Mat Armstrong – Detailed Biography

Mat Armstrong is a popular automotive YouTuber.

He has over 7.2 million subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Mat was a professional BMX rider.

Introduction

Mat Armstrong was born on 11 June 1993 in Leicester, England, United Kingdom and grew up there.

At a young age, his parents separated and he grew up with his mother.

The young Mat wasn’t close to his father, Tony and used to not visit him often. At the time, he prioritised spending time with friends and playing football.

Later, he worked for his father, learnt repairing cars from him and fell in love with cars.

Mat’s father was a self-employed car mechanic while his mother used to work in a nine-to-five job.

Tony liked carpentry but was forced to become a mechanic. He worked as a mechanic for many years just to earn a living. Even though he hated cars, he had a great knowledge of them.

Mat has a sister, Holly Michelle.

He did his schooling from Lutterworth College in Lutterworth.

It started at 17

Mat’s first car was a 1993 Ford Fiesta Mk3 and at 17, he bought a Volkswagen Lupo 1.4 for £1000.

He fell in love with the car and started tinkering it by chopping the springs and straight piping the exhaust. He also started tinkering his friends’ cars.

Mat was passionate about learning the working mechanisms of cars and self-taught himself to fix the cars.

Even while working full-time, he used to tinker his cars in the afternoon.

BMXing & his first car video

The young Mat used to watch and play football and was a fan of David Beckham. But later he shifted to BMXing and fell in love with it.

He learnt BMXing on his own. Even though initially he was slow at riding on the racetracks, he enjoyed performing BMX tricks and started performing on the skate parks.

Thanks to practising continuously, eventually, Mat became proficient at BMXing.

He finished his schooling at 16 and started BMXing professionally. At the time, BMXing was the only thing he enjoyed.

Mat started his eponymous YouTube channel on 7 April 2013. He had no intention of becoming a full-time YouTuber, he just wanted to film BMX videos to send to the BMX competitions and sponsors.

Mat started filming videos of himself riding his bike and doing the tricks and learnt the basics of video editing.

Before posting videos on his YouTube channel, he used to publish videos on Facebook but later switched to YouTube.

Even though Mat started with BMX videos on his YouTube channel, he posted his first car video, “LOWERED MY MERCEDES E350 * EIBACH *”, in May 2017.

And as he got more views on his car video than his BMX videos, he started occasionally publishing car videos and slowly his channel evolved into a car channel.

Competing globally & the accident

While studying sixth form at school, he participated in BMX competitions in France, Germany, Barcelona and Dubai.

Mat did BMXing for a living, from 16 to 20 and coached BMX in Dubai.

He was sponsored by Madd Gear MGP and competed in many BMX competitions around the world.

Even after competing globally for many years, BMXing wasn’t financially viable as the sponsors used to mostly cover just his travel costs.

Mat dislocated his shoulder while performing the 720 tailwhip trick while participating in the qualifying run in the BMX World Championships in Germany.

Even though he qualified in the 16th position, he could not compete in the finals due to the injury.

At the time, Mat’s shoulder used to randomly pop out while sleeping and he quit BMX.

A varied career

As Mat wasn’t able to earn a decent income while BMXing, he used to work at multiple jobs from a young age.

He did a part-time job at Halfords before working at Evans Cycles.

Mat also worked on the cars at his father’s garage and learnt basic mechanical skills.

He started working full-time, at 17, at Spice 45, an Indian restaurant in Leicester.

Thanks to his love for motors, Mat started working at Graham Goode Motors, a Ford Performance place, in Leicester.

His job involved managing social media channels (he worked on Graham Goode Racing YouTube channel). He also built the websites and ran Amazon and eBay shops.

As he started working full-time at Graham Goode Motors, he started working part-time, delivering food in the evenings, at Spice 45.

Mat used to deliver food by driving long distances in his car and got into car repair, as his car occasionally gave him troubles.

He used to drive a Ford Fiesta before shifting to a Volkswagen Lupo.

