Meet Shmee 150 and His Impressive Supercar Collection

With a stable of jaw-dropping supercars and more than six million followers across his social media network, Tim Burton—better known by his online moniker Shmee150—has been making videos for 14 years. In a chat with Playboy, he talks about what keeps his engine revving.

Playboy: How did you discover you had a love of supercars?

Shmee: I think like everybody who has cars in their blood, it starts at a young age. I remember in single digits calling out the names of every car brand we’d see on the road — being a car-spotter as a kid. My granddad was into cars, my dad was into cars. As I reached teenage years, I became even more obsessed with supercars.

The idea of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, adventuring, travel, rallies…a cousin of mine a few years older had been able to purchase himself a Ferrari, and I was absolutely mindblown by the idea of this. It was really something that was there from day one. I really don’t know life otherwise. I’ve always been awestruck by the engineering, the technology, the aspiration of a car like this, the success that it represents, the dream of what that would be like to own and use and to be able to drive. I guess as a petrol head, it’s been’s in there since day one.

Playboy: What inspired you to start your YouTube channel?

Shmee150: Back in the days when I started filming videos and uploading them, there was no concept of what YouTube and social media was or what it would become. We’re talking pre-the existence of Instagram, very early days of YouTube and Facebook. Certainly for me, as a teenager, I was always into cameras, video, photography; I was always ripping tapes to edit videos together of things we would get up to at school: Sports matches, trips.

And as soon as I was off on my own it was making videos of cars. In 2009 I created a couple of videos—unfortunately none of which is still live as I was using music and that became a contentious topic down the line—but earlier in 2010 in January I had recently purchased a new video camera. The intention was to use it for filming an upcoming ski trip, but I tested shooting a video of some cars that were in London at a Top Gear magazine event.

I uploaded it and what was amazing to me is how it would instantly get a few views and comments would come in from around the world. To know I was exchanging messages with someone in Australia or the United States but ultimately people who shared the same passion, the same language for cars, meant that I did it more. Shot more videos, uploaded more videos.

I enjoyed the whole process behind shooting the videos, editing the videos, the subject matter the cars. And then the publishing and learning this world of social media which, at the time, no one had any idea what it would become, what it would be, and certainly the concept that you could make a business from it.

Shmee150: The cars in my collection are fairly varied. In fact, I own an exact replica of a car I owned when I was 20, a Renault Clio. My actual car was unfortunately involved in an accident log after my ownership, and a couple of years ago we managed to track it down in a scrapyard. So I own a cube of metal that are the remains of the wreck of my original first car. But I bought a tribute to it, a car that’s identical in every possible way.

The first big car that’s part of my collection that I owned the longest ago is my 2009 Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster which I bought in late 2010. It was the first car that I ever presented myself talking to the camera [in]. I took it on road trips and adventures and made vlogs. It was the car we knew as the “Shmeemobile,” the car that was really a game changer for what I did on YouTube. I was lucky that my job enabled me to be in a position to be able to acquire such a car.

It was the start of discovering what it meant to share a behind-the-scenes look of ownership of a car like that, and what that would eventually mean for the channel. I sold it back in 2012, [and] nine years later I managed to purchase the very same car back. Of course, it will remain in my collection now for the long haul, a very special car considering what it means personally.

I also own a McLaren 675LT Spider that I’ve had for the longest of any of my cars, now about eight years. It was a car that was a very big part of my YouTube journey, so it means even more than the metal and carbon fiber that it’s made up from.

At that time, I had been sharing a lot of videos with a run of McLarens I owned. and it was such an opener to this world, going to events and building an audience, really, for the Shmee150 channel.

Shmee gets a closer look at some extra-shiny wheels. Shmee150

Playboy: You’ve said before there was no business plan when starting Shmee150. When did you realize it was becoming something big, and how did you react to that?

