Meet Matt Richardson - Furious Driving

Meet the owner, or meet the YouTuber? We should be told.
A 1972 Rover 2000 P6 set Matt Richardson on the path to YouTube stardom. ‘I’ve had it since I was 17 – it’s not going anywhere,’ he said. Since then, the projects have fed the channel – and the channel has fed the projects.

There may be foreign marques on the billing, but the core of Furious Driving always comes back to British classics. That’ll be why Matt’s currently stripping a 1969 Morris Mini Mk2 Automatic to restore; he can’t help himself.

Having made his way through the ranks of automotive journalism, writing and photographing cars, the industry began to change – and made Matt re-evaluate his options.
13 years ago, the channel bearing the name 'Furious Driving' got its title from a piece of 19^th century legislation still in use by the Crown Prosecution Service.

‘Whosoever, having the charge of any carriage or vehicle, shall by wanton or furious driving or racing […] appears in Section 35 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861; rarely sought in the UK, it is more widely used in the Isle of Man, where Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson marvelled at the time while filming segments there.

An unrelated website Matt created had the name first, but when he first started experimenting with YouTube, the name, in Matt’s own words, ‘sounded better than SP30’, the DVLA endorsement for a speeding fine.

Good enough for Clarkson, good enough for Matt? Well, other channels – like Hoovie’s Garage in the US – certainly haven’t done badly citing ‘Jezza’ as an influence, even if, in Matt’s case, it was only for his ability to quote arcane legislation to the TV licence payer.

His first video consisted of a desperate trudge to 131mph on the German autobahn – certainly furious by the standards of the dear old British national speed limit. ‘It’s just 30 seconds trying to reach three figures, it only just did it – it was terrible, that car,’ Matt joked.

The channel ‘wasn’t really anything’ until 2014, when, having amassed equipment to shoot and edit, Matt began to film cutaways, close ups and medium shots introducing a video that never reached a conclusion. helped the dealer in question sell the car as it contained his details; ‘it put the idea there might be a future in this,’ Matt said.

He added: ‘At the time lots of mags were talking about adding video requirements to shoots but it never happened. ‘The P5B video was basically [a way of] translating a magazine shoot to video and a great way to practice and learn the tricks of video. I was so busy with photography for mags and [writing] I didn’t have the time or need to push it. COVID-19 changed everything, really.’

As the channel grew, Matt’s continued day job began finding project cars for him to work on. The channel’s 1983 Mercedes-Benz W123 230E was saved from the scales by Matt happening to be in the right place at the right time. ‘It was found during a shoot. They were pulling the barn down, it was in the way and they asked if I wanted it; the answer was “yes”’

Other cars found their way into Matt’s collection owing to his affinity to the Rover marque – including a 1973 3500 P6 now fitted with a 4.6-litre V8 ‘the old engine just didn’t run’ and a Rover 220 Coupe ‘Tomcat’, the normally-aspirated version of the R8 ‘which has a turbo now waiting to go in’.

The first video recognisable to present day Furious Driving viewers took place in 2018, when his 2000 P6, dubbed ‘went for a drive’. As subscribers increased, so did the offers of cars to drive – and the collection of project cars to acquire.

That’s how Matt ended up with a Rover 200 Vi, the other hot Rover R3 variant (aside from the 200 BRM LE and 25 GTi) reduced to just 17 running examples. A viewer offered the Vi for a great price with a failed head gasket and I couldn’t say no. I took the head off, had it skimmed and rebuilt, with new valve stems and all the business, it runs a treat now.’

Indeed, the 200 Vi is one of the more reliable cars on fleet, along with a 2003 Land Rover Freelander I, a car swapped for another project Rover, an R8 216SEi Cabriolet which was made good (read restored) after a lot of expenditure and a respray.

It was another Rover rescued from the crusher, for just £150; ‘It didn’t want to be fixed but was a reliable cracker at the end, I still see it in Facebook groups,’ Matt said.

Alas, the Freelander turned out to have more rust than expected, and Matt’s 145 Cloverleaf, a car he sought out after unfinished business with a 146 Ti (it was written off) remains challenging. ‘You never know what’s going to go wrong next,’ he said.

Indeed, fixing and preservation keeps the wheels of Furious Driving turning. Matt is edging ever closer to a full-time career from the channel; it shows no sign of slowing down, especially with the likes of a 1988 Volvo 740, a 1995 Rover 420 GSi Tourer, a 2001 Mini Cooper and a 2001 Ford Crown Victoria P71 vying for attention!