Best worst cars in 2024 plus what YouTube Analytics says about Harry s Garage

Welcome to a new Harry's Garage video and this one is my annual roundup of what happened on the Harry's Garage channel. My favourite cars of 2024, my least favourite cars, and just a deep dive into some of the analytics that YouTube are so good at. Now, the year was a good one, I have to say, in 2024. I'm extremely grateful to all my viewers. You've been fantastic in 2024, regular views, always hitting great numbers. Total views for the year was actually 30,461,000 views, up a little bit on last year, which is good. I did 62 new videos in 2024 at the time doing this recording and averaged 329,000 views per new video in 2024, which I'm amazed at because some of those videos are only three or four weeks old. So 10 million of those 30 million views in 2024 were legacy views of previous videos I've done over the years to get to this point. So, thank you so much for supporting the channel so well. Now, let's have a look at what were the most watched videos top five in 2024. And most popular video, the only one to break over a million views, was I'm back in a diesel after four years running both EV and P-HEV, Range Rover Sport it was, and that did 1.59 million views so far. That came out in February. Yeah, deep dive into why I'd gone back to diesel, I'd had electric, I'd had P-HEV. Interestingly, in a few weeks time, I'll be doing a video why I'm back in a P-HEV, but that's another story. Then, number two, why cars are depreciating faster than ever in the UK at the moment. What's going on in the car industry? And that one, I mean, that's only seven weeks old, but it's already clocked up over 900,000 views. And I think there's big concern in the whole car industry. What on earth is going? Buyers are not going to showrooms at the moment. The volume is sort of changing how many cars we buy a year, so I think that's an ongoing story. Third most popular, yes, when I took the Defender 130 out to the Alps, we went skiing with it. For whatever reason, that seemed to people really enjoy that video, and 824,000 views. Yeah, number four, I'm dismissing, it was actually me and Jeremy discussing Range Rover 322s, because that was actually a 23 video, but even in 24, that did 700,000 views. The next one, my number four for new videos, was why I sold my Lotus Amira and bought a McLaren 650S. You never know which video is going to take off. I thought I ought to just reference that, move on. Huge number of views again. Why? But that one, 633,000 views. I think a lot of people love the Lotus Amira and wanted it to succeed. I wanted it to succeed, but it had sort of niggly problems. And what happens when you own a car like that? You see the value you've put into it, and then you'd look around, think, hang on a minute, I can buy a McLaren for the same price as this. I'm afraid a McLaren is a better car than a Lotus Amira. It was once 300,000, and I decided to take the plunge and go to McLaren, but we'll cover that off later. But it's nothing wrong with Lotus Amira. I just fancied a change, and that's the reason it got sold. What are we going to go to next? Number five is, well, BMW i5 M60 xDrive review. An EV makes the top five, and I'll go into detail later, but yeah, for whatever reason, I just didn't get on with that car. But you really huge number of comments as well on that video, and that one was 570,000 views. What's interesting, when I look over that top five, three of them are SUVs. Range Rover Sport, the Defender, Range Rover Long Term with Jeremy. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? That, you know, you all dismiss it, oh, we don't want videos on SUVs. Well, I'm sorry, they're the ones you watch in the biggest numbers, so you're bound to see them. But YouTube also looks at how many hours you watch, and that is a critical number if you're into doing videos like I do. And that often tells a different story. And if I look at the top five, there is a slight difference. Not at the top, back of the diesel number one, cars today depreciation in second, third, the Defender 130. But then in fourth place was when I took the Countach and the Project Seven and a friend joined us in his Porsche, we went out to Spain, that was in February time. It was a 51 minute long video. And if I looked at the watch, what it was in 20th position, but actually the number of hours watched, it was up to number four. And that's interesting, isn't it? That the longer play videos, if it's a road trip, you seem to absolutely love them. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4 road trips in the top 10. So you obviously like the road trips. And we'll be doing plenty of those in the future. Yeah, just while we're on analytics, let's just have a look at where you are. Slight change this year, UK again is top, but you've gone to 40% of the audience when you were 38 last year. And then comes USA, 14%. Australia, I've seen a really big following in Australia. So hello to Australia. Thanks so much. 5.8% of views. Canada, Germany in fifth. Yeah, same positions last year. That's all fairly constant. Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, South Africa, New Zealand, France in number 11. All almost the same. The only one that's dropped down a little bit is Italy. So I don't know what I've done wrong in Italy. I thought that Countach Tour might have gone down well in Italy, but there you go. Now, which videos had the least views in 2024? And I can't show this on the analytics. I actually have to log every single video, go back through the last 12 months of videos and see which was the least popular. Number five was Porsche Cayenne Turbo Hybrid. All grumpy about that. I thought it was actually a very impressive car. I compared it to that Range Rover SV and DBX 707, and I was surprised that it was the same weight as the non-hybrid Range Rover Sport. What is going on there? How can that car be so heavy? And yet the Porsche matches. It's got a great big battery in it. So yeah, number five, Porsche Cayenne, 163,000. Then London Concours was fourth, 160,000. They're all good number of views, but that was a strange one this year because we took that TVR Scamander, which is hiding over there in the corner of the garage, down into London. We had all fingers crossed. It had never done a journey like that, but I still love sharing what's on the field with you and going around and displaying some of the display cars there are very unusual. I really enjoy doing those videos, but 160,000 views. Then in third place, I'm a bit gutted about this one. I did that Countach tour back in September, October time, and it was amazing, just amazing. Some of the things we saw and almost my favourite video of all was when we were in Tuscany and doing those rows of the Val d'Ortshire and then went over to Frucio Lamborghini's winery and finding out where he lived and parking in the same garage he used to park his Countach in. I absolutely loved everything about that video, but you didn't watch it, unfortunately. So it's my third worst video of 2024 of 154,000 views. Second worst was Fiat 500, the update, when I did the engine bit down with Steph Peretti down in London. It's the same when I did the little Lancia Zagato. There's a certain audience who like those sort of rebuild videos. It's a bit quirky, the Fiat 500 and 141,000 views. But my worst video by far was Sand Raiders 2024. Now I might love going off charging across the desert in Morocco or across the beach and sharing the experience with my son, but it doesn't generate views, doesn't matter at all. I'm enjoying it. I love to record it. It's almost putting our holiday snaps to that shared experience. And the smaller audience that like bikes really like those videos. So those are the least liked five videos of 2024. And now we come to what I term the most disappointing cars in 2024. They're almost in no particular order, these, but they're just ones that I book in cars because I really want to drive them, but I'm not looking for, you know, a horror to, oh, I'll book that because that's a horrible car and I can champ on how terrible it is. I'm expecting it to be good. So these are cars that I've got in expecting something and then come away disappointed. And well, I have to give a mention BMW i5 M60. I mentioned it. It was actually a very popular video, but it just didn't feel like BMW five series of the past. There was, I used to really admire BMW when nineties noughties, there was a style to them. There were, there was something that went through the gene of the basis of that car. That was this driving machine. It was not only a strap line. It genuinely, you felt they really wanted to make the drive experience special. I just didn't get that with i5 M60. It was quick, lots of toys on it, but it didn't have a quality feel about it that I expect from BMW and clumsy design everywhere you looked. And then it wasn't very efficient. And I, I remember how good, fantastic BMW were in the early days of electric. You look at how brave i8, i3 was, and then you look at i5, I'm just disappointed. So yeah, I'm afraid it just didn't spark interest in me. Another one, it's new Aston Martin Vantage. The sales pitch on it was this angry car is going to be so much performance. It's going to be so driver focused. It just didn't work on the roads I use for my test route. They are challenging roads to expose chassis floors. And, and it did expose a number of chassis floors. It was just too firm, too aggressive. I just didn't gel with it. And there's lots of better cars out there, but I really wanted to love it. And the price was that much higher. I'm told the Vanquish is the one that is the new Aston that is really stepped up and is really fantastic to drive. I can't wait to try one. Unfortunately, they haven't got any in the UK at the moment, but I will be testing it in a couple of months time or something like that. Then yeah, Mini, the Mini Cooper electric I had in, I'm not knocking it just because it's electric, but it was just overthought. It was high price, all that nonsense sort of chirping and sort of messaging and different themes and modes. No, not for me. And I think it's really interesting that we have the Renault 5 come along and people are raving about it. And I've gained, I've got one of those coming in a couple of weeks to review. Land Cruiser. Yeah, I had that Toyota Land Cruiser in. We just thought that was going to be really taking it on to Land Rover Defender, knock it off his purse, this utilitarian, this working car with the depth of Toyota engineering. And then it had that nail of an engine and then all the interfering nannying of don't look straight ahead, speed thing. It's a nightmare to turn off. You do actually do it through the dash. I never got to grips with it, but I was expecting to love it a lot more than I did. And then the final one, the Maserati Gran Turismo. It's quite a good car there. If you've visited Gran Turismo before and how amazing that engine was and the sounds of things, that's all not there. It's got the performance, it's got the four wheel drive, very easy to live with, but at a price point that just makes no sense at all. It is not a 200 and something thousand pound car. It's half that. It's just like, what are you doing, Maserati? Why are you even thinking you can operate at that price point? All you end up doing is massive discounts and then no one trusts buying one because they think, how much money am I going to lose on this? And yet the car is sort of there. We want Maserati to work, but that isn't the one, unfortunately. Now I get to my five favorite cars of 2024. There were some real hits in there. I have to say, and I'm looking at this list and thinking, how can I not mention like the Pagani Utopia, but I haven't put it in the list. I almost did, but