Just a few minutes into my interview with James Martin, I’ve already had a few laugh-out-loud moments, thanks to his combination of enthusiasm and sense of humor. Based in the United Kingdom, Martin, the man behind “JayEmm on Cars,” has built up his channel—which now has 489,000 subscribers—by reviewing a wide variety of cars, as well as interviewing some fascinating people in the motoring world.
How and when did your love of cars, and specifically Ferraris, start?
I think, like for a lot of people, it’s from my father. He was always interested in cars, and when I was about seven years old he got his first Ferrari.
He did things a little bit backwards. He didn’t have a Porsche or anything like that before he bought the Ferrari; he had an E36 BMW M3, and then bought a 328 because his business had gone well.
He was very, very proud of that car. I, being young, thought it was a terrible car because it didn’t have a stereo in it! At the time, I didn’t get it. A couple of years later, he changed that for an F355, which at the time was the current Ferrari. He still owns it.
Generally, I was always fascinated with cars for various different reasons: their beauty, the noise that they make, that sort of thing.
Were there any other factors that played an important role in your love for Ferrari?
There was: Jeremy Clarkson’s videos, I think a specific one was called “Unleashed on Cars.” It was around 1995 or so, and he called the F355 the best car in the world ever. As my dad got one a couple of years later, the fact that my dad owned “the best car in the world ever” was a really cool thing. Then, in “Apocalypse Clarkson,” he said the 550 Maranello was the greatest handling car in the world ever. So, I always had an interest in the 550.
How did you get started on YouTube?
YouTube started for me around ten years ago. I was working in film and TV, doing mostly low-budget short music videos and some feature films. Nothing particularly big, but I didn’t like the way the industry was going.
Wanting a full-on sports car, Martin decided to buy a 430 Scuderia.
I thought, What am I going to do with my life? and decided to sell all the film kit that I had and buy a nice car. Initially, I wanted to get a Ferrari 360 or an F430. The 360s were a little bit more affordable, but I was afraid of the running costs. I could afford to buy the car, but if it broke, I would be screwed.
While I was calculating what car to buy, I started watching a lot of YouTube videos. Some of these videos were really poor—this was a decade ago, it has changed completely now—and having come from a film background, I watched what they were doing and thought, Hang on a minute. This is really poor quality, but they are clearly making lots of money because they are buying Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Ferraris. I thought, I reckon I could do a better job of this than these guys. In my first year, I made £138!
How did you end up with your first Ferrari?
I had been saving money for quite a while, and sold some cars and things to try and get a car I really wanted. I had about £50,000 in the bank, and thought the 550 Maranello was the perfect car for me. I liked that big front-engine V12, a Grand Tourer with two seats. It has a manual gearbox and it is a Ferrari of my era.
Every now and again, one would come up with quite a few miles on the odometer that was close to my budget. Things were going quite well, but then Covid came and, basically, I started to panic. My friends were telling me not to buy an expensive car now because they are all going to be worthless.
I started thinking the opposite, because I remembered back in 2008, when classic car prices had really first started to go crazy, because people started investing in assets where they could make some money. I was always of the opinion that I wasn’t buying something to make any money. I simply wanted to buy my dream car.
Eventually, I went and looked at this one car that had 100,000 miles on it. I went to the owner’s house during lockdown, and in front of his house were two 550s and a 575M. I knew the 550 needed some work and that it wasn’t in great condition, but it was in a worse state than the pictures suggested. When I left, I was rather deflated.
Alongside this, I had been negotiating with another guy who had a red-over-cream car. It was also a high-mileage example, but crucially he just spent nearly £20,000 on it, including a new clutch and a big service. This sounded like a much better car, but he wanted another £10,000, which I didn’t have. Long story short, I arranged finance and the seller eventually accepted my offer. It was like a week of just biting my nails.
I went and picked up the car with a good friend. It was the first time I ever drove a 550, so it was a huge gamble; I really hoped I liked the car. In the first year, I put 10,000 miles on it. I love the car to pieces. When I bought it, it had 92,000 miles; today, it has 110,000 miles. I drove it all over the place. I covered 2,500 miles in about two weeks with it going to Scotland. It was really special, looking down at that steering wheel and seeing the little prancing horse on the yellow background! I still have that car today.
And that was just the beginning of your Ferrari stable…
Martin’s most recent Ferrari purchase was this F12berlinetta.
The next one I got was the 430 Scuderia. I love the 550, but it’s a GT car. It’s not a supercar, and I really wanted a supercar.
