The world of YouTube celebrities has some odd characters. But WhistlinDiesel, one of the biggest automotive-related channels on the site, takes things to another level. These aren’t simple car reviews—these videos are turning the car video niche upside down.

The channel isn’t just about cars, though. And in recent months, as the budgets of each video go higher, things have gotten fairly wild, with some truly unbelievable moments that have automotive aficionados all around the world talking. So what is the infamous WhistlinDiesel known for in 2023?

What is the WhistlinDiesel YouTube channel all about?

WhistlinDiesel is the main channel of YouTube personality Cody Detwiler. The 25-year-old Indiana native grew up loving cars. Hot Cars reports that he started amassing a collection when he was barely old enough to drive. His hobby of repairing, refurbishing, and simply experimenting with cars gave him the idea for an attention-grabbing YouTube channel.

His most popular videos—historically, at least—are all about automobiles. He has a particular focus on work vehicles, like pickups and heavy construction equipment. He primarily makes absurdist, humorous videos that show off his experimental engineering feats.

Often, he’ll perform an unbelievable stunt, the initially backbone of his content. More often, he takes things up to an even sillier level, and finds creative ways to destroy something.

Is WhistlinDiesel’s channel just about car stunts?

WhistlinDiesel is one of the fastest-growing channels on YouTube, having amassed 677,519,957 views and 5.79 million subscribers at the time of this writing. While the channel has been around since 2015, it took off in popularity once Detwiler started re-investing his YouTube earnings back into the content for increasingly absurd on-camera feats.

The car content mastermind always returns to his bread-and-butter, with even his newest videos focusing on automotive content according to Jalopnik. His true schtick, the one that guides every one of his recent videos, is making unprepared viewers mad.

He makes the sorts of videos that gleeful, knowing fans love to share with their unsuspecting friends and family. And given how shocking this content almost always is, it makes for the perfect conversation piece.

That includes the time he bought a $400,000 Ferrari for the sole purpose of destroying it on camera. Just two years ago, he was regularly menacing fans of squatted trucks by destroying them, but clearly, he has upgraded to bigger and more lavish targets as his popularity grows.

How does WhistlinDiesel make money?

WhistlinDiesel is a lucrative business—and it’s almost entirely thanks to revenue from Detwiler’s massively popular YouTube videos. Tuko reports that the daring hobbyist engineer is worth an estimated $3.5 million as of 2023. Even as the costs of his videos continue to rise, clearly his profits from ad revenue outpace it handily.

His early videos often had some oddball angle to them. Strangely customized cars were a big part of his content. Some of his more recent videos, though, simply involve buying an expensive item—often unrelated to automobiles at all—and wrecking it on camera.

Clearly, the 25-year-old content creator has a formula that works, and is happy to apply it to areas outside of his personal interests.

For now, this shift toward broader topics has been massively successful. He still finds ways to tie things back to his roots, always bringing out the old excavator or filming with his massive car collection in view.

Whatever happens in the future, one thing’s for sure: WhistlinDiesel’s YouTube channel will continue featuring videos that will make squatted truck superfans very, very angry.