If you are reading this on July 6th, it is a very special day for The Intercooler. For us it is the most important since we started the Ti adventure as a tiny Instagram site called DriveNation back in the summer of 2018, four years ago, almost to the day. Since then we have grown a following of over 52,000 engaged, informed and always entertaining followers. Our podcast arrived two years later and has proven to be rather popular.
Then, last spring, we launched the Ti app on both the Apple and Google app stores. And now we have launched the Ti website, available both on your laptop or desktop computer and, because the site is fully responsive, on your mobile devices too. The app will carry on as it is for those who favour the convenience of a dedicated mobile app.
Our Instagram site, podcast and app were all unlike anything else out there in the car media world – and the website is unique too. For a start, we carry no traditional advertising, meaning you won’t see any flashing banners, pop-ups or expandable ads here. That’s because we wanted to deliver the cleanest, most enjoyable reading experience possible. It also means we can remain entirely independent and fearless because of it – no advertiser will dictate our editorial agenda, because we don’t have advertisers.
What we wanted to create instead was a website that was not only genuinely beautiful, but simple and easy to use as well. We never did see why form had to follow function, or vice-versa. It’s a place where the writing of what we believe to be the greatest team of motoring journalists working in the world today is allowed to breathe, across the full page width, accompanied by beautiful imagery too. Writers like Henry Catchpole, Karun Chandhok, Andrew English, Mel Nichols, Peter Robinson, Colin Goodwin and Ben Oliver, as well as our superstar designers Ian Callum and Julian Thomson, and engineers David Twohig and Joana Fidalgo. We’ll continue to champion the cause of young writers too, because in the world of motoring journalism there are few causes more important or closer to our hearts than helping bring on the next generation.
But the website won’t just be easier on the eye and better to use than anything we have done before, there’ll be new content there too. We start with a new series called ‘I Witnessed’ where our writers, drivers, designers and engineers talk about the most important, memorable and game-changing moments they witnessed first-hand. We kick off with Karun’s memories of Romain Grosjean’s miraculous escape from the flames at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.
After that there’s going to be a new podcast series. Dan and I will continue with the existing free-to-air podcast every week, but the new one is different. Different to the Ti podcast insofar as it will have amazing guests, and different to every other automotive podcast in the way we go about talking to them. We’ll leave you to ponder that for a moment, but if we tell you its title is ‘Last Blast’, that may provide a small pointer to the direction in which we are heading.
There will be more to come beyond that too, for we are anything but short of ideas on how to make the website work harder even for you, but we hope we’ve said enough to whet your appetite for now.
If you already subscribe to The Intercooler via the app, you will get free and full access to this website. You simply need to head over to the app to find out what to do. Similarly, if you subscribe via the website, the app will be available to you free of any further charge.
So that’s about it, apart from to say thank you so much for staying with us thus far: without your enthusiasm, engagement and, yes, money, we’d never have been in a position to take the next step. Thanks also to our partners BARC, Bonhams, Footman James, JBR Capital and Motorsport UK whose unwavering support has been as appreciated as it is invaluable. We have never partnered up with any organisation without first being convinced they share our values and aspirations, and we never will.
I’ll shut up now: there are over a million words waiting for you on the website right now, words from the over a thousand stories Ti has written and commissioned to date. They’ve never been easier to find and never been better to look at and read. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have enjoyed bringing them to you.
