid my conclusion is indeed James. aka Mr JWW
Because Chris would/will get sued for defamation. The problem Chris has now is if he causes a tangible financial loss and measurable costs to the Influencer he is digging a hole. Chris can't say he has suffered a financial loss himself due to the influecers agent quoting for work from a 3rd party. No one has lost any money at either Litchfield or Harris. The influencer would have phoned his lawyer and they would have said shut up and let us deal with it. Not post on Twitter then go on TH-cam to thrash it out with your mates. As much of a gaff the £25k Yaris will be for the Influencer. This could prove VERY expensive for Chris Harris.
Let's be honest and realistic here.
With the details Chris gave there were only 2 UK people it realistically might have been - Tim (shmee) or James (jww)
Every other UK youtuber/influencer with a GR Yaris is either too small, it doesn't fit their profile or have it on loan.
Tim's gobby manager instantly said it wasn't Shmee and slated James.
However it turns out that the Shmee lots only issue was the amount asked, not that something was asked.
Chris knew EXACTLY what he was doing doing when he broadcast this.
Things in the motoring journalism type business have moved on.
You might or might not like the way it's moved, but it's a fact that it has.
Oh and let's not forget Chris himself has tried to make changes to the automotive journalist way of life over the years.
£25k was a silly amount to ask for
But did jww (or whoever) think they would get that, or was it merely a somewhat cheeky starting point ?
@@fraserwright9482 - You've absolutely no understanding of libel so quit being the barrack-room lawyer
. I say this as someone with an LL.B, an LL.M, and an M.Phil. I also run a respected legal consultancy for clients in the creative industry.
JWW isn't going to sue Chris Harris for defamation of character. It's not possible because Chris didn't name him and nor could JWW be clearly identified from the Twitter post itself. The only person who did this is Shmee's manager. Chris Harris has nothing to worry about.
@@th3b0untyhunter but they can reasonably say that it was in fact Shmee's manager that specifically named the influencer, not Chris. He's just acted as the catalyst and has been careful not to say any names. My view is he's in the clear. Dodgy work on the part of the 'influencer' to (essentially) threaten legal action, which looks like leverage to get Litchfield over a barrel as part of damage control. This is in reference to an influencer's post where he says he wants to do an interview with Litchfield, while discussing 'legal' actions.
I've known Iain since the late '90's and he's definitely one of the good guys. He's done incredibly well, through masses of hard work. Good lad!
My biggest issue is this freeloader mentality among some of these Rich Kids of TH-cam. They already got everything for free at home and now they are expecting people outside their family circles to pay for their hobbies too.
ah your comment is pure gold, those rich kids got spoiled so much it's starting to ruin the car journalism but at least we got chris and harry's garage for quality mature content
Chris, yesterday’s global kerfuffle proves one thing... you’re the key influencer in car world. 😬
FEEL THE POWER! 🤣
Yes he still is the key car influencer!
He’s the original, but he earnt his right with car skills we all aspire to have
That's exactly what I find most unpalatable to be honest. Chris claims to hate influencers, yet he posts the story on an influencer platform in order to influence people. He claims cars are not important and just a bit of fun, yet its his career and livelihood. Doesn't sit right with me. "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...."
Outside of the UK Chris Harris is seen as a hack 🤷🏻♂️ sorry to burst your bubble
@@All_Dead_In_Shimoda are you THE BNE Exotics.... the chosen speaker for the non-U.K. global car community??? Oh sir it’s an honour!! 🙄🤣
As a result of this story, I now find myself browsing his website. Nice influencing!
Misha & Robert laughing about this the other day was comedy go watch that video too y'all
did you see jww insta? robert was kissing jww's back side in the comments. these people are different on and off cam
Those 2 are clowns
Lynne to James:
“Lichfield said no to a caravan, and yes to a tow-bar”
The 25k, work on my car and pay me a slice of the revenues isn't a big shock. TH-cam car influencers in 99.9% of cases are born into extreme wealth. Their lifestyle and cars are bought by the bank of Mummy and Daddy whilst they disingenuously pretend that it's all down to their hard work and entrepreneurial skills. So it's no surprise that they're entitled and dishonest.
