Automotive Files
Five days. Five episodes. Week one, delivered.
Automotive Files launched on September 28 with a promise: a new episode every weekday at 5 PM ET. Here's how the first week landed.
Episode 1
The streak
Every weekday since launch.
Source: YouTube Studio, Sep 27 – Oct 4, 2026. Long-form episodes only (Shorts not included).
Every file, in order
Start at episode 1 and keep going. Press play on any card and it opens in the player at the top, where you can step through the rest.
The schedule
A new episode every Monday through Friday at 5 PM Eastern. Here's what's coming this month.
Weeks 4 to 5 are the planned lineup and may shift as stories develop. Have an idea for a later week? Suggest a story.
Built like an investigation
Most car videos are someone talking in a garage. Automotive Files is closer to a case file: the machine, the paperwork and the people, laid out so you can see how it really happened.
Cars drawn from real photos
Every vehicle is traced from reference photography and animated line by line. The Batmobile's fins, the 2J's fans, a Cobalt's ignition switch: to scale, never guessed.
Sourced like journalism
Court opinions, federal reports, recall filings and contemporary reporting. Each episode lists its sources in the description.
Both sides on the record
Nobody's a cartoon villain. When a story is disputed, you hear the dispute in the words of the people involved.
Scored and sound-designed
Original music and real mechanical sound. Made to be watched with the sound on.
No filler
Six to fourteen minutes, with chapters. A full story every weekday.
You always know what's proven
Every claim on screen carries one of these labels, so fact, allegation and legend never blur together.
Documents recreated for the screen are always marked as reconstructions. Nothing is dressed up to look like an archive it isn't.
Every car has a file.
Monday to Friday at 5 PM Eastern
Help build the next file
The best ideas on this channel come from people who were there, or who've been chasing a story for years.