After seven extremely busy years, Vilebrequin’s Youtube adventure came to an end at the end of 2023 with a joint announcement made by Pierre and Sylvain, the two friends who then found themselves in the 2024 season of the television show Top Gear France which they co-presented. At that time, we knew that there were tensions between the two friends but they continued to put on a good face in public and wished each other the best for the future.
These courtesies were shattered last August when Pierre published a particularly heavy video of accusations against his former college, described as a manipulative crook. From the theft of the famous “1000Tipla” to contracts established by Sylvain obliging their former common collaborators to no longer frequent Pierre, his former best friend suddenly seemed like an evil character.
While Vilebrequin fans consoled Pierre in comments full of empathy, we then discovered a wave of insults at the bottom of Sylvain’s publications which even amplified when the latter published a short and sober text message on social networks to deny the accusations against him.
But Sylvain finally decided, on January 10, to respond in a long video published on his new YouTube channel as Pierre did last year. In this video he was trying to debunk all of Pierre’s accusations using material evidencebut also by making serious accusations himself against the person of his former partner. A few hours later, Pierre tried to respond again in a “live” recorded on the Twitch platform. Instead of tears and emotion during his shattering video with which this argument had broken out in public, he adopted a much colder tone without providing as many material elements as Sylvain with whom he claims to be on trial.
Everyone is talking about it and the haters are enjoying it
The media monitoring of this settling of scores is dizzying: after the more than four million views of Pierre’s first videothat of Sylvain has just exceeded the six million views on Youtube. All the media are talking about it and the wave of hatred splashing Sylvain’s accounts on social networks after Pierre’s first video, carried by Internet users then convinced of his sincerity, seems to have since turned against him. Is the merciless people’s tribunal ruling in Sylvain’s favor?
Whatever the truth in this story which would have deserved to remain in the private sphere, the degree of violence and hatred seen in the comments is a reminder of how toxic and harmful behavior can be on the internet. We also see other Youtubers trying to ride the buzz by giving their opinions on this affair which do not concern them in any way or even, in the small world of “automotive journalists”, some who giggle while disdaining all the work of Vilebrequin and of their two co-authors by reducing it to their burps and farts.
As if, all of a sudden, the millions of fans touched by all these videos – sometimes sprinkled with allusions and other slightly vulgar gestures – but above all amused and passionate by often remarkable sequences, where the authors could go as far as popularizing in detail notions as technical as the operation of a gearbox, or thrilling people behind the wheel of old legendary rally machines, took second place.
I’m not one of the Vilebrequin groupies and my heart even bled a little when I heard Sylvain say nasty things about Jeremy Clarkson in one of his recent publications. But if I were 10 years old in 2025, maybe it was by watching one of his videos that I would become a car enthusiast. This is why this story, and especially the depressing reaction of the modern Internet world, should not make us forget Vilebrequin’s tour de force: having succeeded, without benefiting from a colossal fortune allowing him to exhibit his dream cars or to ‘having to earn a living (and without ever giving up their total freedom of tone vis-à-vis brands at a time when collaborations with manufacturers are increasing and criticism is becoming increasingly rare), to entertain millions people, including those outside the sphere of automobile enthusiasts.
Related News :