I do agree that this blag is worse than others. The influencer in question knows his teenage subscribers aren't buying GR Yaris' or going to Litchfield so the sales pitch is fundamentally dishonest as well. He just wants free work that costs thousands and £25k in his back pocket for doing f*ck all. That's leech behaviour and shouldn't be tolerated in the car community.
Nailed mr Jww there
And then who is going to be influenced by them? How many people can afford the cars they have? To me they aren't influencers, they are just people who show off their wealth
@@christiantava442 seen through glass summed it up. All of the uk car influencers are privately educated so can afford to do this and if it failed just go back to mum and dad
@@christiantava442 well thats the whole thing, the majority of "influencers" are actually smart, they use their wealth and platform to show off the cool shit they get and appeal to a young and impressionable audience and leech off of them for insane views
Actually a lot of vloggers get gifted cars by the manufacturers marketing department to create exposure for the brand across a reach of consumers in a day all the legacy magazines couldn’t reach in a year. When the time is over, they conveniently have to sell them, and move onto next freebie
If Chris Harris’ tweet results in all influencers losing their income and publicity, then Chris should be nominated for a Nobel Prize.
@@carlb123 jeez why not live and let live - they are only trying to make a living. What’s the difference between an old school motoring industry journalist and those treading the boards of new media...
@@Rosso456MGT - I wouldn't have issues with car influencers if they were just honest but the vast majority aren't. Most of them are born into extreme wealth and their lifestyle and cars are bought by the bank of Mummy and Daddy whilst they disingenuously pretend that it's all down to their hard work, ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills. This is just fundamentally dishonest because they're selling a TH-cam dream that's largely unachievable. I'd just respect them a lot more if they said "yes, my family is rich and I'm very lucky to drive all these cars and subsequently make good money via Google AdSense."
Also, there's a massive difference between a traditional motoring journalist and an influencer who says "give me 25k, work on my car for free and pay me a slice of the future revenues" so you can have some promotion via my TH-cam channel. What's made worse is that the influencer in question knows his teenage subscribers aren't buying GR Yaris' or going to Litchfield so the sales pitch is fundamentally dishonest as well. He just wants free work that costs thousands and £25k in his back pocket for doing f*ck all. That's leech behaviour and should be called out.
I've run a very successful business and have done so for 11 years. I loathe companies and people within business who oversell, sell fake products/services and/or purposely take advantage of other businesses because they think they can.
It's like me promising a potential client that I can create a fuck load of value for them when I know I can't and still taking their money. It's unethical and you deserve to destroy your reputation if you do that and that's now what's happening to the influencer in question.
@@Jimbo8012 you are off the mark with statements around TH-camrs being born being RICH! you could say some youtubers are born with a greater opportunity than others. that would be fair. The hard work, business ethic, personal challenge that all successful YT creators have been faced with is being disregarded in your statement. If you 'own a successful business' you should know the effort that takes to get there. You make a lot of ill informed assumptions in your rant above and I loathe people who do that rather than seek balance in judgement and know facts before slating people. Your final statement isnt justified either as you really don't know what's deals offers or options were on the table and you are basing you statements on the HOPE that Litchfield is telling the full truth which, he categorically isn't! You can see it on his face, he isn't sitting comfortably in this interview. What he is doing s simply selecting the suitable parts of a rich tapestry of context and framing a story which positivelymarkets him and his business - I believe that to be the truth. The fact he's gone out to the masses on the back of that makes him the one who is dishonest and unfair and no-ones hard earned reputation should be damaged as a result!
@@TheJonaire - In your case, a teeny tiny amount of knowledge is a very dangerous thing. You made a ranting and completely ill informed comment about Litchfield in the comments below without any understanding of basic accounting and how businesses file with Companies House. You accused Litchfield of being worth only £20k and yet you didn't realise that they've multiple companies offering different services and holding companies to minimise Corporation tax exposure. Just 1 of their companies has net assets of over 1 million.
