Launched about two years ago, the /DRIVE YouTube car show we all know and love has amassed over the course of  nine seasons a little over 1,1 million subscribers and almost 200 million views.

The tens, if not hundreds, of awesome car-related videos they have shot until now are obviously the main reason for the channel’s huge following – even though, let’s face it, most came to watch Chris Harris’ opposite lock shenanigans – but none of them would have been created if DRIVE hadn’t been backed by YouTube.

That’s right, as some of you already know, DRIVE was one of the first original content programs backed by the number one video website in the world.

Unfortunately, it seems that YouTube will no longer pay the bills, leaving the DRIVE team entirely on their own. With the following season of the show being awaited like Christmas, the peeps behind DRIVE gave everyone a huge bombshell – a new subscription video on demand (SVOD) channel has been created and it is called DRIVE+ (Plus).

The old channel will remain active, supported by Google Ads and with its own content, while DRIVE+ is supposed to give you ad-free, longer-form and better-quality videos for a cool $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year, with a free 14-day trial subscription.

While this news is probably hard to swallow on its own, the biggest letdown so far is the fact that the new DRIVE+ channel will not let people from certain parts of the world subscribe – including European countries like Germany, France, Spain or the Netherlands.

In other words, DRIVE is certainly changing, and on a personal note, this change may not be for the better because of two major reasons.

First of all, keeping the really good content behind a pay-wall that only connoisseurs from certain countries have access to will probably alienate the remaining audience.

Second of all, while four bucks a month is a less cholesterol-filled burger for an American, it is also almost fifty percent of what Netflix charges for quite a bit more than twice the content – even though some or most of it isn’t interesting for everyone.

Will it work out in the end? I certainly hope so, but the first predictions aren’t very positive. What do you think?

By Alex Oagana

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