The Scuderia was a car I had never really considered, because I had driven some F430s and they had never quite gelled with me. The Scuderia looks amazing, but it is another £100,000, right? I just never even thought about it.
However, at a Ferrari dealership, I asked a stupid question: If I put a big enough deposit down, what will the monthly lease payment be? I was shocked by the low figure they gave me. I think it was because it was a Scuderia, and they knew it is going to hold its value. I took the car out for a test drive and I was like, Yes! All the problems I had with the F430, they were fixed in this car.
Were there any disappointments?
My main thing I worried about with the Scuderia was one of the things I love about Ferraris, the interiors. That beautiful leather on every surface, it’s a special place to be. Obviously, in the Scuderia, they have chucked most of it in the bin. It has the harnesses, the roll hoop, and all that, and by the time you’re strapped in, it feels really special and you haven’t even gone anywhere. Unfortunately, I had several problems with that car, so it went back, but I replaced it with another one, which I still have.
You also have an F12berlinetta.
I remember when the F12 came out. It was a huge deal, and I thought, I must have one of those once in my life. Years later, I had the opportunity to review one courtesy of a good friend. I remember not being massively impressed with it, mostly because it just struggled to put its power down. It was still on its original tires, then being seven years old, and it was a bit scary. You couldn’t get out of a parking lot without it fishtailing everywhere.
Two years later, things had changed for me a little bit, and I was in a position where I could buy something. My friend was selling his F12, and I went to him and said, “Just humor me here. If I wanted to buy the F12 from you, how much would it be?” He said, “I’ll give you a really good deal, it’s basically going to be the cheapest F12 in the country.” I wasn’t really sure about it at the time, but he was offering me such a good price and I knew the car has been well cared for.
Did owning one change your mind about the model?
The first day I picked it up was in February. It was quite a nice day, but I just drove the car home in traffic—nothing exciting.
Sam Fane of “Seen Through Glass” owns this Challenge Stradale.
The next couple of months, I kind of didn’t love it. It was a really nice car, and it was a beautiful thing, and very impressive. It made great engine and exhaust sounds, but I was almost a little bit underwhelmed with it. It has 700 horsepower, so it should blow my mind! It just didn’t.
However, I was up in Scotland that April or May, and the weather had improved. I found myself on a little back road that I know quite well and I had my music list automatically playing, and the theme tune from the first Mortal Kombat movie came on. Basically, three and a half minutes later, I decided that I was never, ever going to be without an F12 ever again!
What changed during those few minutes?
I just put it into Race mode. I was having so much fun with that car and I just completely clicked with that machine. I was absolutely amazed at how good it was, and also how practical it is. It has a huge trunk. I love making fellow exotic-car owners jealous with the size of the trunk.
Sam Fane is one of the most respected and enthusiastic YouTubers in the UK motoring fraternity. He has built up his channel, “Seen Through Glass,” over the course of 11 years, and now has 640,000 subscribers. In the process, his passion for cars has grown even further, and it all started with the Prancing Horse.
Where and how did your interest in cars, and filming them, start?
Well, it’s all kind of tied together. Everything goes back to Michael Schumacher; I’m a big Schumacher devotee. That was my era growing up, the perfect period to be obsessed with Formula 1 and Schumacher, and that, of course, meant I was Ferrari-obsessed. To be honest, when I was young and growing up, I was not really obsessive about Ferrari’s road cars. I was a race-car enthusiast.
Fast forward, when I started working, I still longed for some kind of involvement in Formula 1, cars, and motorsport. The result was that I set up a little PR consultancy, because that was what I was doing at the time, with the aim of working in and around Formula 1. But it is a very hard world to break into.
I was in a band for a while, and used to make music videos. It was just when YouTube and being a YouTuber were kind of becoming a thing, and I thought, Maybe I could make some videos about cars—road cars to be specific, because I was working in Knightsbridge [a very wealthy section of London—Ed.].
It was a sort of enthusiasm from afar. But then, being in this motoring world, being surrounded by high-performance cars, and doing videos more often, I learned very quickly even more about cars. Compared to who I was then, I had just been indoctrinated; today, I’m a complete petrolhead.
Sam Fane bought this 360 Modena after seeing it in a dream.
When I was starting out on YouTube, especially in the supercar space, there was this period where the way to get maximum views and engagement was to buy a new kind of crazy car, wrap it in a crazy color, take it on a road trip, and then off you go again. You would sell it, track down another car, buy it, and repeat the process. Viewers were fascinated by this idea of buying supercars.
How did you come to buy a Ferrari road car?