I've not personally taken a car to Litchfield but know many who have and loved the work they did. They've an exceptional reputation in the industry for a reason. JWW on the other hand...
Quite frankly, I don't need condescension and lectures about how I should know how hard it is to get a business off the ground from a random TH-cam idiot who's prepared to die on a hill for JWW.
@@Jimbo8012 funnily you should mention a little bit of knowledge is dangerous, your guilty of it exercising you 25pence worth! I happen to work in a jurisdiction which doesn't pay Corporation tax where the wealthy really know how to be tax efficient and whilst I am not an accountant and don't have my own business I do have a slightly greater knowledge than you've assumed. Im prepared to be a good person and not spit out distain to someone they've never met, I've merely voiced the other side of it which has more validity than your limited one-sided view has to offer!
Looks like JWW has watched this 7 times
He's up to 41 now
Love the Iain Litchfield story, great stuff. Never rated Mr JWW from the moment he did a series with a Mclaren F1 road trip and overdubbed it with music!
Noble story had me chuckling in fits and takes me back to being young. Priceless. Thank you. And takes me back to my gone but never forgotten Spec C...
Having worked on several projects with Iain many years ago, I have nothing but good things to say about him. We have been asked by the latest crop of "TH-cam Influencer" to supply fully prepared Motorsport shells for zero, like it's a given. No chance.
My biggest concern is how would anybody get to a figure of £25k that would benefit Litchfield.
I'm astounded at the level of stupidity! Astounded.
29:00 so Aston Martin bought one of the first R35 GTRs in the UK from Ian Litchfield because they were so impressed with how it drove they wanted to essentially reverse engineer it? That's amazing.
I learned about Litchfield when they did the 730hp RS6. I also love the Apline A110 Litcfield which was crazy fast in the Carwow drag race.
Well done for putting this together guys!
Excellent video, very interesting. Stand out comment for me was Ian's comment of 'we like to follow the customer' so if they move on from say a GTR to a Porsche or McLaren we want to still be able to offer them something. This shows real business acumen and is what sustains a successful business. Good on you and I wish you continued success. Modifying a car isn't my thing but I know many are into this and clearly this is a good place to go.
Where’s the pride in building your own car gone? I’ve got a built Litchfield GT-R and I’m so proud of it. Even more so of the fact I’ve worked hard for it myself. Such a shame we live in a world where those who can afford to spend a lot of money on parts expect everything for free. Loss of role models in the modern age
Sam from seen through glass is a class act
A great video from collecting cars. Glad sean through glass and harry's garage got a mention. Those two along with car throttle seem to be the only car channels I enjoy watching these days.
Iain is a top car enthusiast along with his dedicated team, Neil at Litchfield has always looked after my GTR-R35 requirements and looking forward to some tweaking on my M3 Competition this year also.
Between 2011-2015 I took my 2x R35 GTRs to be serviced & modified by Iain’s company. I was very pleased with the Litchfield experience..good guy 👍
Ah the promise of "jam tomorrow", I learnt very quickly in business that such people need to be told that any discount or payment is given upon them delivering something of value to myself.
I am a big fan of Chris Harris and Collecting cars and don’t know Litchfield from Adam but it’s interesting that this particular deal has been called out in the way it has been. Take a listen to Yianni and JWW discuss this on ‘Stereo’ - there is always two sides to every story.
The audacity to ask for a free suspension kit + 25k is infuriating, but to then also want a future sales percentage of the kit is hilarious! Who the hell do they think they are!? Litchfield do all the development work for the kit and manufacture it and some tosser approaches them and wants to be paid to have it on their car and take a cut of every other sale. Crazy.
Jokers
Never have I ever clicked on a notification so fast
Lovely! Can you do a similar interview with the chaps at Alfaholics please!?
