Battle Of The Brands: Which European Automakers Bare All On YouTube?

By Richard Read

Richard Read

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Richard Read is a car writer, covering marketing, technology, social media, and other auto industry topics for High Gear Media. With a background in... More

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1,019 views August 10, 2010

Screencap from Porsche's YouTube channel

Enlarge Photo

Yesterday, we launched a little friendly competition: a comparison of automakers' YouTube channels. We were curious to see which qualify as must-see web TV and which ought to be canceled ASAP.

Monday was devoted to U.S. brands, and today, we're moving across the pond for a look at their "European" competitors. We say "European" instead of European because there's room for debate about what qualifies as a Euro brand nowadays -- what with wealthy Asian companies gobbling up their financially unstable Continental colleagues as fast as the "For Sale" signs go up. (HUMMER excluded, natch.) Feel free to debate all those socio-political nuances in the comments below.

Asian and exotic marques will follow tomorrow and Thursday. (Generally, any brand sold in the U.S. is fair game.) Then on Friday, we'll break out the booze and the bottle rockets to announce our grand prize winners. Take just a moment put on your headphones -- out of respect to your cubicle pals -- and follow along.

* * * * *

Aston Martin: http://www.youtube.com/user/astonmartin
Total uploads: 9
Total subscribers: 516
Total views: 45,017
Date launched: November 03, 2005
Date range of clips: One week to two months
Like: Clean; easy to navigate
Dislike: Pretty boring for such an exciting brand; only nine clips?; feels slightly underused and abandoned
Most recent clip: "One-77 Episode 4 Teaser Video.mov"

Audi: http://www.youtube.com/user/AudiofAmerica
Total uploads: 46
Total subscribers: 2, 432
Total views: 1,580,781
Date launched: June 18, 2009
Date range of clips: Twelve hours to one year
Like: Well, it's clean, that's for sure
Dislike: Disabling the "all" button; hiding subscribers in the profile area; that completely uninspired, unbranded design; no header (this is the "official" channel, right?)
Most recent clip: "Audi TT RS - European Spec"