It’s been a brutal past year or two for automotive media. From layoffs to restructuring to entities changing hands or closing altogether, the titles and content that helped us fall in love with cars are changing. Case in point: “Need For Speed” appears to be on hiatus, and as a result, “Speedhunters” appears to be dead. Thankfully, the end of the site doesn’t mean the end of the love. The photojournalists putting out work we love are back with a new project called “Turnpike”.
Speedhunters was a somewhat covert marketing project for Need For Speed, collecting trends in the aftermarket while staying authentic in order to give the game series some additional cred. In a way, it was almost idyllic—gorgeous photos of amazing cars shot by some of the world’s most skilled photographers, all without obvious corporate interference. Unfortunately, EA reportedly decided to pause the Need For Speed franchise, and thus, Speedhunters became a casualty.
However, as we’ve noted before, automotive media is an industry without much of a moat, meaning that so long as people have the right branding, backing, and name recognition, there usually isn’t much stopping them from starting something new. Look at Big Time and Speeed, born from Donut Media talent, or former-Hoonigan Vin Anatra’s solo YouTube channel, or, well, us to a degree. With photographers Mario Christou, Alec Pender, Alen Haseta, Larry Chen, and Dino Dalle Carbonare having already made a name at Speedhunters, it only makes sense that they started something new in the wake of that site’s purported implosion. It’s called Turnpike, and right out of the gate, it seems to be giving us more of what we love, but its creators seem open about the challenges that come with DIY-ing it. As Christou wrote in a blog post:
When Alec Pender and I had a phone call back in January ‘25 and sparked the idea of Turnpike, we knew that we needed the right team to scour the world; bringing you the widest possible variety of car culture that we can – to the widest audience possible.
But what does that actually mean? It’s one thing to get out and shoot as much as we can, but in Alec’s own words, “No matter what the platform, without an audience, it ceases to exist. Audiences create readership, conversation, and provide valuable insight into not just trends, but what the content that we all really care about is.”
Indeed, readership is critical to any car site’s survival, because readers keep the lights on. Basically, there are three main ways to make money in this arena since nobody really does direct ad sales anymore: Programmatic ads, sponsorship, and membership. The success of all three rely heavily on readers.
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While Turnpike doesn’t appear to have programmatic ads turned on yet, they’re basically ad spaces that advertisers algorithmically bid on through a third party. Pageviews, reader demographics, and click-through rates directly affect revenue from programmatic ads, but it’s one tool that websites use to keep the lights on. The more readers you have, the more money your site brings in from programmatic advertising. Then there’s sponsorship, where brands and outlets directly strike deals on partner content. Brands are often more willing to work with outlets that put up sizeable readership numbers of a target demographic, as it’s all really a sales drive. Then there’s membership, where readers like the media they follow enough to pay for it directly. This one can be tricky, as paywall discourse is still raging, but it’s the closest thing to a community-funded that many creators have. More importantly, it’s a direct gauge of whether or not you’re doing good stuff.
Right out of the gate, Turnpike looks fantastic. The color palette is tastefully subdued, the side-scrolling full-bleed embedded galleries are beautiful, and the sans-serif body copy font will be instantly familiar to fans. Hitting the ground running with coverage of Ultrace, Gatebil, Doridore, Pikes Peak, and more, Turnpike is everything we loved, just with a new twist.
In an age when private equity and big conglomerates have gobbled up so many great automotive media outlets, I want to see every creative-led effort succeed. Good on the team for starting Turnpike, a successful recipe that now seems to have the structure needed for sustainability. Sure, we might live in a line-goes-up world, but sometimes it’s just about doing what you love.
Top graphic images: Turnpike; depositphotos.com
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I wish them luck.
And will you look at that! They’ve managed to make the comments sort logically!!