Looks the 25 K talk is here 😅
Haha thanks came to the comments for this
that’s why I’m here
Have a look at Robert Mitchell's channel, from Apex, he did one yesterday with Mischa
Integrity is priceless
Hi, 5,000 GR Yaris sold in the UK now sold out of 2021 build
The Type 25 was one of my dream cars growing up! 415bhp, 0-60 less than 4 seconds and 175mph top speed i think it was. Never managed to see one in real life though. If i ever manage to buy a Hawkeye STI, it'll be going to Litchfield!
Great seeing Iain, had one of his JDM Forester STis, still the most capable fun all rounder I ever had and the after market service was superb, was always like a kid in a sweet shop whenever I went over for services.
Life of palos need to listen to this he been dying to hear this
Great podcast/video 👍🏼 I hope Litchfield gets even more publicity from it, fantastic products and from a genuine car enthusiast! I’m already looking on the litchfield website and classifieds for my next litchfield modified machine....😊
Cant believe I'm watching this then they start talking about Thornbury and Castle school! Good stuff greetings from thornbury Iain
Great job putting this shi* on blast !!
Must let these influencers people know it’s not cool !!!
It's not a cool or not cool case. The problem is how they asked, like they are entitled to it.
25k and rev share is quite common in any industry, the thing is, you are not given these type of ammounts like this. 25k means you will bring a lot of business in, think +200k worth of sales, with rev share is even a bigger ammount.
The problem is the disconnect between value and measurable objectives from said influencers and what they are asking.
Business will pay as long as someone gets them results.
Hell influencer could even asked 1M and if he was to bring 5M or more in sales, I'm sure Ian would gladly pay up.
@@cutdepiefails6596 25k and rev share is common? No. No it is not.
Very few advertise the fact that the video contains paid endorsement.
The industry needs correcting.
Smeg 150 is one of the worst. & will block any one who points out his shill
@@ecolenakles haha yeah he blocked me years back for pointing out something on his Ferrari ppf video
@@TBATTIECYCLING He blocked me for pointing out that quite a few of ''His'' cars were in fact loaners That he was only allowed to keep for 6 months ..
@@ecolenakles 😹 find it hilarious how they take it
What I like about Chris Harris & Harry Metcalfe is they say it how it is. If it’s good they’ll say...if it’s bad they’ll say. Keep it up fellas
Id never heard of litchfield, now I have. I am also in no position to buy anything from them! Fascinating insight into Mr litchfields back ground. Very enjoyable podcast/video....thing.
Cheers guys, great chat.
Great podcast, lovely to hear his story and all the other stories. Great group of lads and just overall good guys👏🏾👍🏾
Mark my words, these sort of deals are discussed in the utmost confidentiality. I would not be surprised something serious is in the works for the rebuttal. The deafening silence so far speaks volumes.
Shmee puts the commercial tag on his videos, as well as Sam.
It's some guy called jww
Lots of them do put the commercial tags, although probably not as often as they should.
Traditional TV and print media have rules around these kinds of transparency issues. They might not always be followed but the rules are there. The internet and social media platforms are so far, significantly less regulated. How that will evolve, how it should evolve, is a topic of our time ... and it's scope runs much wider than the issue of motorcars alone ... In the meantime, transparency earns respect.
'paid for reviews' has been a thing since forever, my dad worked for massive sales companies and they was always approached by companies asking them to rave about their products if they were given freebies or cash
in fact what hifi employees look after whatever company looks after them at christmas :)
Great Chris puts focus on this, a lot people don't know this youtubers gets cash to tell nice stuff about different products. Now days you never get any real feedback. Also youtubers are not journalists most of them. This days we really miss independent journalism
Chris acknowledges the conflict of interest around this. It’s not like Top Gear pays a penny for sitting in featured new cars other than their own production costs. It’s a spectrum of blag; magazines were prolific offenders. this reported blag appears to be at the current outer limits of the market (and it is a market like any other). People want free content, TH-cam is a very rich resource, little in life is “free”.