it's not quite as pretty as I wanted it, but the driving experience was there. Maybe I should, if I want to have a top six and it's sitting at six. Some of my favorite cars there, we had the Fion, that 911 Resto mod that's built just up the road. That really surprised me, how engaging it was, how wonderful that engine was, how personal and like you needed to know what it was. It wasn't overflash, but my God, what a driving experience that car offered. Rolls-Royce Spectre. Now there's a surprise, an electric car making my top five, but the drive experience of that Rolls-Royce Spectre, it just enhanced everything about what Rolls-Royce offers. It just glided, it had the performance. I actually really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it is extremely expensive and is suffering a little bit like other EVs in depreciation and things, but my God, what an experience it is to waft around in that Rolls-Royce Spectre. Then yeah, the BMW M2 Litchfield Edition, when he added 650 horsepower and turned this car, well, I can't really call it a hooligan. It could be a, turn things off, absolute hooligan car, but what made it so special was how the management of traction controls and things, you could dial it into a place where you could really enjoy that car on UK roads, on my B roads, and the amount of performance on offer was excessive and yet it didn't compromise anything else about the car. It still rode really beautifully. Everything worked as it was. It was, yeah, sheep and wolf's clothing type of car. It's still an M2, but it was a car that you could really live with and then have this wild side. If you just turn it up, oh my goodness, I massively enjoyed that car. I think that's going to be something that a lot of people do to their M2s in the future. And then I get to my top two and I've been deliberating which one to put top for about a week now. My top two, well, the Porsche ST, that 911 ST that came in. I thought, oh, it's just another variation. It's overpriced. Porsche just milking it. And then you drive it and they finessed every point of a 911 to make it this driving car for on-road. No track knots, no mention of Nurburgring times, no wings, no nothing. Pure driver enjoyment from that car. The stupid things like that shorter gear lever, who would have thought that would improve a bit? It's just when you just flick through the gears, the lower gearing, the horsepower, the engine management, the suspension on and off. It was humbling. Just fantastic. Yes, it's a lot of money, but my God, if you've got one of those garage, you'll love that. And that brings my top car to the McLaren 750S. I just thought it was another variation of McLaren, but it was in the right colour and we did the right sort of trick with it. And we went down south France and came back lots of miles to really get to know the car. I knew it had incredible performance because I'd had a chance to drive a back-to-back Ferrari 296 and the 750S at Goodwood just on a press event. And I went back to back one to the other. And to me, I couldn't get over how much more I enjoyed the McLaren 750S. I could instantly get to grips. Both of them were stupefyingly fast, but the Ferrari would manage in its electric and that horrible steering control. And it was almost too much tech. And I wasn't sure if I was driving it, it was driving and the brakes never felt confidence inspiring. Jump in the McLaren, again, crazy performance, the speeds you're doing down the straights and the corners. But instantly everything made sense. Wheels control, paddle, traction controls, brakes, firm pedal, massive power, wing, air wing working. It was a big eye-opener driving those cars back-to-back on track. I don't normally do on track, but it was then taking the same similar car out to Europe and back. I came away and I said, I'm just going to buy a McLaren. I just gel with it. It is what I want a mid-engine driving machine to be like. And hence I bought the McLaren 650S that you've been following as well and watching in great numbers. So yeah, there you go. The McLaren 650S, my car of the year of 2024. So 2025, just around the corner, I've got a Ferrari Pura Sangue sitting outside the house. We're off to the Alps in that. Let's get back, got a day in the UK and then straight out to see the Dakar Rally again with Toyota. And then some of those other cars I've mentioned earlier coming into review as well. I would like in 2025, I sometimes think I'd like to just slow down and do more road trips and then put a bunch of videos out. We'll see. I say that now, but I probably won't. I'll on a weekly basis, but the Testarossa has to do a road trip. The Porsche, for goodness sake, we're going to Germany in that. We're going to do all those things I plan to do this year. Got to do that. And, you know, when I look back and that, you know, Countach tour around Italy, we did nine videos from that trip over a two week period, 2.3 million views, over 10% of new video views in 2024. Maybe that's the way forward. And actually, if I look at the top videos, then just me spouting off in here on what's happening in the car market, what's happening, electric or depreciation or something seem to be extremely popular videos. So maybe I ought to do a few more of those in 2025. Let's see. But for now, thanks so much for watching and the support. I put on, I think it was 90,000 subscribers just over in 2024. One of the things I'd love to do in 2025 is to grow that subscription base. I'm keep being told I should be well over a million subscribers, the type of views I get on these videos. So please, if you haven't already touched the subscribe button, which I'd put on the right now, I'd be hugely grateful if we can hit that magic million number in 2025. Let's see. But for now, thanks ever so much for watching in such numbers in 2024, 2025 round the corner, more videos coming very soon. Transcribed by https://otter.ai