In New Book, YouTube's Rich 'Rebuilds' Benoit Goes Fast and Fixes Things

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

Rich Benoit did not intend to become a YouTube content creator. But when he started documenting his work revamping wrecked Teslas, people were intrigued. Not only because Teslas were, by design, intended to be reparable only by factory technicians. But because Rich, unlike many people in thrall to the brand, had a sense of humor about the electric automaker’s limitations, and his own human capacity for improvement. He now has nearly 1.5 million followers on the platform, under the moniker "Rich Rebuilds."

Likewise, Benoit did not intend to write a memoir. "I didn't think I was interesting enough to be worthy of a book," he tells Car and Driver. But when co-author Lisa Rogak suggested the idea, he considered it. Slowly. "It was really only after, like, six months of talking where I started to look back at the story and say to myself, ‘'You know, I am kind of interesting,'" he says.

The result, Going Fast and Fixing Things: True Stories from the World's Most Popular DIY Repair Expert and Car Aficionado (Hachette Go, $27), is indeed intriguing—as well as funny, poignant, wry, and delightfully candid—telling the story of how Benoit, son of Trinidadian immigrants, went from a scrappy childhood outside of Boston, to acceptance at Harvard, to a career in IT, to chucking it all to become, as the title says, the world's most popular do-it-yourself car fixer. Along the way, he disassembles his aunt's VCR, peddles bootleg porn, sews designer labels onto bargain basement clothing, shoplifts, becomes a teenage father, and drops out of Harvard.

Throughout it all, our narrator perseveres because, as the book reveals, Benoit has an unyielding and robustly entrepreneurial mind, always seeking an angle. But also because he has a generous and joyous spirit. He learns to love, and live into, the tumult that is life, following the threads of his interests until he finds a way to weave them into a fitting garment. "I think the biggest story the book is trying to tell is, where you start probably isn't going to be where you really end up," he says.

Benoit made his name Dr. Moreau-ing Teslas, but lately he has moved away from a sole focus on the marque. This is in part because of the behavior of the Tesla loyalist community that has formed around that brand and its CEO. But it is also because he found that committing to EV exclusivity foreclosed growth opportunities, personally and professionally.

"If you want to modify your EV, you need, like, a bachelor's degree in computer science, because the software and hardware are so tightly integrated," Benoit says. "So, honestly, as a car enthusiast, I really started to get bored with EVs because their modification potential was a lot lower than on gas cars."

Benoit has gone on to modify an Audi RS3 and RS7, a BMW i3 and i8, a McLaren 720S, a Mini Cooper, and a Rivian R1, among others. He swapped a V-8 engine into a Tesla Model S. He has even created a hybrid Franken-pickup, built on a Volkswagen Caddy platform, with an electric motor driving the front wheels and a turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle engine driving the rears.

Though Benoit has experimented upon, hacked up, and hacked into all manner of vehicles—from the pedestrian to the quixotic—he still has a unicorn car he'd like to rebuild. "The Bugatti Veyron," he says. "I've always wanted a Veyron. But the problem with the Veyron is that the prices have gone up to $2 million now. And even finding a wrecked one is still $1 million." What would he do with a Veyron? "It's a very mysterious car. So I'd like to pull back the cloak of a lot of questions. To say, can I do my own Bugatti Veyron maintenance? Can I do my own oil changes? Can you do these things yourself? Or is Volkswagen just kind of blowing smoke to make the car a lot more mysterious than it really needs to be?"

We want Rich to get a Veyron. So buy your copy of his book now. Also because Benoit is worried about his future. "I think about it every day," he says. "If I were to jump back into IT, I would have to take a pretty substantial pay cut. I'd have to liquidate some things. And then also, for the rest of my natural career, I would have to hear people say, 'Hey, wait a minute. Aren't you that guy that was on YouTube?'"

You Might Also Like

• Car and Driver’s 10 Best Cars through the Decades

• How to Buy or Lease a New Car

• Lightning Lap Legends: Chevrolet Camaro vs. Ford Mustang!