Yahoo Autos Watch James May Unbox an Actual Toyota Yaris
After a two-year hiatus from cooking eggs and assembling shipping boxes, James May, the automotive co-host of BBC's Top Gear and now Amazon's The Grand Tour, reappeared on his personal YouTube channel to make fun of the internet again, this time "unboxing" a Toyota Yaris over 17 incredibly boring minutes.
Boredom sharing is a Thing for YouTubers, who frequently film themselves peeling the protective film off new consumer products and opining about the wonders of modern packaging. Audio fetishes (search "asmr") feature young adults whispering and popping bubble wrap for hours, in an undeniably creepy way, racking up millions of views. So that explains why May, a.k.a. Captain Slow, with his usual dry and drawn-out humor, can almost be taken seriously.
This particular white Yaris, unlike all other Yaris hatches, is actually worth the obsession. It's the GRMN special (which stands for Gazoo Racing Masters of the Nürburgring) that we tested in the U.K. this summer. The Yaris GRMN is a limited-edition hot hatch with a supercharged 209-hp engine out of the Lotus Elise. Measuring 155.3 inches long on a 98.8-inch wheelbase and weighing in at an estimated 2550 pounds, the Yaris GRMN may not be the biggest vehicle on the market, but fully assembled, it does require a sizable cardboard box. Or, as May puts it as he walks all the way around it, eager to prove the video is no sham: "So, the box is made of cardboard, as boxes generally are . . . Now we’ll go around the other side of the box, and it’s still a box . . ."
In the video, May also plays with protective film and cardboard zippers-very slowly, of course-and even takes the shifter, steering wheel, and seats out of their own boxes. He strokes Styrofoam. Then he sits in the car reading warnings from the owner's manual. It's much funnier if you first watch a few iPhone-unboxing videos, like the one from the guy who claimed to have spent more than $3000 on an original 2007 iPhone only to find it was rewrapped by a scam artist, or the Unbox Therapy channel where a lonely man unwraps an iPhone XR in every color.
Somehow, for a fraction of what major television networks and streaming services spend on shows, these people make a living from uninteresting content. Even Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond would agree he isn't that dull.
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