Here’s What You Get When You Become An Autopian Member, And How It Will Make This The Greatest Car Website Ever

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The Autopian is a place for car-lovers. It was created after three people — Beau Boeckmann, Jason Torchinsky, and David Tracy — sat down in some microcars one day and scribbled down this motto: “The Autopian exists to serve the car enthusiast community by creating content that informs and entertains, while celebrating the unifying quality of automobiles.” We’ve upheld that motto for over eight months now, and many of you have rewarded us not only with your clicks, but with your excellent comments and frequent questions about how you can support this community more. We now have an answer: Become a member. Not only will it help us become the best version of the car website you’ve always wanted, but you’ll also get things and stuff and perhaps even goods out of the deal. Here’s a look at the details behind The Autopian’s Membership.

The Autopian came into being after hundreds of people kept messaging Jason and me — then writers at Jalopnik — asking us to do something. Readers were yearning for an easy-to-use website that championed car culture, and after a while, the calls became impossible to ignore. So Torch and I, two car-nuts who were just big enough dipshits to think we could pull this off, reached out to Jason’s friend and diehard car-person Beau Boeckmann (whom you’re going to see more of on this site soon!). An avid consumer of automotive media (and a media personality in his own right) and someone who had wanted to be involved in this business for years, Beau came out of the gate with a “Let’s do this thing” attitude. He’s affording us the freedom to do our thing; we hired Mercedes Streeter and Matt Hardigree, and recently we’ve got Patrick George hanging out with us to help build a more sustainable operation from the content-creation side. We’ve got some incredible contributors, an awesome video team, and so much fun stuff planned for the future.

We’ve built something here, and you all are the most important part of it. This community is something that we all plan to keep growing for years to come, and an important element of that longevity will be your support in the form of membership.

You may be familiar with the website Defector. It’s a product of a bunch of former Deadspin writers quitting and starting their own subscription-based, mostly-sports website. It works great, and the site is firing on all cylinders, providing readers with exactly the content they want. We like this concept, but feel that a completely paywalled site would in many ways thwart what we’re trying to do here, and that is: champion car culture. We think a car website should be accessible for everyone from every walk of life, so our membership is optional, though we will try to force your hand by bribing you with exclusive content and merchandise!

So let’s talk about those bribes, shall we? (For now, we’re only shipping to folks in North America, since shipping costs are so high; if you’re not in North America, we’ll offer another, more virtual tier at a future date!).

Autopian Vinyl

Vinyl Banner

  • What it is:
    • A way for you to get exclusive content and merchandise while supporting The Autopian’s mission.
    • Basically, this is you officially joining our cult. Because you can’t spell “car culture” without “car cult.”
  • What it costs:
  • Things you get:
    • A special, limited-edition Autopian shirt
    • An Autopian bumper sticker
  • Things you get (virtual)
    • Member’s only newsletter
    • Weekly wrenching open chat with Autopian writers/weekly open chat
    • A chance to be featured (if you want) in a weekly member rides post
    • Access to special content (extended cuts, early project car updates)
    • Early invites to Autopian events like car shows and parties
  • Things you get (emotional)
    • The warm feeling in your heart of supporting independent media at a time when a lot of your favorite car sites are going away…

Sign up here for Autopian Vinyl (Monthly)

Sign up here for Autopian Vinyl (Annual)

To gift an annual membership Click Here

Autopian Velour

Velour Banner

  • What it is:
    • A way for you to provide even more support to the site while also getting more opportunities to interact with the staff.
  • What it costs:
  • Things you get:
    • Everything in Vinyl plus:
      • A classy-as-hell grille badge
      • Random raffle prizes, including press swag from automakers.
  • Things you get (virtual)
    • Everything in Vinyl plus:
      • Invites to private quarterly Zoom/In-Person Automotive Trivia Nights
      • A drawing on your birthday from Jason of whatever car you want sent directly to your Atari
  • Things you get (emotional)
    • A powerful, pervasive feeling that you’re actually doing genuine good in the world, which will be expressed via powerful sex hormones that everyone around you will absolutely notice. Also, you’ll probably sleep better.