Shmee150: In the early days of uploading videos, there was no concept of where it could go. I just enjoyed the process, I enjoyed the people that I met, and the events that I would attend. And then of course, the whole involvement to publish the videos.

It became interesting in terms of the reach when I had a couple of viral videos in the first summer of making car content. It wasn’t that it was overnight going to become a job, but it was certainly a case of “Wait a moment, there are a lot of people watching this stuff.”

A couple of years further on, as the numbers had grown a little bit and started reaching an interesting level and I was shooting purposefully made content to try to make it viral, we kind of understood that it could really be something. It was at that point that I was really very lucky that my boss allowed me to spontaneously, take some time off to make video content, go to events. Also being a car nut, he kind of understood the cool side of it.

And really we almost fell into it by mistake, a couple of virals and then taking a chance. I left my job, and for a while it was a difficult challenge to get the reach to cover the bills. But ultimately it paid off and opened up a new world, new opportunities, new things that I never really could imagined. And being at the start of the social media wave, surfing this wave. At that point we had no idea what it was, and certainly what it was going to become.

Playboy: What cars have given you the most joy?

Shmee150: I think cars can give you joy in so many different ways. I have so many incredible memories. Its a mixture of things, from the person or people you’re with, the place you’re traveling to, or the road trip you’re on, and the car itself, of course. And combining things. Sometimes it’s how spontaneous that can be.

Some of my favorite memories have come from things that I didn’t expect. I have some great memories of my first ever car as a teenager and that freedom it introduced, to the first sports car I bought, to the first supercar I bought…some amazing things that I’ve been lucky to do over the years.

One of my favorites is when an opportunity arises to drive, film and share something that people don’t really know much about. To be able to bring an experience to people through the camera that I know myself would have been inspirational in terms of the existence of that engineering, of what it’s all about.

It’s one of my favorite things is to be able to create this content and give an insight that, even in my own shoes before all of this began, I would have loved to have known about. Thats really how the channel began and how it all started—sharing what I wanted to watch.

An overhead view of Shmee150’s impressive car collection. NWVT Photography

Playboy: How do you decide what cars to add to the Shmuseum and what cars to let go?

Shmee150: Buying and choosing cars is such a personal topic. I have specific reasons behind some, many its the case of the heart saying, “Yes! We’ve got to add that one to the collection.” Often, there are cars I want to go and drive and feature and have fun with and share the ownership experience. Sometimes, it’s about the brand and experiencing what that brand has to offer, and sometimes it can be fairly spontaneous.

On other occasions, perhaps its the business mindset of the channel and what car I think might do well, but normally for me it’s a very personal thing. There are cars that I still own to this day that aren’t at the forefront of the video content but were such a big part of the storyline and have a sentimental value. Choosing what cars to let go, similarly—it’s about the experiences. Owning the car for a couple of years, seeing what it’s like having owned it and moving on to the next.

Sometimes, its almost like forming a bond with the car from the different drives and videos it’s featured in, and having a reluctance to let it go as a result. There’s no specific rule of thumb between what cars to keep and what to let go. It’s very spontaneous. I often to refer to cars earning their spot as a permanent “Shmeemobile” over the ownership period.

Shmee’s Zenvo TSR-S C.J.N. Photography

Playboy: What are the biggest challenges of being a content creator and how do you deal with them?

Shmee150: There are a lot of challenges when you’re creating videos that a lot of people on the outside don’t understand. It’s a very fortunate position to be in, to call what I do a job. It doesn’t make any sense at all. If I was trying to explain this to a younger version of myself, I would have laughed back at that being a career, something you can effectively make a business out of.

For example, the pressure you put on yourself to create content, to keep the video schedule, to of course satisfy the viewers. It’s an amazing world in terms of collaboration. There are some very exciting opportunities to work with so any individuals, other content creators, brands along the way.

But there’s certainly a pressure that comes from the direct relationship that the viewer has with you as the content creators. Often, it’s a very one way relationship. You don’t know the millions of people that know you. And that means that there’s a strange dynamic when it comes to comments and messaging.

