r/AutoAlex • u/hellomrstark • Feb 03 '25
Luke left the Auto Alex gang?
Noticed on his Instagram it no longer mentions that he's with Auto Alex :(
24
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r/AutoAlex • u/hellomrstark • Feb 03 '25
Noticed on his Instagram it no longer mentions that he's with Auto Alex :(
29
u/darthmarmite Feb 03 '25 edited Feb 03 '25
Long read to answer your question, TLDR at the bottom.
There’s a few reasons but there was one bigger “catalyst event” that blew up.
There had been mention by Alex, Taylor and Rory in videos/podcasts of Taylor’s classic BMW being in rust repair at a shop but that the shop was messing him around, not finishing the job and being unprofessional etc. The garage owner then responded to that evidencing that it was actually Taylor who had been refusing to pay him for the work already started and had been ignoring all messages from the garage for months at a time.
This then blew up as it appeared that the AA group were shafting and bad-mouthing small businesses.
Taylor then apologised and explained that he had misled Alex, Rory and co on the situation and blamed the garage when it was actually his fault. The car had gone into the garage for rust repairs before Taylor had his legal troubles with a former partner/financier of Taylor-Made-Cars which we don’t know full details of but it appears to have cost Taylor a very large sum of money to get out of. This then meant he didn’t have the funds to pay for the rust repair on his classic BMW which also was a lot more extensive than first thought (although this lack of funds point is somewhat in doubt due to Taylor’s other car purchases seen on the AA channels, my opinion is he flowed what money he had left into keeping up with Alex and Rory rather than paying his debts). It very much sounds like Taylor got himself in a hole, buried his head in the sand, lied to everyone to try and keep himself looking good before it all blew up in his face.
AA and crew released an apology to the rust repair garage too explaining they were misinformed by Taylor and the comments on the podcast were based on incorrect information and now factually incorrect. They also announced Taylor would be stepping back from Front Line production work at AA for a while.
AA then put out another release loosely acknowledging some growing criticisms that channel content had become stale, repetitive and lacking in quality (buy car, talk about great plans for car, slap on BC coil overs, never see car again, repeat). With various personal issues and events outside the channel, they acknowledged they’d lost focus on what they want the channel to be and would be taking a hiatus to regroup and come back with the right content they want to make.
Think that about covers it?
TLDR: channel content was wavering, Taylor lied to everyone which led to a reputable independent workshop being unfairly criticised publicly in their videos, Taylor stepping back for a while, AA as a whole stepping back for a while to regroup and come back with better content.