The Intercooler’s best year yet

So we couldn’t just allocate the required marketing funds to go out and buy ourselves an audience. Instead we would have to grow slowly and, for want of a less excruciating term, organically. People would need to find us, over time, rather than the other way around. But what we suspected then has turned out to be true: people came to us because they thought we were good, rather than because we were cheap; which means that, overwhelmingly, they have stayed. And what we think is happening today is now that Ti has hung around for a bit and proven itself no mere flash in the pan, more people are talking about us, telling their mates about us and slowly some form of critical mass is being achieved.

If, when Ti was no more than a tiny Instagram site called DriveNation, an after hours side project for both Dan and I, you’d said that within five years it would be a successful award-winning website and app, a YouTube channel with 45,000 subscribers, a podcast regularly placing in the top three in the UK automotive charts and the top 10 in leisure, and have over 80,000 followers on social media, I’m sure our eyes would have widened a bit, but I still think we’d have backed ourselves to do it. But we always judge ourselves on what we feel capable of achieving, while everyone else judges on what has been achieved.

And what is that in Ti’s case? I guess we no longer feel like a newborn start-up staggering around on spindly legs. We’re still very young, we’ve still got lots to learn and things to do but we’re getting stronger by the day. Which in turn means we’ll be able to invest more in the business and, hopefully, grow faster and further even than we’ve managed so far. For that we have to thank our incredible band of contributors – you’ll find their names on our writer’s page and I expect most will already be familiar to you – the world-class photographers with whom we’re so fortunate to work (and whose images you’re seeing here alongside my words), plus the small band of people who work backstage at Ti managing all aspects of what we do from digital analysis to social media marketing. You all know who you are.

But really the main point of this story is to thank you if you are now one of the many thousands of subscribers who make possible what we do. We know from your comments that you represent a small but passionate, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and intelligent constituency of car fans, and I hope you also know from our replies how valued you are. But we’ve turned off the paywall on this particular article so it’s free to read for anyone, in the hope that some less familiar with The Intercooler will have their interest sufficiently piqued to find out a little more of what we’re talking about.

The easiest way to do that is simply to take out a one-month free trial, have a look at some of the 1200 bespoke stories (and two million words) that are already in our library from drivers, engineers, designers and journalists and see if you like what we do. If not, no harm done; but if you do, we plan to bring you even more great reviews, features plus the latest news and opinion – we publish a fresh, original story every day of the working week – throughout 2025.

It has been an absolute privilege for Dan and I to have spent another year doing what we love and with your support the future’s looking brighter by the minute. So all the very best to you from us both and everyone involved in the Ti project; and we wish you the happiest of happy New Years.

Free Reads on The Intercooler are freely available for all to read. The vast majority of our stories, including all of our feature articles, sit behind the paywall, only available to subscribers who get unlimited access to our ever-growing library of more than a thousand stories and close to two million words. 

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