I’m glad that Iain and Chris have highlighted this episode to provide some insight into some of the drivers for “free” content. I find it hard to distinguish the difference in car magazines, tv programmes and TH-cam. All are “influencers” whether they are self aware or not. Only difference is the platform, same audience.
This is an example of plain greed.
Another tremendous point made in comments below is that this behaviour and market will only push up the cost to genuine punters.
So we have already rich people making money from content anyway, pushing up the cost of semi-affordable hobby interests to make themselves richer. And this is to provide a potentially dishonest, biased opinion.
As said above: pure GREED.
I'm not really sure it was "wrong" as I would imagine that these management teams are doing this for many influencers and some companies may actually agree to demands. It's cheeky at its worse, companies can say no. Possibly the worse thing is the timing within a time of high financial stress and business pressure. The risk is that if you get too cheeky like in this situation, you end up with reputation damage.
Totally agree.
For me the only issue was that £25k even as a starting point was way too high.
Not sure I agree. Chris you seem to have ascended into an ivory tower which you've built just doing a more 1990s version of exactly this? Nobody is forcing anyone to watch or say yes.
I don't think any of the automotive TH-camrs refer to themselves as "influencers" and I think the use of the term here is particularly cynical. It is a deliberate attempt to demean and distance what automotive TH-camrs do from what Harris does/did. TH-camrs have a full-time job of arranging, scheduling, travel, filming, editing and promoting the content as Harris himself knows all too well. Many of the TH-camrs have invested considerable time and money in building their audiences and push out high quality automotive content on a regular basis, which many of us enjoy. Some are exceptional at it. Let's not shit on all of them because it is cool to do so and/or one of them has stepped out of line with regard to what is deemed to be an unacceptable blag.
On that, it was nice to hear Iain give a shout-out to Sam from @SeenThroughGlass. Love his channel and the @BehindTheGlass podcast too.
Critiquing my own comment, and upon further consideration I realize that definitely pulled an "influencer" move by saying give me stuff, plus stuff, plus more stuff or we'll work with a competitor. It took me a day to get there. I think my confusion arises from considering what is modern "publishing" in the automotive world and further, what is the acceptable distance between who is paying and who is getting paid. A quick example would be; if you are writing for an automotive magazine the money you are being paid is coming from subscriptions, advertising and stand sales and this distance affords you some plausible deniability. "I was unaware, at the time of writing, that Subaru paid $25,000 to advertise in the same issue that I wrote about how good they are". TH-camrs are self-publishing and that gap has all but vanished, but we still want high-quality content. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Haven’t yet watched this, really hope to hear some background on the Subaru type 20/25/gp edition ect... really looking forward to this one !
Scooby type 25 ❤️❤️
Many years ago !! I wanted one but ended up with a B5 RS4
Had my T25 nearly 16 years now 😀
Love a B5 RS4 🙌🏼
Regarding Chris's comments about Naim and Focal ...
I met Chris Harris when he came for a look round Naim a few years ago - he was being shown round by Jason Gould and I was introduced to Chris as "This is Phil - he's into cars too - he has a TVR" ... I could have died at the time as to him that would have been like someone being introduced to me as "This is Gerald - he's into HiFi too - he has a set of Bluetooth speakers for his iPhone..." but to give the guy his dues he actually stopped and asked me which TVR I have (I have a Chimera) and commented that he rather enjoyed the Chimaera when he drove it.
I had hoped that Jason could swing me a run out to Chris's gaff if Jason got to go out and install the Naim kit for him but that didn't come off... :-D
Being in America, I'm getting this episode much later than people in Britain (I'm waking up to it.) So if there has been any movement on the initial topic, I'm unaware of it. Recently I watched Chris's interview on Remove Before Race. They had a fantastic conversation about the role of influencers in todays automotive world. As Chris so deftly stated then (and was repeated in this video) watching these so called "influencers" all review the same car in the same way on the same day is quite monotonous. There's a few of them that have been labeled with that word that I think is unfair. For instance I think James aka Mr JWW, Sam at STG, and Archie Hamilton get a break from me because they are either race car drivers, are attempting to become a race car driver, and/or review older, "modern classics" instead of showing off how many brand new supercars they own. Having any one of them go to any shop, supplier, or manufacturer and ask them for money to use their kit is extremely pompous and is degrading to the whole spirit of the automobile hobby.
