YouTuber, content creator, influencer – however you want to label him, Sam Fane, AKA Seen Through Glass, has mastered his art, and is being rewarded with a massively successful channel approaching its 10th anniversary.
When we meet Sam Fane, he’s mid-way through one of his favourite games: Guess What’s Under the Cover. We’re in the London branch of Windrush Car Storage, one of countless secretive, vault-like spaces beneath the streets of the capital, while commuters and tourists walk and drive about above, totally unaware of what lies below their feet. It’s also a haven for people like Sam, the man behind hugely popular YouTube channel Seen Through Glass, who keeps his small car collection here when not in use.
And this place really is a vault. Lined up beneath the streets are rows and rows of automotive rarities, trickle chargers running down from an overhead gantry like life support machines. Despite being not far below the streets of one of the world’s biggest cities, it’s remarkably quiet down here, the only notable sound the occasional rumble of an Underground train passing by on the other side of a wall. It adds to the sense that these cars are almost hibernating as they sit silently below silken fitted covers, reduced back to their raw profile.
And therein lies the game. That’s definitely a 911, but does that towering rear wing mark it out as a GT3 RS or a GT2 RS? That’s the unmistakeable profile of a Pagani Zonda, but all those winglets and canards – which of the many, many derivatives is it? It’s a nice way to pass some time with Sam and Windrush’s affable manager, Alastair, before we sit down in their little glassed-off office-stroke-clubhouse, in which sits a replica of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen – the dawn of the automobile.
If you’ve been anywhere near automotive YouTube in the last ten years or so, you’ll probably be familiar Sam and Seen Through Glass, which as we write this has 580k subscribers and almost 150 million total views. STG rose up as part of a gaggle of supercar-centric YouTube channels around a decade ago, amidst what proved to be a perfect confluence of events.
Just as the traffic-choked streets of London’s wealthiest neighbourhoods were beginning to fill with unbelievable seven-figure exotica every summer, people were beginning to view the term ‘YouTuber’ as a legitimate job title rather than a derisive label for people who didn’t get outside enough. There was an obvious gap in the market for supercar spotting videos, and it was swiftly filled by names like Shmee, Supercars of London, TFJJ, and, yes, Seen Through Glass. Whether you liked their content or not, there was no denying the brilliant simplicity of the idea.
Of course, in the years since, the content landscape has overlapped increasingly with that of social media, and a new term has arrived for those who might once have been labelled as mere ‘YouTubers’. “The ‘influencer’ thing gives me the ick,” says Sam. “It’s such a wide term – it could mean you’ve got 2,000 followers and you do yoga videos, or it could mean that you’ve got 40 million followers, and you make the most incredible, cinematic, beautiful, Oscar-worthy videos. It’s a bit like being called a ‘celebrity’ – what does that actually mean?”
Unfortunately for Sam, the label comes with the territory, especially as automakers have increasingly recognised the inherent marketing value of inviting these so-called automotive ‘influencers’ along on launches and press junkets.
“I think at the beginning, there was a lot of hesitation when content creators, YouTubers, influencers started to go on traditional media events like car launches. The old-school journalists who maybe had to work their way up through the magazine ranks and start off reviewing diesel Polos; 10 years later they were going on a Ferrari launch and suddenly, YouTubers who’d been doing it for a year were going [too].
“I tried to embrace it, because a lot of those guys and girls were my idols – those reviews I was watching or reading… I didn’t [necessarily] aspire to be like them, but I enjoyed them, so the fact that they were then like ‘why the hell are you here?’… I just tried to tackle it up front. These days, I think everyone gets on super easily. We end up on the same events all the time and there’s a lot more respect both ways.”
Besides, Sam’s content has changed a lot in the nine years since he started his channel. It began with POV videos which were quite literally seen through Glass – the name isn’t a reference to a camera lens or a car windscreen, but the ill-fated Google Glass ‘smart glasses’. Sam was an early adopter of this ultimately abandoned bit of tech, and would wear them while travelling from his flat in Clapham to his old PR job in Mayfair, recording the supercars he’d see along the way.
These videos have long since given way to proper mini-movies – there are soaring drone shots, cameras set up at two different angles in the cabin, and little quick-fire shots of scenery, food and drink stitching in some flavour of whatever locale he’s filming in. It’s the sort of thing that was the preserve of TV shows when he started out, before YouTube quickly became an outlet for genuinely cinematic content.
Visually, it’s now far closer to the sort of YouTube content fronted by presenters from much more traditional journalistic backgrounds. The key differentiator, of course, is the audience: “How I see it – whether it’s true or not – is that I’m just sharing my life with cars, rather than trying to review them. Of course I review cars, but it’s more my experience, what I’m doing with them, where I’m going… I’m not trying to give detailed, analytic consumer advice, because if you listen to me about what car you should buy, that’s a disaster.”
With the tenth anniversary of Seen Through Glass coming in 2024, Sam is in an introspective mood about his content output. As well as putting an increased focus on his hugely successful podcast, Behind the Glass, he wants to ensure his videos don’t get lost among the noise in an inarguably oversaturated content landscape. “This year, I’ve prioritised quality over quantity, and I want to do that even more next year. [I want to] keep it adventure-focused, take cars where we always think about taking cars. The long-form thing works really well – seven-minute videos don’t work on YouTube anymore, because of the TikTok mentality. You’re now coming to YouTube as a replacement for TV, and therefore you’re ready for a 30 to 45 minute video, but it has to be engaging.”
Sam’s personal car landscape is changing, too. If you’re familiar with the channel, you’ll most readily associate him with his Ferrari 360. “If Windrush was on fire, it’s the one I’d save,” says Sam. “I don’t think I’d ever sell it – it’s the one I’ve dreamed of, the one I’ve done everything with. That’s the one I think of as my own.” A manual, Rosso Corsa car with plenty of bits taken from the hardcore Challenge Stradale version, he describes it as the closest possible thing to a manual Stradale without retrofitting a real one at ridiculous cost.
Elsewhere, there’s a 992-gen 911 GT3 – also manual – in a delightful PTS shade known as Racing Green Metallic and sporting some throwback Pascha-pattern seats. We came to visit in a Jaguar F-Type R 75, a thumping, supercharged V8 farewell to Jag’s ageing but still hugely charming sports car. Sam gives it a knowing nod as we rumble into Windrush’s ‘Drop Zone’, a sort of antechamber between the anonymous scene outside and the treasure chest within. He’s owned several F-Types – the recent arrival of a baby for him and his wife means the most recent has just gone, and he’s seeking something with room for a family. It’s a small but deeply personal collection, and the culmination of a car story that began with a 1.4-litre Mark 4 Golf.
No matter your thoughts on the automotive YouTuber scene, there’s no denying that Sam has mastered a craft that appeals to a huge, broad audience. What really shines through, whether it’s in his videos or wandering amongst the rows of hidden exotica in Windrush, is an unbridled passion for cars, and sharing his experiences with them. Just don’t call him an influencer.
Sam is joining us in the Tipi for ‘I Love You, Man’ on 4 September 2023. The event is almost sold out, but you can join the waiting list here.