Harry Metcalfe is a car enthusiast, and a popular YouTuber.

He has 681K subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Harry’s garage’.

Also, Harry is the founder of Evo magazine, and a farmer.

Introduction-

Harry Metcalfe was born on 17 November 1958, hails from Wales, United Kingdom.

He grew up in Wales, and Liverpool.

His grandfather was a horse dealer in Yorkshire.

Harry’s father, Charles, studied Fashion at Liverpool College of Art, and he was a farmer turned fashion designer.

Growing up, Harry was into design and used to interact with designers, and attend Paris Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, and fashion shows.

Born  Harry Metcalfe; 17 November 1958; hails from Wales, United Kingdom
EducationHND Agriculture
Occupation  Farmer, YouTuber
Farm locationThe Cotswolds, England
Magazine‘Evo,’ launched in 1998; later sold it to Dennis Publishing
YouTube channels‘Harry’s garage,’ and ‘Harry’s Farm’
Years active on YouTube2014-present
GenreCars (Harry’s garage) and farming (Harry’s Farm)
Subscribers  681K on ‘Harry’s garage,’ and 136K on ‘Harry’s Farm’
FamilyPatricia (wife), daughter, and a son (Charlie Metcalfe)
Car collection2005 Fiat Panda 4×4, 1970 Fiat 500, 1987 Ferrari Testarossa, 1989 Porsche 930 Turbo S, 1978 Jaguar XJC V12, Jaguar XJS restomod, 2018 Jaguar Project 8, 1973 Lotus Elan Sprint, Jaguar Project 7, 1970 Rolls-Royce Shadow 1
Harry Metcalfe information

Love for motorcycles-

Harry used to live on the Bell Bank farm in Bentham, North Yorkshire; here, one of his cousins, Roger, had a bike barn.

At 10, he started visiting the bike barn, tinkering with the bikes and their engines, and fell in love with motorcycles, and wanted a motorcycle.

Prior to this, as his father and grandfather were horse dealers, Harry too wanted a horse, but dropped this idea as his father felt that he couldn’t look after the horse.

After he passed the eleven-plus examination, he bought a couple of 50cc bikes for £15, and started escaping on them into the 70 acres of woodland in Wales.

Later, Harry bought a 200-scrambler motorcycle for £27 from Roger, and later, started collecting on-road and off-road motorcycles.

He also learnt repairing motorcycles, and at 16, he started repairing others’ motorcycles.

Love for cars & photography-

A Citroën Dyane 6 was Harry’s first car, and he inherited this from his family.

Thanks to tweaking a few Volkswagen Beetles, at 17, he became obsessed with cars.

Harry spent a fortune on tweaking Beetles, making them go faster; he also bought his father a Volkswagen Beetle 1200.

Thanks to the vroom of car engines, he fell in love with motoring.

Once, Harry’s father gave him a Rolleiflex with Carl Zeiss lenses, thanks to this, he developed an interest in photography.

For some time, he became a photographer but wasn’t able to make it his career; nevertheless, this knowledge of photography later helped him to shoot beautiful pictures for his Evo magazine.

Education & career-

Initially, Harry wanted to study Automotive Engineering with British Leyland at Loughborough, but he couldn’t do well in Maths A Level due to which he wasn’t able to study Automotive Engineering.

As he was frequently taking holiday jobs on farms, and loved farming, his father enrolled him into Shuttleworth College in England to study for a 4-year HND Agriculture course.

At 18, Harry worked in a dairy farm.

After passing out in 1980, he secured a job as an on-farm grain-buyer with Grainec company.

Later, Harry was confident that he could do the grain buying in a better way, so, in 1984, he became a self-employed grain-buyer, and also started trading lime, renting grounds, and sheep farming.

After growing up a flock of sheep, he got tired of the arduous work, and gave up sheep farming; and shifted to arable farming in Harpenden.

Cars & media-

During that time, Harry had a Saab 99 Turbo car, and later, he bought Lotus Elan Sprint and BMW M3 E30 cars.

In 1993, he participated in the CCC National Hill-climb Championship with his Lotus Elan Sprint and came runner-up.

A year later, Harry traded his BMW M3 E30 for a Maserati Ghibli Cup; at the time, he was the first person in the UK to own a Ghibli Cup, and thanks to this, he got to know some automotive journalists, Jeremy Clarkson, Steve Cropley, Brett Frazier, John Barker, Dickie Mead, etc.