As these were modified cars with very low ground clearance, Mat was unable to deliver food to certain locations. So, he shifted from delivery driving to working behind the bar.

He loved working at the bar as he loved talking to the customers.

Later, Mat also worked part-time at Mallory Performance Ltd.

He used to work from 9-to-5 at Graham Goode Motors and then from 6–10 pm at the restaurant, from Monday to Friday. He also worked weekends at the restaurant.

He used to save all the money and used to neither go out nor drink. Thanks to this, he was able to buy a Mercedes Benz E350 for £11,000. He loved the car.

The plan

While BMXing, Mat realised that he can’t earn good money with it.

As he didn’t have a university degree and qualifications, he saw investing in houses as an opportunity to get rich. At the time, his father was also investing in houses.

His plan was to save money by working at various jobs, invest in properties, earn passive income from them and finally, retire from his 9-to-5 job, tinker full-time with cars and ride his bike.

Mat bought his first project house, at 21, for £102,000 and renovated, refinanced and rented it and started earning passive income.

Later, he bought his second house by refinancing his first house and continued this cycle to buy a few more houses. He currently has five houses.

Even though Mat didn’t love working on the houses, he did so to earn money for his goals.

It all started with a crashed Audi TT

In 2018, Hannah, his girlfriend, crashed her Audi TT going home from work and the insurer wrote it off.

When Mat saw the car, he felt that he could fix it easily. So, he bought the car, which was originally £6,000, back from the insurance for £600.

Meanwhile, Hannah was paid out around £4,200 from the insurance and she bought a new BMW 1 Series car.

Mat decided to rebuild the Audi TT and film it on YouTube as he felt that the audience would help him if he got stuck.

His YouTube audience helped him to rebuild the Audi TT by helping him to get the parts and he also found the parts for cheap on eBay. Also, Hannah helped him rebuild the car.

At the time, Mat used to film videos with a GoPro and used to get a few thousand views on them.

He learnt repairing the cars on his own by watching YouTube videos and used to occasionally call his father for help.

Mat spent around £1,000 repairing the Audi TT, then made it his main car and sold his Mercedes E350 for £9,000.

By the time he finished rebuilding the Audi TT, he had less than 10,000 subscribers on his channel. But his channel got monetized and he started earning around £40 a month.

At the time, Mat didn’t believe he could make a decent income from YouTube but he enjoyed working on his channel and his viewers started requesting for more car rebuilds.

So, he started modifying Hannah’s BMW 1 Series and those videos started getting popular and he reached around 20,000 subscribers.

Even though Mat was busy working at Graham Goode Motors and Spice 45, he continued working on his YouTube channel on the side, in the weekends and fell in love with producing videos.

He used to also tinker with his cars in the car park of the restaurant.

In 2020, Mat bought the UK’s cheapest AUDI S5, specifically for YouTube, for £5,000 and posted its video, which blew up.

It got around 100,000 views in just a couple of days and all his other videos also started getting good views.

In that month, Mat made around £3,000 in ad revenue from YouTube and this income was greater than what he was earning from his jobs.

From that point on, all his videos started getting over 100,000 views.

Then, Mat quit working at Spice 45 to dedicate his evenings to work on his YouTube channel.

Going full-time

Mat was furloughed from Graham Goode Motors, during the COVID-19 lockdown, and he didn’t know when he would be called back into work.

As he had nothing else to do and was confined to the home, he started dedicatedly working on his YouTube channel.

At the time, Mat had saved enough money to deposit on his second house. But as the house prices were inconsistent and he loved working on YouTube, he invested the money to purchase a crash damaged Bentley Continental GT for £10,000 from an auction on eBay.

At the time, he was earning a couple of thousand pounds from his channel each month.

Mat started rebuilding the Bentley on his driveway outside his house. As most people were at home due to the lockdown, the views on his videos exploded.

He also crossed 100K subscribers on his channel and the car rebuild got him featured on Daily Express. Also, he got contacted by Bentley and was offered help checking the car.

Mat also secured his first high-paying sponsor and signed a year-long contract with them.

