10 Automotive Things to Watch on YouTube This Labor Day Weekend

Man, here’s a tagline for a movie (from IMDB):

In order to release his kidnapped sister, sports car mechanic Chan Foh To (Jackie Chan) has to beat a supercriminal street racer.

Illegal drag racing. Super-criminal activities. One mechanic trying to be the good guy. It’s Fast & Furious before Fast & Furious.

You can find clips and trailers for the film. To watch the full-length film, it’s $2.99 to rent or $9.99 to own on YouTube.

If you have just a half hour to spare, instead of starting another season of TV on Netflix or Hulu or whatever else you pour money into to watch media, put on This Time Tomorrow. The 27-minute documentary was produced for Ford, covering the 1966 running of Le Mans. If you’re having trouble putting your finger on why this particular race stands out in your memory, that’s because its the race when Ford won 1-2-3.

It also stands as one of the most controversial race wins in Le Mans history. If you recall, driver Ken Miles slowed down his car from a substantial lead to follow team orders for that true 1-2-3 photo finish. that would take his first place win with Danny Hulme and give it to Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon. Oh, and there was this one movie made about the entire thing.

Which brings me to this next find on YouTube...

One thing I loved about the book Go Like Hell, from which the film Ford V. Ferrari was adapted, was the way it filled in the gaps of the story the Blockbuster movie wasn’t able to paint into its visual storyline. Granted, most adaptations of books lose a lot of the details when brought to a visual medium, so that’s just to be expected.

This 24-minute video, 8 Meters: Triumph, Tragedy and a Photo Finish, was produced by the Petersen Automotive Museum, and features Go Like Hell’s author, A.J. Baime, to tell more of Ford’s 1966 Le Mans story. Great for those who just can’t get enough racing history.

And if you haven’t already, the Petersen has a ton of great videos to watch, including tours of their facility during the early months of the pandemic.

Tony Angelo is a goofy man of many talents, and I say that in an endearing way. Not only is he a former pro driver of the Formula Drift series, but he was also one of the entertaining wrenching minds on Motor Trend’s television network. You may best know him as one of the two former hosts of Hot Rod Garage, and his occasional appearances (to break things...) on Roadkill.

After six seasons with Hot Rod Garage, Angelo made the decision to take the show back home to Pennsylvania and launch his own channel on YouTube: Stay Tuned. It’s the same, goofy Angelo we know, but less produced, and more crazy hair (he even admits this on one of his more recent episodes). I chose this particular episode, where he goes through his 1983 Suzuki, because it is such a great breakdown of a monster bike.

It honestly surprises me how many people understand the reference when I say something things like “sparklelator” or “I’ll be dipped” — thanks to the very upper midwest, Minnesotan musings of Derek Bieri on Vice Grip Garage. I will admit there are some days I wish he had a guide to translating all his little witty nicknames for actual car parts, so I could maybe retain some of what I was learning. But with time, I guess, you just learn.

For decades, there wasn’t a race weekend without at least have one fatality. Once, looking through the front pages of what was Competition Press and eventually Autoweek, the series and notoriety of the driver seemed to determine the placement of the deadly story. As racing developed, so too did the safety for drivers, and by the 1990s, deadly crashes were reduced considerably.

This documentary, Ultimate Racing Crashes, takes you through some of the deadliest crashes in motorsports. They also break down the science to determine how these crashes happened, how they affected the driver, and what that analysis has done for racing safety today.

While there is a death in racing from time-to-time today, these lost lives have been instrumental in increasing safety across all forms of motorsports.

This suggestion may feel a bit on the drier side, so feel free to skip along to the next slide. But recycling car components has been a hot topic, especially as precious metals become more difficult to get a hold of. This video of Volkswagen recycling batteries in Salzgitter is really for the curious, who just want to see how something like this would be done. It’s actually quite fascinating.

You can watch the video (that wouldn’t populate on our site) here.

GM chemical and mechanical engineer Thomas Midgley, Jr., just wanted to eliminate knocking in high combustion engines and prolong the lives of those engines. He would be the brain behind leaded gasoline, and you can fill in the rest of the gaps from there, and if not, Veritasium does a great job explaining it.

The last two videos were a bit on the more serious side, so this one is sure to lighten things up quite a bit. If you are an F1 fan who spends any time on

Reddit’s r/formuladank thread, you’ve likely seen one of Alphamaxnova1's videos. From the strange computer-read dialogue to the amusing and gratuitous use of Eurobeat music, it’s an insanely amusing recap of Formula 1 races.

These ridiculous complications had to have taken an insane amount of time to stitch together, because after a year or two of producing them for every. single. race. for the formuladank community, we’ve been left with season recaps. I don’t blame them, and I think we can all certainly make peace with that.

Save the best for last? You likely know of MotorWeek and John Davis, so no further explaining needed. What’s important to know is that MotorWeek and Davis are still going strong, producing the video car review content we need in this world. Oh, and on MotorWeek’s YouTube channel, there’s a playlist called “Retro Review,” with 737 videos for your viewing pleasure. Talk about nostalgia you can taste.