James Pumphrey is the kind of guy you feel like you could easily talk shop with. Or talk about anything, really. He has an easy, good-natured vibe to him that makes you want to while away an evening chatting over a couple of beers, laughing at the world or a good meme or a bit of both.
We aren’t the only ones to notice that. Pumphrey became a publicly beloved figure after joining Donut Media a decade ago and telling the stories behind legendary cars in the successful Up To Speed series. Fans flooded the comments, with many saying he was the reason they loved Donut.
But then, in 2024, several of Donut’s key personalities left the company: Jeremiah Burton and Zack Jobe, who have since moved on to start their own auto channel BigTime, and then after a long silence, Pumphrey also announced he had left it behind.
Pumphrey had done what many other influencers had done before him: Hit a point where in order to evolve, he had to move on. His fans were quick to follow to Speeed, his new YouTube channel in partnership with ex-Donut CCO Jesse Wood, where 1.13 million subscribers have clicked the subscribe button. In a talk with Playboy, Pumphrey talked about why he made the move, what his plans are for Speeed, and why he’s ready to move on to topics beyond all things auto.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Playboy: Picture this: you just saw the first car you ever fell in love with. What did it look like? And did it plant the seed that led you to where you are today?
James Pumphrey: I think I have a number of like defining car moments in my life. I remember like very distinctly seeing like a 90s Z32, 300ZX, like twin turbo, the Kill Bill car. And I just remember thinking “Oh my God, what is that?” And then my dad said that’s a Nissan. And I was like, no way that’s not like a Ferrari or something. That car was always on my computer screen for the next five years. As a kid, you have no concept of money. So I said, “Oh dad, like this one’s only fifteen thousand dollars!” (grins)
This is like pre-social media, so there was a lot of aura around cars for me growing up. There were two almost identical BMW 2002s that apparently some rich guy built for his daughters. And one of them was orange and one of them was red. I never saw who the driver was. And then in high school this kid Cam had a black [BMW] E30 series. I remember thinking he was so cool, and that car was so cool. Now I have a black E30. So I think aura, aesthetic, and the story that went into cars has always been of interest to me.
I had asthma really bad when I was a kid and I’d have to go to the emergency room a lot. There was one night where I was having a crazy asthma attack and it was looking kind of scary, and my dad and my whole family credits the fact that my dad had this BMW 535is. The fact that the car was so fast and my dad was such a good driver is the reason I survived. That’s part of my origin story, it’s just built into who I am.
Playboy: You were once pursuing an acting career before you tried out for a role at Donut. Do you feel you’ve left that behind? Is there any part of it you miss?
Pumphrey: [These days] We watch YouTube on TV, and more often than not, movies premiere on TV. That’s the same place my videos are, so in a lot of ways I think I am doing what I came out to LA to do. To be funny at the educational thing—that turned out to be the thing that stuck, the thing that made a difference in my career. So I think l’ve evolved into what I want to do through the experience of doing Donut.
I also think media is evolving. So there’s less of a line, it’s consistently blurring more and more between making your own stuff or being in a huge movie or a TV show. I would love to get a higher budget thing, like Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear guys are obviously huge influences on me, and I would love to – especially since they’re retiring – pick up that mantle and get some big budgets and fly around the world and drive cool cars.
I’m open to whatever this brings me. And I think I’m here today because I’m very consciously riding a wave. Nothing’s off the table, everything’s on the table.
Playboy: You recently announced you were leaving Donut and doing your own thing. What were some of the accomplishments that you were really proud of over that period of time?
Pumphrey: The whole Donut thing was sort of…it’s not a surprise, because we all worked really really hard, but it was sort of unplanned. And it was really like breaking new ground, at least for me. There were a lot of opportunities that came up that made me feel “I can’t believe I’m doing this right now.” I drove a Lamborghini at the Lamborghini factory. We went to Geneva and ran into Magnus Walker and he was like “Hey Donut!” and I was like oh holy crap, you know! Jesse and I drove through the Swiss Alps. I was in three video games! That’s bizarre.