Autopian Rich Corinthian Leather

Rcl Banner

  • What it is:
    • The ultimate in Autopian membership.
    • A chance to be treated like a king by a bunch of car-loving dirtbags.
  • What it costs:
  • Things you get (physical):
    • Everything in Velour plus:
      • An annual private tour (potentially with other members) of Beau’s personal collection in LA, the Petersen Museum, The Crawford Museum, or the Lane Museum led by a staffer or friend of the site. If you come to Beau’s collection you’ll also get lunch at the famous Horseless Carriage restaurant in Galpin Ford
      • Limited-edition Autopian merch every quarter
      • Reserve parking at any Autopian event (where possible)
  • Things you get (virtual)
    • Everything in Velour plus:
      • A video from David or Jason to a person of your choosing that encourages them to buy a specific car OR allow you to buy a car (or just a birthday video) 
  • Things you get (emotional)
    • David will send you a signed vial of rust flakes from one of his project cars. Place this vial in your garage as a reminder that, as bad as things are going with your own project car, things could be worse. Legend has it that if you rub this vial three times, it will give you good luck with loosening stubborn bolts. (Use of a breaker bar to remove a tiny 1/4-inch (or 6mm) bolt voids warranty; also, there is no warranty).
  • Sign up here for Rich Corinthian Leather
  • Give the gift of Rich Corinthian Leather by Clicking Here

The Autopian Wrenching/Road Tripping Experience

Dttrip

  • What it is:
    • Hanging out with DT, wrenching all day, living the dream.
  • What it costs:
  • Things you get:
    • Everything in Rich Corinthian Leather plus:
      • David Tracy, whom we’d prefer you not murder and store in your basement freezer, will spend at least three full days helping you wrench on your car. He will bring pizza and beverages, and it will be an epic wrenchfest, though one focused on fun. This is not a rent-a-mechanic service, it’s an experience with one of the internet’s foremost shitbox wrenching experts.
      • [Ed Note: Are we really doing this? This seems like a terrible idea? Is anyone going to actually do this? I have many many questions. – MH]
  • Sign up for the wrenching experience by clicking this link
  • Gift this experience by Clicking Here

How Membership Will Improve The Site

We’re trying to build a financially sustainable operation here at The Autopian, and membership — as well as carefully-placed ads — will be key in making that happen; this is our first shot at this, and we’re always looking for ways to improve the membership experience (we welcome your ideas!). The more members who sign up (either by clicking the links above or by clicking the “support us” button on the homepage), the more cars we can do dumb things with. I personally want to fly to Brazil to buy a very rare Jeep, fix the thing up, and take it on an epic South American roadtrip. I may do that regardless, but you becoming a member will make that so much more feasible; plus, the video/articles will come faster!

Membership will also allow us to hire more talented writers, host more reader meetups, and just produce more and better content for you all to enjoy. We’re excited to continue building this car community, and we thank you for supporting us in our early days as we worked our butts off to build this place from scratch. Now it’s time to continue working our butts off to make it even better.

477 thoughts on “Here’s What You Get When You Become An Autopian Member, And How It Will Make This The Greatest Car Website Ever

  1. How do I get an Autopian mug such as the one strategically product placed in David’s hyper-mileing video? Did by not see it on your merch page. Does not need to be personalized but that would be nice. Do not want David’s used mug at any price 🙂 BTW: edit feature is great!!!

  2. In the spirit of honesty and transparency, I’m withholding my money until you can make comment notifications work. I shall reward you with my cheddar promptly upon this happening. This issue significantly hampers my enjoyment, and curtails my participation greatly.

  3. Thanks to Jason for my bday drawing! A super excellent SW20 with winking pop up headlights!

    Credit also to Matt and Otto: “The good news is that I bribed Otto with a Costco-sized box of Cheetos Sweetos Cinnamon Sugar Puffs and he agreed to lock his father in the basement until your drawing was done.”

