Car and Driver - USA (2019-10)

OCT/2019. CAR AND DRIVER. FEATURE. 43

Jason Fenske

Engineering Explained

New Faces

of Automotive Enthusiasm

Jason Fenske failed at his goal of becoming an auto-

motive engineer. He had the proper skills. He loved

cars. He was, as he admits, “bad at literature and

writing and good at math.” He earned a degree in

mechanical engineering. But his dream did not come

to fruition. “I worked for a forklift company,” the

29 -year-old says, laughing.

However, back in 2011, the summer before his

senior year at North Carolina State, he started mak-

ing YouTube videos demystifying automotive engi-

neering principles for a lay audience. The videos

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toiling in the world of industrial hoists and dedicate

himself full time to internet fame. His channel, Engi-

neering Explained, now has 2.3 million subscribers

and averages 6 million to 10 million views a month.

Fenske knows exactly why he’s been so success-

ful. “I credit my charm and excellent looks,” he jokes.

Really, he says, he just created something that he’s

always wanted to see himself. “Cars are the most

complicated, expensive things that people will pur-

chase. We buy homes, which are more expensive, but

they’re not nearly as complicated. So the car is this

mystery, and I thought it’d be cool to have all the dif-

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explained in a way so that all of us can actually know

what’s going on.”

Fenske’s videographic catalog is broad and var-

ied, busting common my ths about cars and examin-

ing every thing from turbochargers to synthetic oil.

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sions,” he says. “Their functionality isn’t all that

complicated, but verbalizing, simply, how they work

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bit on battery-powered vehicles. “I skipped my elec-

trical engineering course in college to be in the

machine shop,” he says. “Electricity, for me, is con-

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The Teacher

The world is full of soothsayers predicting the end of the world.

Or at least the end of car culture as we know it. With every head-

line that’s published complaining about millennials and their

lackluster new-car-buying habits, we imagine a wizened old

newspaper editor wearing a green visor as he bangs away at his

IBM Selectric. “Kids these days! They hate cars!”

Spoiler alert: They don’t.

Things have changed just a little from the days of yore. Young

and young-adjacent ]R\]YR N_R ¼YYV[T b] \[ aURV_ Nba\Z\aVcR ]N``V\[` Of watching

YouTube videos at home, listening to podcasts, or paging through Instagram feeds of

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they’re learning how to be their own mechanic from a woman who decided to teach her-

self about cars and then share that with the world.

We’re not worried. Young people are still doing lots of cool things based on cars.

photograph by ROY RITCHIE