I'm not sure if this is a generational thing and like Chris said I don't want to sound like a crabby old man (Chris and I are about the same age) but I think this is one of the problems with social media. We grew up in a time when we couldn't wait until the next car magazine arrived so we could get home from school and just devour it at night. Now we are constantly bombarded with new stuff everyday. I think some of these "influencers" need to step back and think about why they started their platforms in the first place. I remember getting R&T, C&D, etc, reading it 3 or 4 times in the first day, then giving it to a friend. As we got older, we continued that sharing with books, specific techniques, parts and even entire cars. There was never a monetary gain in our "you help me and I'll help you and in the end we are all the better for it" attitude! Again, most of us are tired of the horsepower wars, the "one-upsmanship" between social media platforms, and the barrage of reviews on the same car at the same time. Some of these guys need to slow down, step back and think about why they got into cars and realize that when we are all doing positive things and helping each other out, everyone gains.
Rant over. As usual, absolutely fantastic episode again today. Thank you lads for the great insight and conversation. Looking forward to the next one (but the next one doesn't gave to be 5 minutes from now.) Cheers boys!
Well said!
Retailing of marketing services 101. Tell the customer (Litchfield) what you can do for them, the features, advantages and benefits of what that is and the projected return. Show evidence of past successes for similar clients. Then tell them the price. If you miss the first bit out expect people to look at you like you're a bit arrogant.
Cracking listen while on the road today
Well said, Chris! Great conversation and influencers who are in most circumstances not influencing anyone should stop feeling entitled to money and products.
Brilliant timing! 😂😂😂😂
I know right. Anyone would think Chris does this for a living. :)
I think it is brilliant that you fellas are bringing attention to this. All it does from my perspective is make finding reliable, honest information using youtube or other websites etc more and more difficult to know whether they are exactly that. These "shills" seem to be commonplace in many industries these days
Iain and his team are top people.
What about a BMW 240? Can these benefit from the Litchfield treatment not being an M car. To clarify would the suspension parts fit due to the different tracks.
Don’t reply, I have answered my own question by looking at the website.
Also, more pod casts please.
Chris Harris seems like a top lad.
Even though he's a big budget presenter now, at heart he is a journalist that couldn't be swayed by the big dick energy of the car world.
Edward Lovett - For christs sakes stop *****NG around with your mobile mid podcast - is the Mrs really that much of a bunny boiler? Chris doesn't do it so if he doesn't you certainly shouldnt.
He’s a businessman.
I used to have a car collection Matchbox & Corgi cars - RR, Bentleys, Range Rover, Porsche, Lamborghini & Ferrari...
Seems like the old Pirate gens are coming out from Mr Walker...
I can remember going to a very large annual car show where I met Karcher .. certain people told me that JJW is nothing all a front, acting as if NVM is his company etc . The guy has lost a lot of respect amongst fellow car enthusiasts.
Great video again, proper honest journalism from CH again. It maybe 'old scholl' but at least it's honest. Having discovered the perpetrator, that's 1 TH-cam channel i've unsubscribed from...always did think his content was a too biased and lacked real depth.
Excellent, telling him where to go.I’ve used them from the offset for my Nismo, they are professional,Super good service and more importantly the car comes back in perfect condition, unlike main dealers.
I'm sure most people fully support Chris on the main story in this podcast. I think he's done the industry, and us, a massive service by making this public, and has done so carefully with a lot of tact. It's absolutely worthy material that should be in the public domain.
I don't think the individual concerned has helped his cause (at all) with his initial response - clearly trying to make out he's the victim of all of this. It does come across as arrogant and out-of-touch - with some vague mention of consulting with his legal advisers.
He's either drafted the whole thing himself or used Prince Andrew's advisors - it's a really poor statement.
