Joshua Brown
- Apr 13, 2019
- 5 min read

From IT to Automotive Youtuber: Rob Dahm

If you're a regular in the automotive Youtube universe and especially rotary car universe then you've most likely heard the name Rob Dahm before. Most notably for his recent venture of making an All-wheel drive, four-rotor, big turbo RX7. Rob however has been in the Youtube realm for quite a long time and he himself would say (and apologizes for) is a big influence on the "JUST PICKED UP MY NEW LAMBO" clickbait titles you see now. A little over seven years ago Rob revealed through a rather small channel at the time his new pride and joy, a bright yellow 2001 Lamborghini Diablo VT, which was a big help for his channel roughly six months later when he made one of his biggest videos to date on how he came to own the car. But his initial success did not come from showing off his cars.

Rob's success did not even start with his Youtube channel, it began with an IT business he started called ComputerWorks at the age of 16, working on computers in his garage for people in his neighborhood. Through hard work and determination he moved into an office space at 18 whilst setting a goal for himself to figure out how to make the business be more successful. With a lot of long hours and some smart decision making ComputerWorks did exactly that, hitting nearly 80 thousand dollars in net revenue their first year at the newly acquired office space. This business growth allowed Rob to make more big business decisions including buying the building he was in and even some pertaining to his love for cars such as purchasing Executive Auto Care, a local detailing company.

Rob's channel began as a place to record some of the mishaps and cover information on his favorite type of rotary powered vehicles, the Mazda FD (or fourth generation) RX7. These cars are a staple of who Rob is and a major reason why he's become so popular in the automotive Youtube community. In just three years his channel reached over 100,000 subscribers. Through the help of a handful of viral videos like "What it's like owning a 20B RX7" he gained traction on the channel and built a following mixing in his business background whilst showing his mistakes and adventures of playing with his toys like the three-rotor RX7. One thing he has always done well is to try and educate as much as possible from business advice, general knowledge on how rotaries work, to explaining the ins and outs of cars.

Whilst visiting the shop Braden Carlson had given Rob a 3D model of a four-rotor motor that his brother Brock made as a gift. He was overjoyed with the fact that he could deconstruct the whole thing and be able to break down how the motors work in a very simple and hands on fashion. "For most people it's hard to realize what goes on in these compared to a piston engine. This is gonna be so useful in explaining the basics of how they work." describing the struggle for people who aren't familiar with the concept of rotaries as he's standing inside the engine bay of his absurdly brilliant creation. The four-rotor, All-wheel drive, big turbo RX7 which is the culmination of Rob's passion for the chassis and his wild imagination. Stemming from an idea in his head, just like starting ComputerWorks, Rob knew that he would find a way to make it a reality.

The four rotor car is essentially an entire tube frame chassis with an FD RX7 body dropped over it. For names sake it is called an RX7 however it won't handle, accelerate, or operate like the traditional car. With everything being designed from scratch, many hours were put into designing the chassis and the suspension as everything had to be custom built. Things such as billet knuckles, cantilever suspension, and figuring out how to route an entire front driveline system with the help of one schematic from "The Hoonicorn" suspension it houses an M3 differential and custom axles which together made the build process extremely lengthy. With the unveiling of the car at SEMA in 2016 the car has only just recently started to really "come together" to most of the public in the past 8 months. The project goal has been long since shot past as many setbacks and financial restrictions have made the car exactly what it is, a project. But this isn't the kind of project that you find in your buddies backyard rotting away, it is one that is poured over every minute till the very end as it is one truly bred out of love. Even if by the end everyone has lost interest (which would be astonishing) Rob will still finish the car as it is something that make him truly happy.

The car is powered by a custom built 4-rotor engine with the help of Abel Ibarra who is an NHRA hall of famer known for his record setting rotary drag cars. Just the core motor alone being well over the ten thousand dollar mark you can see that the build has no expense spared. As the car sits currently Rob has totaled it all together at a value of around $300k which is well beyond the initial figure but everything has been painstakingly engineered so that the car won't be some un-driveable monstrosity. With a motor expected to put out around 2,000 horsepower at the crank it takes a lot of development to make sure the car can put as much of that to the ground as possible and safely. Once the motor has been completely built the car will move forward very quickly as everything from there on are the "smaller" parts of the build. As it sits right now, the chassis is complete, and the suspension is finalized in the ways of design. The suspension will need track time for final adjustments and tuning but the car will be able to make it's first faze of high-speed events and drag races as it sits.

This type of project truly shows that Rob is not building this for anyone other than himself and to even further prove that rotaries are an incredible platform in the automotive world. This kind of content is the reason why he has grown to be such a large voice in the automotive Youtube community and why he continues to grow as such an honest content creator. Many years ago in an interview with SecretEntourage Rob explained "All of my followers are amazingly dedicated to what I do and then I’ll start upping the excitement level and doing all the crazy stuff that people do to get more YouTube viewers. Until then, it’s very high integrity type of channel." But to this day Rob's videos aren't for the sole purpose of more viewers, they're being made from the love and joy of content creation. Some of the videos he puts out can be seen as "clickbait" and "just for views" however they are mainly satire towards some of the other creators on the platform or for the purpose of experimenting and being silly. This kind of mindset towards content creation on the platform is one of the big reasons that his channel has grown so large, it is entirely genuine as what you see on camera is what you get in person. Just a very logical, idea driven guy with a love for rotaries, Lamborghinis, and causing disruption in the name of honest jest.