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    The Death of Motoring News: When The Net's Most Popular Sites Fell Silent

    8 hours ago

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    Speedhunters published its last story on April 3, 2025. The site that featured photography from Larry Chen, covered everything from Formula Drift to Daikoku Parking Area, and introduced Western audiences to RWB and Akira Nakai went dark without announcement or explanation. According to The Drive, nobody noticed for almost three months. Former contributor Paddy McGrath told Reddit in July: "Speedhunters always tried to shine a light on parts of the car world that others wouldn't touch, and I still don't think there's another outlet out there like it. It's a damn shame that it's gone (for now anyways) but that nobody really noticed it was gone for almost three months is telling." That single observation captures everything wrong with automotive journalism in 2026. A site that ran for 17 years, backed by Electronic Arts, featuring world-class photographers, and producing feature stories instead of SEO-optimized listicles shut down and the car community barely registered its absence. The silence wasn't indifference. It was exhaustion. We've watched so many platforms die that another one barely registers. Car Throttle uploaded its last video on October 27, 2025. The channel that built a community around comedy sketches, cheap car challenges, and accessible car content hasn't posted anything since. In January 2026, presenter Alex Gassman announced he'd left the company, calling his time there an "incredible experience" without mentioning the channel's future. According to Wikitubia, the future is now uncertain. Car Throttle was acquired by Dennis Publishing in August 2019 after raising $3.14 million from investors including Passion Capital and Redalpine. The site and channel had pivoted from community-focused content to social media optimization years earlier. Founder Adnan Ebrahim wrote in 2017 that with "finite resources in both money and staff time," the company served "hundreds of millions of users out there in the wild west world of social media" rather than focusing on the thousands of community members who built the platform. That social media strategy delivered 375 million video views monthly at its peak. It didn't save the company from going silent five years later. The economics broke. Speedhunters never figured out monetization despite EA's backing and global reach. Car Throttle raised venture capital, got acquired, and still couldn't make the numbers work. Both platforms produced quality content that audiences loved. Neither could convert that love into sustainable revenue. Speedhunters' problem was structural. EA founded the site in 2008 to market Need for Speed games by embedding the brand in authentic car culture. The strategy worked brilliantly. Speedhunters became genuinely respected, featured incredible photography and writing, and influenced millions without feeling like corporate propaganda. But when EA paused the Need for Speed franchise in February 2025 following the final update to NFS: Unbound, the parent company had no further use for an automotive culture site. According to The Drive's investigation, EA had even built a new Speedhunters site set to launch in early 2025. It never went live. Paddy McGrath, who contributed to Speedhunters from 2009 to 2021, told contributors privately that "there were so many times that Speedhunters was circling the drain over the last decade. We rarely knew ahead of time if our contracts would be renewed each year." The site survived multiple near-death experiences before the final one, kept alive by dedicated people who believed in the mission despite uncertain futures. When EA finally pulled funding, those people dispersed to individual projects. Larry Chen runs a successful YouTube channel. Dino Dalle Carbonare operates Dino DC with nearly 200,000 subscribers. Photographers Mario Christou and Alec Pender launched Turnpike in November 2025 with several former Speedhunters contributors, hoping to recreate the magic without corporate backing. The broader journalism collapse provides context. Entertainment and media companies cut over 17,000 jobs in 2025, an 18% increase from 2024, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas data. News organizations accounted for 2,254 layoffs. Automotive News, the industry trade publication, laid off at least four editorial staffers in November as part of broader Crain Communications cuts affecting multiple titles. Press Gazette tracked at least 3,434 journalism job cuts in the UK and US during 2025, down from 3,875 in 2024 but still representing a massive contraction in professional reporting capacity. The decline hit every sector. National newspapers, local outlets, broadcast, digital, and specialized publications all cut staff or closed entirely. Automotive journalism faces unique pressures beyond the general media collapse. The industry is technically complex, requiring writers who understand engineering, regulations, and market dynamics while also producing engaging content. Manufacturers provide press cars and access in exchange for coverage, creating relationships that can compromise editorial independence. Enthusiast audiences expect deep technical knowledge and authentic passion rather than generic consumer advice, yet those enthusiast audiences are smaller and less lucrative than mass-market readerships. The platforms that thrived temporarily did so by choosing a lane. Speedhunters focused on visual storytelling and global