Mat Watson

Mat Watson is a popular automotive journalist and YouTuber.

He features on the popular ‘carwow’ YouTube channel, which has more than 8 million subscribers.

Mat has more than a million subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Mat Watson Cars’.

Introduction-

Matthew Watson was born in Walsall, England, United Kingdom; he grew up in Walsall.

His parents were teachers.

Mat’s mother, Sally Watson, appeared in a few of his videos.

Love for motorcycles & cars-

At a young age, Mat was more into motorcycles than cars; he liked the sensation of driving cars more than learning about their features.

He has been tinkering with cars since a young age.

Much like Mat, his friends were also car enthusiasts, and they loved to read car magazines like ‘Performance Car,’ and ‘Max Power’ but as he wasn’t into reading, he used to watch ‘Top Gear’ TV shows.

His inspiration-

As a kid, Mat used to watch the TV shows of Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson.

He was impressed by Jeremy Clarkson’s presentation style on Top Gear and considered him his idol; he loved the way of Jeremy’s presentation style incorporating entertainment into the otherwise geeky and boring car reviews.

Mat learnt a lot from watching Jeremy’s shows, and this inspired him to later do car reviews.

Later, as he started focusing on reviewing cars himself, he stopped watching Jeremy’s shows.

Education-

Mat did his schooling from Barr Beacon School; here, he did A-levels.

Then, he joined The University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland to study for a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Chemistry.

Then, Mat joined Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) to study for an ACA; and became a qualified chartered accountant.

Career-

On 23 February 1995, Mat joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Birmingham; he worked here until 1998 as an Audit Manager.

While working at the job, he realised that accountancy doesn’t suit him; and he found the job to be monotonous.

Journalist-

While working at PwC, Mat met his colleague’s wife who was working as an editor for a local evening newspaper; he was amazed to see her enthusiasm towards her job; up until that point, he hadn’t come across anyone with such enthusiasm for their job.

As he believed that he liked researching and storytelling, he decided to become a journalist.

So, Mat wasted no time in quitting his accountancy job; and started working as a journalist for Southend Echo, his job involved reporting on local news stories, attending council meetings and court cases, etc.

He did a National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) qualification.

Even though Mat’s journalist job paid a quarter of the money of his previous job, he was satisfied with his job.

Automotive journalist-

While working at Southend Echo, one of Mat’s colleagues observed his passion for cars, and informed him about a job posting advertisement of Auto Express motoring magazine.

He attended the interview, and in July 2001, joined Auto Express.

Here, Mat initially worked as a Consumer Reporter, and his job involved writing news stories, and investigative stories.

Eventually, he started test driving cars; in 2008, he started producing car videos for Auto Express.

Until December 2015, Mat worked as Editor at Large for Auto Express and CarBuyer and Head of Motoring Video at Dennis Publishing.

In 2009, he set up a digital magazine but it didn’t succeed.

From June 2013 to June 2014, Mat also worked as a Presenter for ‘I Want That Car’ show for ITV4 in London; from November 2015 to June 2016, he worked as a presenter for ‘Find Me A Classic’ TV show.

He also worked as a car reviewer for the ‘Carbuyer’ YouTube channel.

Joining ‘carwow’-

He was in charge of the video content at Auto Express, and his job involved reviewing cars on their YouTube channel.

At that time, Auto Express used to mainly focus on its magazine and website, and had just a little budget for its YouTube channel; but carwow’s primary focus was its YouTube channel, this compelled him to quit Auto Express, and join carwow.

Also, at that time, the CEO of carwow was suggested by one of Mat’s friends to hire him.

In February 2016, he joined carwow in London, and worked here as an Editorial Director until October 2020; from October 2020, he is working as a Chief Content Officer.

Thanks to Mat, carwow YouTube channel accrued millions of subscribers; as of November 2023, it has 8.67M subscribers; drag racing cars greatly helped in the success of the channel.

The first video of him reviewing a car on carwow is ‘Kia Sportage SUV 2018 review’, it was published on 6 April 2016.

Mat is a salaried employee at carwow, and has a small share in the company.

Mat Watson Cars-

On 25 April 2011, Mat started his personal YouTube channel, ‘Mat Watson Cars’; as of November 2023, he has 1.07M subscribers.

And has 1M followers on Instagram, 428K followers on his Facebook page, and 67.8K followers on Twitter.

On carwow YouTube channel, Mat reviews new, hyper cars, and does drag races, whereas on his personal channel, he mostly focuses on old, value for money cars.

He earns from: advertisements on his YouTube videos, affiliate marketing, sponsorships (on his channel, Instagram, and TikTok).

His first car & his car collection-

At a very young age, Mat’s father used to take him on a local industrial estate, and he used to drive around.

His father taught him driving, and he took four driving lessons to get the rules right; and at 17, he passed his driving test.

Mat’s parents lent him a Mini Metro, this was the first car which he ever drove, and he learnt driving in it but he hated the car.

A month after passing the driving test, he crashed this car and the car was written off; then, he got his mother’s Ford Fiesta XR2i.

Later, Mat purchased his first car, a Ford Fiesta XR2i, he enjoyed driving this car, and he used to drive this to The University of Edinburgh.

His car collection consists of a Fiat 126, a supercharged Mazda MX-5 Mk2, a Porsche 996, Porsche 911 GT3 RS (his dream car), and a black Suzuki Jimny.

Mat’s work cars are: An Audi RS6 and GR Yaris.

Ferrari 250 GT California and Ferrari 288 GTO are his all-time favourite cars; he also likes Porsche 911 (he believes this to be the best all-around car), Tesla Model 3, and Mercedes-Benz A-Class.

Mat believes Peugeot 205 GTi to be the best hatch of all time, and GR Yaris to be the best hot hatch.

He loves the early and late 90s cars; and loves Porsche cars more than that of Ferrari and Lamborghini ones, as he believes that Porsche cars deliver the same performance, are more reliable, and are less expensive to fix than the other two car brands.

Mat doesn’t have a racing license, and doesn’t race.

The fastest he had ever driven was in a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport on a busy Autobahn at 212 miles an hour.

Personal life-

Mat is married and has a daughter, Grace Watson.

His future plans apart from working on YouTube channels is to branch out to television, streaming, and new social media platforms.

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

Share with me in the comment section below.