I genuinely had a dream, an actual dream, that I had bought a manual Challenge Stradale. It was always my dream car for a number of reasons. Then I woke up and was like, Oh, they did not actually make it. A 360 Modena manual was the closest I could get, and when I posted on Instagram that I had this dream, and somebody replied and said, “My dad has got one for sale.”
I clicked the link and, I kid you not, it was like the car in my dream. It was a manual version with carbon-fiber bucket seats, red exterior with tan leather, Challenge grille, harnesses, roll cage, fire extinguisher, and that crazy racing specification. I just decided that I needed to have that car. That was the start of my Ferrari ownership journey, in 2015.
What did you like most about the Modena?
You definitely do not forget the first drive. Sitting behind the wheel of a Ferrari, to this day, never gets old to me. I think there is something, I suppose, like putting a Rolex on your wrist or flying first class for the first time. Any of these experiences people talk about their whole life. It did not disappoint when I got the 360, it felt truly special. Because of the manual gearbox and the setup of the car, it all just felt very engaging.
But on a journey after I first got it, there was some trouble; I had a Check Engine light that was sort of permanently on for the first six months. We could never get to the bottom of it. Then I drove to a car event and the floor literally fell off on the motorway. For some reason, some bolts had fallen off and the floor came loose.
Still, that never detracted from the experience. I felt so connected with the car, and I found it really easy and engaging to drive. It was in no way intimidating. In general, I have found Ferraris to be very approachable and very easy to handle. I put a lot of miles on it.
Having watched a number of your videos, it was evident your goal was to one day own a Challenge Stradale.
It has been my halo car. Even prior to YouTube, just in general, that is a car I have always loved and wanted. I always said I would never sell the 360 except to buy a Challenge Stradale. Even then, I would kind of like to have the two together.
Fane later sold the Modena to buy a Challenge Stradale (which, as seen on page 37, has since been repainted Rosso Barchetta).
I was starting to look around at the possibility of finally pulling the trigger. I had received finance quotes on a few cheap left-hand-drive cars a few years earlier, so I kind of roughly knew what I might be able to afford. Essentially, a car came up on an online auction site with “No Reserve.” I was really cocky, and just thought, Screw it, I’m going to place a bid and let’s see where we get to. It was quite a high-mileage example with standard specification: red with a black interior, very simple, but mostly looked after.
With about two hours to go, I got an email saying something along the lines of, “The auction is ending soon and you are the highest bidder,” I won the auction and I sat there wondering what to do next, but realizing I had done it; I had bought a Challenge Stradale! Then everything happened in a whirlwind, as I had to sell the Modena to be able to afford the Stradale.
How was the experience of picking up the Challenge Stradale?
Being very honest with you, by the time I went to collect the CS it was a classic, miserable UK day: pouring rain and freezing cold. I bought it from a private collector who had far more impressive machinery in his garage. We started it up, and it was that classic sort of clunky Challenge Stradale experience. There were some creaks around the car and the Check Engine light came on. I’ll admit, for a moment I wondered, Have I made a stupid mistake? But since then, it’s been as I hoped it would be, in the sense that it is pure emotion.
And the driving experience compared to the Modena?
I think I probably had a better grasp or more confidence driving the Modena. I had done thousands of miles in it and pushed it really hard; I just felt like I really knew that car. I still feel like, dynamically, I’m learning the Stradale; it’s a very different creature.
The CS is inherently a little bit more skittish, and it has got its own quirks. But I adore the emotion that one gets, and how it looks, and everything that goes with it. It’s more like the dream achieved.
You took a long road trip in the Challenge Stradale, right?
I did this very quick 2,500-mile trip around Europe. I did it in about five days. One morning, I woke up very early to go and drive the Susten Pass in Switzerland. I woke up with the birds, a sunrise drive. It was only me and, weirdly, a RUF Porsche. We were up there and there was no one on the road, just the mountains.
I was just enjoying the car. I was not pushing it overly hard, but it was singing. I thought, That is what this car is about. If you are trying to hustle and keep up with modern-day supercars, it will show its age, but it’s just special to drive on its own and get that emotion. I also visited Monaco and then Maranello. I went to Ferrari, but, annoyingly, not to the factory. I was there for another Ferrari event.
Is it a keeper?
I don’t see any reason to sell it. I say that, but with the values going through the roof, it’s a little bit more of a question, I suppose. I would love to work hard enough to add another Ferrari to the stable and not replace the CS, but whether that is possible, I do not know. It would take a lot for me to sell it.