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When we set out to do Donut, we didn’t really see ourselves represented in car culture, and we didn’t really feel like car culture was a very welcoming place to a lot of people. So I think hearing testimonials from the audience or people DMing me to say “Hey, thank you for making this like a more welcoming place, thank you for highlighting so any different types of people.” That was really cool.
At one point Top Gear was the biggest non-scripted show in the world, and it’s about cars. We looked at that and we were like, all right, there’s no excuse. We can make this entertaining. Cars are cool. Let’s make stuff that’s digestible for everybody.
Playboy: How the hell did you learn so much encyclopedic knowledge about such a wide range of cars?
Pumphrey: Well, I don’t think I have encyclopedic knowledge on anything. I think I have surface level knowledge on a lot of things. Every Donut video is a huge team effort. With Up to Speed specifically, me or Jesse but also other members of the team would have an idea of what the video would be, and then we would research the hell out of it. And so the answer is, I don’t have that knowledge, but I work really hard with a group of really talented people to make it appear as though I do.
Playboy: What did you learn in acting that came in handy when you created the persona you portrayed in Up to Speed?
James Pumphrey: The first note I gave everyone who wanted to be on camera at Donut is you have to stop being embarrassed. After that, it’s about honing skills. I did hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of live comedy shows, I took classes a lot at UCB, I toured with my sketch group. I think that the biggest lesson I bring from acting comedy is it doesn’t hurt to try, you know? Best-case scenario, everyone’s like, “Yo, that’s so sick.” And like worst-case scenario, no one sees it (if you’re not successful performing on YouTube).
Playboy: What was it like for you to see so many fans concerned about where you’d gone after vanishing from Donut? And did it help drive you to start Speeed?
Pumphrey: It was kind of trippy. Overall, pretty flattering and definitely motivated me to have the confidence in doing my own thing. By the time everyone was talking about it, I was pretty deep in the planning phases of launching Speeed. A month before [it launched], I changed the coloring of all my socials to black and green. The day before we launched, I just deleted all my socials and then just had a link to our website in my bio. I want to just operate it as a small business for the rest of my life. So I was like, let’s Frank Ocean it a little bit and build up some aura and have fun with the story of the whole thing.
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Playboy: What’s the scariest thing for you about stepping away from Donut and starting this project?
Pumphrey: When we first launched, it took a minute for the algorithm to pick us up because they didn’t know who we were. So the first two days, the response was a little underwhelming. And then by Sunday, I woke up and the graph was straight up. And I was like, Oh, thank God. But there were a couple sleepless nights in there.
I think Jesse said something to the effect of “this is why most people don’t do this.” And I think the realization was I’m nervous in a way that I haven’t been nervous in like a decade. If I failed at Donut, my paycheck would still come every two weeks. I would definitely still have a job and I could take huge swings. Failure was different, but also because of that, the ceiling for my success was a lot lower.
Also, I don’t know if I factored in how the bottom is scary too. I think I’m just coming to realize that, yeah, we are all on our own, but we’re also on our own. That’s the number one positive of this situation, but I think it’s also the negative. We have been shown as much support as one could hope for. I’m moving forward confidently.
Playboy: You’ve mentioned that Speeed will take on topics beyond just autos.
Pumphrey: You know, we’ve spent nine years making car videos, both Jesse and I. We love cars and we’re going to continue to make videos about cars. But we also realized we like other stuff, too. And because cars became our careers where we spend most of our time looking at other stuff on the internet when we’re not working, there’s a parallel to where we are with menswear and gadgets. We’re fans of these realms and we would like to dig in deeper as actual enthusiasts.
So we’re starting with the Up to Speed format about the history of a lot of legacy brands. We’re making a Stussy video. There’ll be like a Timbaland video. We also have an hour-long video on the history of the Porsche GT3. We’re gonna just make videos about the cool stuff that we like.