car culture features. Car Throttle built community through comedy and accessible challenges. Jalopnik carved out investigative reporting and irreverent commentary. Top Gear leveraged television budgets and celebrity hosts. Each found an audience and developed loyal followings. None could monetize those followings sustainably once the broader economic model collapsed. Display advertising revenue declined as programmatic buying drove down rates. Subscription models work for general news but fail for specialized automotive content where readers can find free alternatives. Affiliate income from product recommendations generates pennies. Video production costs far exceed what YouTube ad revenue returns for most channels. Sponsored content alienates audiences and compromises editorial integrity. The math simply doesn't work for quality automotive journalism at scale. Social media platforms promised distribution but delivered fragmentation. Building an audience on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok means renting attention from corporations that change algorithms without warning. Car Throttle's 375 million monthly video views sound impressive until you realize the company couldn't control that distribution, couldn't reliably reach their own audience, and couldn't convert views into sustainable revenue. Private equity and corporate consolidation destroyed what remained. Companies bought media properties, extracted value through cost cuts, and closed or sold them when profitability targets weren't met. Dennis Publishing acquired Car Throttle in 2019. The site produced content for five more years before going silent. EA funded Speedhunters for 17 years, then shut it down when the marketing rationale disappeared. Both decisions make business sense from quarterly earnings perspectives. Both represent losses to automotive culture that can't be measured in spreadsheets. The platforms dying now shaped how a generation relates to cars. Speedhunters taught people to appreciate Japanese car culture beyond Fast and Furious stereotypes. Car Throttle made automotive enthusiasm accessible to younger audiences who couldn't afford expensive builds. These weren't just websites. They were communities where people discovered shared interests, learned about different aspects of car culture, and connected with others who cared about the same things. What replaces them? Individual creators on YouTube and social media fill some gaps, but without editorial oversight or institutional backing, quality varies wildly. Manufacturer-funded content feels like advertising because it is advertising. AI-generated listicles optimized for search engines provide no value beyond clicks. Forums and Reddit threads serve specific communities well but lack the production quality and reach that dedicated platforms provided. The ecosystem fragments into smaller pieces where discovery becomes harder and shared culture dissolves. Meanwhile, the appetite for quality automotive content demonstrably exists. Audiences haven't disappeared; they've simply moved to platforms and formats that media companies struggle to monetize. The challenge isn't creating content people want. It's building sustainable business models that fund professional journalism without relying on corporate subsidies, venture capital that demands unrealistic growth, or advertising rates that collapsed a decade ago. Some platforms are finding paths forward. MotorBuzz has experienced significant growth over the past six months, proving demand for well-curated automotive news aggregation remains strong when execution is solid. The difference between survival and failure often comes down to cost structure, monetization creativity, and willingness to experiment with models beyond traditional advertising. But experimentation requires resources, and resources require funding, and funding requires proven business models that automotive journalism largely hasn't developed. Speedhunters died because EA stopped funding it. Car Throttle went silent because Dennis Publishing couldn't make it profitable. The pattern repeats across the industry: great content, passionate audiences, unsustainable economics. The death of Speedhunters and the silence from Car Throttle aren't isolated incidents. They're symptoms of an industry-wide collapse that has been accelerating for years. Quality automotive journalism costs money. Producing feature stories with professional photography, traveling to events globally, maintaining editorial standards, and paying journalists fairly requires budgets that display advertising and subscription models can't support at current rates. What we're losing isn't just websites. It's institutional knowledge, editorial standards, community spaces, and the infrastructure that connected global car culture. Individual creators can produce excellent content, but they can't replicate the scope and reach that dedicated platforms provided. The fragmentation means audiences scatter across platforms where algorithms determine visibility rather than editorial judgment.   The automotive journalism that survives will look different than what existed. Leaner operations, more sponsored content, heavier reliance on social media distribution, and inevitable compromises between editorial integrity and commercial necessity. The platforms that defined car culture for a generation are dying, and the replacements haven't emerged yet. Speedhunters went dark in April. Car Throttle stopped uploading in October. Who's next? And will anyone notice when they're gone?
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