Most people would take one look at an eBay ad for a poorly built, fake Bugatti on a Honda Civic and laugh. Freddy Hernandez on the other hand, better known as Tavarish per his YouTube channel, smelt opportunity in the $4,500 mess. When it comes to automotive content, sometimes the worse a car is, the more views (and revenue per 1,000 views) it pulls in. Tavarish’s fake Bugatti Veyron, which featured in just three videos, has racked up a cumulative total of over three million views.
Considering the YouTuber’s following at the time, it’s estimated he would’ve earned anywhere from $5 to $10 per 1,000 views. This means that for an “investment” of $4,500 and some time, Tavarish could have made between $150,000 to $300,000 on this particular series, other sponsor deals notwithstanding.
Of course, this figure can vary wildly but it’s not bad for taking a chance on some replica Bugatti put together in someone’s garage.
Hernandez is one of the best poster boys for the content creator rags-to-riches story, with the Russian-born refugee now a millionaire. Tavarish started his YouTube channel in 2006 with a single video of him trying to start his 1998 Nissan Maxima. Fast forward to 2020, by which time Hernandez had already made a name for himself for buying ‘the cheapest/worst car in the country’ and fixing it back up.
Some are more successful rebuilds than others. Through it all, Hernandez was raking in the ad revenue. The YouTuber seems to have hit critical mass when he rebuilt a Range Rover that was buried underground, covered in a video from five years ago, incidentally still his most popular video with over 16 million views.
Tavarish’s fake Bugatti Veyron was even subjected to Hummer wheels and a drag strip, making for pure entertainment that people didn’t know they needed. While some auto YouTuber’s content may seem cringe, just know that while you’re laughing, they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