And I’m very lucky to work in a super positive and passionate industry when it comes to content creation. But you have to differentiate personal insults from what you’re trying to do—creating content about something you love. I think that’s the hardest part of it. There’s a lot of pressure on the shoulders, and very few people who understand it.

And it’s easy to fall into the trap of well, you choose to out yourself out there, so the burden lies on your shoulders. But the other way around, myself and many other of my closest friends who create content didn’t have a plan in the first place. They did what they enjoyed and it was very organic. And almost, the viewers chose them to be successful, the viewers chose to watch their content. And you almost surf the wave or run in the hamster wheel, however you’d like to define it, and go with the flow.

Of course, you can take a time out at any moment. But its like a drug, its like an addiction, creating that content, and sharing it, and seeing the views climb and the subscriber numbers build up. It’s very fun. But there’s definitely a lot of pressure involved.

Playboy: What trends do you see happening in the automotive space today?

Shmee150: We’re in a fascinating time in the automotive world in general. The growth of electric vehicles—something that, for petrol heads, is a challenge, we can certainly say. But it’s very much a necessary change in terms of the environment and the world as a whole. It’s an interesting time, therefore in terms of content, as petrol heads who consume automotive content particularly keep their interest to internal combustion engines, and therefore it becomes more niche, less of a car becoming a passion purchase and more of a necessity for transport.

This is a trend that obviously, we don’t really know what will be the end direction. It’s constantly evolving. There are going to be many changes that happening within social media: the rise of short form, and therefore in terms of automotive what that means for content creation as platforms like YouTube become more television-esque in their style. So, what do we do from our side to adapt to that?

Automotive trends, as well, in terms of the car: what will it look like down the line, will there be fewer and fewer cars at the high end of the industry? The hypercar is becoming more exciting than ever as engineering advances at an even more rapid rate as ever before. And the sheer performance that the latest crop of cars offers is simply mind blowing.

14 of the cars in the Shmuseum. NWVT Photography

Playboy: What are your future plans for Shmee150?

Shmee150: It’s always very difficult to think about the future because social media is a world that started and grew incredibly quickly. And it can also change very fast as well. You see that with the introduction of new platforms, with the changing audience understanding of the content that you’re making.

There’s a constant shift in how people view content and you have to adapt to that very quickly. So, I find the future of Shmee150 very hard to judge. I can look seconds and minutes and maybe even hours, weeks away, but looking months and years down the line is a very difficult game.

I think one of the biggest shifts organically I’ve seen with other creators is moving into more traditional industries, forming other businesses around the side of the YouTube content, and using the platform to move forward to do new things, try new things.

It can of course become very repetitive when you’ve created the same type of content for a very long period. I am approaching 15 years of a video a day on average on my main channel with additional content across every other channel every day as well. So I am not going to stand and say this is something that will continue forever because that’s not realistic!

But it’s always a case to adapting to what happens. If something new happens around you, mixing it up, changing what you do. Evolving. Adapting to this very, very interesting and continually developing world we call social media.

Playboy: Lastly, what’s your idea of a perfect day?

Shmee150: Many people might think that spending my entire life around cars creating content, hosting events, presenting videos about automotive pretty much every minute that I’m awake, you might think my perfect day would be a complete break away from that to do something completely unrelated.

I would still say its grabbing the wheel of something exciting, going for a drive on an amazing road, being with a group of friends on an adventure together, building memories, having fun, enjoying it, and that’s always been something that’s driven me despite being fortunate enough to drive some of the most amazing roads in the world.

I still enjoy exploring somewhere new, finding something that perhaps is somewhat of a secret, and just heading out, being on the road, having an adventure, and ultimately ending the day with a massive smile on my face. I think that makes a perfect day out driving. Can be anything, doesn’t have to be a supercar. Just in the right place, at the right time, with the right people.