At the time, he was getting over 100,000 views on his videos and was charging £50 for a 60-second sponsor ad. But on the suggestion of an agency, he started charging £2,000 and this was equivalent to his entire salary of his month’s work.

Five weeks after getting furloughed, Mat was called back into work at Graham Goode Motors.

By the time, he started earning well with his YouTube channel, much more than his job and wanted to quit his job for YouTube. But as he saw people getting laid off from work, he returned to work.

Mat wasn’t able to concentrate at his work as he couldn’t stop thinking about his YouTube channel. Also, he was replying to YouTube comments and emails and as he felt it unfair to do at the workplace, he quit his job a week later, at the end of 2019.

His mother, who used to work in a 9-to-5 job, didn’t approve of his idea of quitting his job for YouTube. But his father, who was self-employed, encouraged him to follow his dream.

Watching other YouTubers quit their jobs also inspired Mat to quit his job and become a full-time YouTuber. He thought that if he couldn’t succeed on YouTube, he would get another job.

He started working really hard on his channel as he wanted his channel to succeed as he had a mortgage to pay.

While rebuilding the Bentley, Mat’s plan was to drive it to Monaco after the lockdown ended and he realized this dream in between the lockdowns.

Rebuilding the Bentley gave him the confidence to later rebuild expensive cars and also helped him understand various aspects of rebuilding cars.

Mat spent £10,000 to rebuild the Bentley and recouped the cost of the car and its rebuilding by selling his car through raffle tickets.

YouTube success

Before getting monetized on YouTube, Mat used to publish videos irregularly but started publishing consistently after getting monetized.

Richard Hammond, a popular automotive journalist, reacted to one of his cars which helped in the growth of his channel.

Currently, Mat has over 7.2 million subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel where he publishes videos of rebuilding crash damaged cars.

Thanks to his love for BMX, he has the word BMX on his car plates.

Mat studied media in the sixth form where he learnt the basics of storytelling which later helped him succeed at YouTube.

His story-driven videos appeal to a much wider audience than just the gearheads.

Mat also has other YouTube channels, Mat Armstrong MK2, Mat Armstrong Shorts, Mat Armstrong Gaming and Mat Armstrong ES.

He has voice actors for his Spanish channel.

Mat has employed five people full-time, including his father and girlfriend, in his business.

Hannah helps him with the finance and merchandise aspects of the business.

He does all the video editing on his eponymous channel.

Bonding over Murcielago

Mat’s all-time favourite car was Lamborghini Murcielago and he always wanted to own one.

He bought a Murcielago, with a blown-up engine, from a track experience company.

As this was his first engine rebuild, Mat took his father’s help. His father loved doing engine rebuilds.

At the time, his father, Tony, was retired and was looking for work. So, Mat employed him part-time and later full-time and working together strengthened their bond.

Tony also features in some of Mat’s videos and he was never into super cars but Mat got him a Ferrari and an Aston Martin DBX.

Car collection

Mat has over 30 cars and some of them are Maserati Granturismo, Audi RS6 GT, Ferrari 458 Spider, Rolls-Royce Wraith, Lamborghini Gallardo, BMW 635CSi (E24), Lamborghini Murcielago, Ferrari F430, Lamborghini Urus, McLaren 720S, Porsche 911 GT3, Rolls-Royce Mansory, Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, Rolls-Royce Cullinan, Aston Martin DBX, Ferrari 296 GTB, Ferrari 812 Superfast, Mercedes-Benz G-Class, BMW M3 and Bugatti Veyron.

The first sports car which he didn’t buy crash damaged is the Lamborghini Gallardo.

Mat loves German engineering and his favourite car rebuild is Volkswagen Golf.

Prior to succeeding on YouTube, he used to watch expensive cars on Top Gear and used to think that he’ll never own one.

Personal life

Mat met his girlfriend, Hannah Smith, through BMXing.

He lives in Leicester and loves summers over winters.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Mat Armstrong?

Share with me in the comment section below.