At that time, Jeremy Clarkson was working for the Performance Car magazine, and he invited him to participate in the road tests with his Maserati Ghibli Cup; likewise, Harry got featured in the Performance Car.

Thanks to doing arable farming, he was free for a few months which allowed him to do road tests for the Performance Car.

Starting Evo magazine-

In 1998, John Barker informed Harry that the Performance Car magazine was ceasing its operations; as he was interested in magazines, he decided to launch his own car magazine, and fill the space of Performance Car.

Even though Harry had no knowledge of the publishing world, in 1998, he along with a few motoring journalists, launched the Evo magazine.

Initially, he wanted to name the magazine as ‘Road Sport’ but settled for the catchy ‘Evo.’

Harry took a loan of £275,000 on the pretext of setting up a grain store and started Evo with it.

The first issue of Evo was published in November 1998; 24,000 copies of the first issue were sold in the UK, and around 7,000 copies were sold overseas.

Becoming financially viable-

In 1999, the third issue of the Evo magazine sold many copies, thanks to this, Evo became financially viable.

Harry worked as an Editorial Director for Evo.

In April 2001, Evo was acquired by Dennis Publishing; initially, Future Publishing wanted to acquire Evo, but Dennis Publishing acquired Evo in a counter bid.

Harry sold Evo as he believed that Evo could attract the right talent under a much bigger publisher.

He left Evo in September 2013; since then, he has been an Independent Consultant for Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations.

During that time, Evo forum was very popular but was incurring high server costs, and wasn’t profitable so, it got closed down.

Later, Harry purchased the Octane magazine; now, this magazine is owned by Autovia Limited.

He wrote for the Octane magazine, and The Sunday Times; later, he shifted his focus from magazines to his couple of YouTube channels.

YouTube-

Realising the popularity of videos, Harry started producing videos; initially, he hosted the videos on his server, but as it costed him a fortune, he shifted to YouTube.

On 29 October 2013, he started his YouTube channel, ‘Harry’s Farm’, a channel on farming; as of January 2024, it has 136K subscribers.

On 4 August 2014, Harry started his second YouTube channel, ‘Harry’s garage’, a channel related to cars; as of January 2024, it has 681K subscribers.

He earns from a variety of sources: advertisements on his YouTube videos, sponsorships, and also accepts donations on Patreon.

As of January 2024, Harry has 108K followers on Instagram, and 91K followers on X (Twitter).

In November 2023, he received ‘Best use of Social Media’ award from Octane Magazine.

Apart from working on his YouTube channels, he also farms in Cotswolds, England.

His garage; car & bike collection-

Even though Harry thought of initially using his barn to store grain, fertilizers, and seed, he uses it to park his cars, and motorcycles.

He likes to park all his cars in his spacious barn (garage), under one roof.

Harry’s car collection is substantial: 2005 Fiat Panda 4×4, 1970 Fiat 500, 1987 Ferrari Testarossa, 1989 Porsche 930 Turbo S, 1978 Jaguar XJC V12, Jaguar XJS restomod, 2018 Jaguar Project 8, 1973 Lotus Elan Sprint, Jaguar Project 7, 1970 Rolls-Royce Shadow 1.

His favourite car of all-time is the Ferrari F50.

He also has many motorcycles, 1980 Kawasaki Z1300, 1979 Honda CBX, etc. and Dakar bikes in his garage.

Harry also had a boat collection but thanks to their high insurance costs, he sold them off.

Personal life-

Harry is married to Patricia, a Canadian.

She helps with the filming of his videos.

This couple has a daughter, and a son, Charlie Metcalfe.

Charlie studied a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Rural Land Management, and currently, he works as a Photographer, Sales & Marketing Manager at The Hairpin Company Limited.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Harry Metcalfe?

Share with me in the comment section below.

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Naveen Reddy

Hello folks, I'm Naveen Reddy. I love writing the inspiring success stories of people so as to inspire you. Enjoy the well-researched, thorough articles! Every article takes many days of effort; so, why not pay it forward by sharing them and spreading positivity.

2 Comments

Elena Gilbert · August 12, 2022 at

I really enjoyed reading your blog post about Harry Metcalfe. He is an inspiring person and I’m sure that everyone who reads about him will be inspired as well.

    Naveen Reddy · April 28, 2023 at

    Thanks a lot, Elena, for your appreciation!

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