Warning: You are about to lose a significant chunk of your day to YouTube, and you’ll be joining over 30 million other people who’ve spent a collective 192 years watching the same thing. Whether you’re a car fan or not, there’s something mesmerizing about seeing an engine disassembled, and then put back together, but better.
If you already know all about engines, then Hagerty’s Redline Rebuilds series is a chance to test your knowledge, and empathize when overhauls don’t go as planned. If you couldn’t care less about your car’s power plant, then these videos will likely convert you. And the best thing is they’re time-lapses, so you can watch the whole process in under 10 minutes, and then click on to the next one, and the next.
Hagerty, which sells insurance for classic vehicles, got into this particular video business somewhat fortuitously. “Our YouTube had maybe had 15,000 subscribers. It wasn’t a main focus for us,” says Ben Woodworth, Hagerty’s video boss. Then, in 2015, they got their hands on a three-axis motion time-lapse camera. Woodworth had been nerding out on some national park time-lapse videos, and wanted to make something equivalent. An engine tear down seemed perfect, following the incremental progression from grungy and grimy to glistening and gleaming.
Their first effort was a rebuild of a Chevy small block V8 engine, marking the engine's 60th birthday. In a few weeks, it has racked up 1.5 million views. And Woodworth realized they had to make more. They're now into a second series of the videos, with some spin-offs too.
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