I think if he'd come out and said this is the first time (if that was true) that he'd worked with the particular agency (that's employed by him) and apologised, he'd get some flak - but it would be accepted as a mistake.
But he hasn't - so it's very difficult to believe that the said agency representing him has not done so on a number of occasions (or even on a regular basis) making it even harder to believe that James doesn't know how they operate or what sort of "deals" they get (or try to get) for him. If he'd just bitten the bullet and said this was wrong, should never have happened, and apologised for the behaviour of the "external agency" that he employed (on the understanding that they'd represented him in a good, professional manner) it might have been better.
Instead the whole thing comes across as "Me, me, me!"
Saying that in the past, he's often worked with, and helped brands for free, throwing cyber-bullying into the mix. and so on - hasn't really helped him.
With just about every "influencer" posting content on a car with only 700-1,000 of them coming to the UK, and a mere fraction of these likely to be further modified (and even then, the likelihood that numerous modifiers/tuners would have such business spread amongst them).... the £25,000 fee, through to the share of future business on the product isn't even a business proposition.
It just shows a complete lack of understanding of James' value, the industry in general, and profit and loss.
Most people will just see it as greed.
Mr JWW out begging?
not him
@@rramirez19 James Willy Walker?
@@rramirez19 Not what Shmee150 manager says on twitter.
@@rramirez19 totally him, he is pissed.
Imagine what he got from the AM DBX JWW edition deal...!?
Great video. Was interesting to hear about the prolific tuner just up the road from me
I want to know which TH-camrs attempted this.
Mr JWW
@@yasir11 Thanks, don't watch the ass hat anyway just wanted to make sure it wasn't someone I actually respected.
Lots of them do it.
Shmees manager slated Jww but later messed up and admitted actually his issue was the amount asked not that an amount was requested in the first place.
I wonder if James is watching this.
Probably changing a nappy which is less of a shit storm 😭
I can hear his arse twitching as he gets another one ripped anyway.
Who was the you tuber trying to squeeze Lichfield???
Seems like it’s JWW or something.
When I saw the thumbnail I thought it was Hank from Breaking Bad, a small part of me is sad that it isn’t. 😉
Ridiculous way to be treat - Iain is a true gent. Litchfield helped me out with my F80 crankhub on short notice last July. Fair play to you for putting this out there for all to see
I think I can hear the subtle squeak of a certain twonks’ sphincter as we speak!... eh JW?
I think this highlights the problem with the social media world and you are correct to bring this issue up.
Half million subscribers worldwide is not a large percentage of the population, yet these people think they are "MEGA STARS" caught up in their own perceived self importance.
They think they can ask / deman huge sum to promote a products from hard working people. when in fact it's the hard work of others that lets them be where they are on these platforms.
"Tail wagging the dog springs to mind"
They seem to have felt the real world and are living in a fantasy bouble of celebrity, they are just small fish in a very large pond.
True thinking about all these youtubers with brand new BMWs that we know got a special deal that isn't given to customers, make a video before selling on the following month, there's zero transparency.
"blag" great word, still relevent.
That MrJWW is almost as iterating to watch as that overly overt Shmee character. As with Chris Harris and Harry Metcalf and even Petrol,Ped, you can tell the difference between those who are already wealthy kids with a TH-cam channel,hobby, compared to those who have learnt a craft from the bottom to the top.
Irritating.
What a great episode that was 👏👏👏
Read many comments surrounding this, lots saying Chris shouldn’t of shared this information, I believe wholeheartedly he should of and as per the summary the little man won.
I took a shot at said 25k influencer who attended a Supercar Driver event last year with his production team, very clever editing and little to no thanks to the event organiser would of had you think he had organised the event.
He immediately blocked me on Instagram for speaking my mind and stating he should of given credit to Supercar Driver for organising such an incredible event.
Not one to wish anyone bad, some of the comments towards him have been dreadful, hopefully he will learn a lesson from this day forwards.
I bloody love Chris Harris...rock on fella