    The benefits of membership and excellent cotomer sevis!

  4. My stuff has been “shipping” since March 25th with no movement, and the email that says they will reply with questions does not reply. What is my option?

    Also, why do I need a 3rd party to have an avatar, I’m not giving business to other companies, I am here because I support you guys, not because I want to have to create accounts that track everything I do across the internet.

    1. In the same boat. Email on the 25th. Tracking shows label created, and no movement since then. I’m hoping it gets here they time they start asking me to renew.

      1. Hey y’all. That’s on me. It’s been crazy. We ran low on stickers, but they’ve arrived. Emails coming soon and items either shipped yesterday, today, or tomorrow, so you should start getting updates as well.

  5. How about a Mexican Beach Blanket level or Duct Tape level for $5 or so, without the swag.

    I want to support, but times are tough you know…2020’s $2500 shit boxes are now $5k

  6. I really want to support both DT and JT, but I am so conflicted. Your supporting partner Beau, abliet a smart guy, advocates ADM’s. He has so many F150’s and yet friends in Santa Barbara, who are cops, have to pay those markups.

    it’s pretty simple, I wanna support this site, but your main supporter doesn’t support those who help us.

    And I am a Vet., combat and all. So I bought my last Ford from a dealer in GA, and drove it back to CA.

    Sincerely,
    Conflicted.

    1. He has so many F150’s and yet friends in Santa Barbara, who are cops, have to pay those markups.

      And here I am hoping that benefits like these end for cops because it attracts the wrong type of person to law enforcement. The market is still messed up, a majority of dealers are not offering discounts or special pricing right now. It’s a little disingenuous to ignore that and still be upset at the lack of discounts.

  7. Are all the changes already out (per matts article the other day?)

    I’m still missing notifications, and the ability to edit my username.

    1. I don’t get notifications on anything either, and cant edit on my phone, half the time I click the smile on my phone it doesn’t work either.

      *I looked more, seems like EVERY post you write you have to enable notifications. That’s super annoying

      1. The notifications don’t seem to be working correctly once they’re enabled too. I keep getting notifications for ALL posts to my email, but I’m not getting notifications about responses to my comments…. this was actually the very first response I got a notification (to my email, not on the website) for lmfao.

      1. I saw the post about the update being released, but I’m still not seeing most of the changes. In fact, all I see are the new editing tools, but I still can’t edit my username, nor can see my notification feed.

  8. Are you guys considering a cheaper virtual “shitbox” option for the Europeans following your shenanigans? Would really appreciate that, say for 5 or 6 dollars a month.

  9. Not sure if this thread is still being followed, but is there a way to purchase additional member bumper stickers for those of us with hooptie fleets?

  10. I was thrilled to get my swag bag in the mail today! The T-shirt looks great (featuring a 1970 Skoda 110R, if I’m not mistaken) and the grille badge is fantastic.

  11. Yeah….. some of is “more experienced “ folk don’t see the value in much of the high falutin swag offered in these services. In particular looking at what $10 clams gets you here vs other online streaming services, which we would rather do without too.

    Hence, how about a level that we can read all content, but not get travel swag, trips to wrench with folk, etc.

    Let’s call it the “ShitBox” level. Seems to make sense….

    1. I was happy to purchase the Vinyl plan, but I totally agree with GLL here.

      You guys should calculate the average bandwidth cost and the lost ad revenue for a typical user, add a dollar and we have the “ShitBox” level. $10-$12 per year and you’ve got a winner.

    2. Right? I want to support The Autopian, but I am David Tracy-levels of cheap. Can we have a Shower Spaghetti* level, even?

      *For those not in the stingy kids club, you do shower spaghetti to conserve dish water. Step 1, eat spaghetti. Step 2, wash dishes, then self. Step 3, early retirement.

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