Fundraiser for Sussex YouTuber passes £5k after blaze destroys car workshop roof

Harry Dewhurst, 32, runs the channel Cash Machine Cars out of a Crowborough garage and aims to save vehicles that are ‘pretty unsalvageable’.

But he told this newspaper that a fire broke out at his workshop on Wednesday, September 23, during his latest project as he was welding parts of a 1979 Mk3 Ford Capri.

Harry, who lives in Uckfield, said: “I was actually underneath the car when it happened. I was in quite a small pit that you work on the car in.”

He explained that he had been welding the car for about four weeks and had ‘literally just put the last patch on’.

He said: “I put my ear muffs on and started grinding back all the welds and I think the thing must have been burning already. So I was doing that for about 20 minutes while the thing was probably burning. But because I had the ear muffs on I didn’t notice. When I took them off all I could hear was a massive bonfire right above me.”

Harry said he had been very cautious not to catch anything on fire during his welding process, but he now thinks the fire might have been started by his hoodie being on top of the car. He said: “Either it fell in or something fell in.”

But he is puzzled by the incident, saying: “There was nothing there to burn so I don’t know what could have gone in there...but my hoodie was nowhere to be seen.”

He said: “I think it was just really bad luck.”

Harry said that after the fire broke out the dashboard then caught fire, which he said is made from ‘very flammable’ old plastics from the 1970s. He said he went into a ‘mad panic’ to put the fire out and tried two fire extinguishers that had no pressure in them. By the time he found one that did the fire was ‘absolutely roaring’. He added: “All the windows were just exploding all over the place.”

Harry suffered smoke inhalation during the incident and had a sore chest for days afterwards. He said: “I was standing over it and breathing in all this smoke and when I came out I had really bad chest pains and was unable to catch a breath. It made me feel really, really sick. The fire brigade came and listened to my chest and it was just really wheezing, so they took me to hospital.”

He said he was able to leave hospital that night and has now recovered but, a week later, he said he still gets a bit short of breath.

After the fire, Harry decided to put an online fundraiser up at www.gofundme.com/f/cash-machine-cars-workshop-roof to try to cover the cost of repairing his roof. His message on the page said: “The last thing I want to do is for people to pay for my stupidity but if anyone would like to help with putting a new roof on my workshop after my huge mistake I would appreciate it more than anything in the world.”

He said: “I need a new roof really. I just put brand new lights in and they all melted.”

Harry also documented the aftermath of the fire in his latest YouTube video, which he titled ‘I am an Idiot!...Ford Capri pt3’. The video gained more than 210,000 views in just two days.

Harry said: “I’ve had 2,000 comments. Everyone’s being really nice and supportive.”

He also said he is ‘blown away’ by the £5,900 that has been donated to his GoFundMe so far and has thanked everyone for their generosity. He also thanked the people at the office behind his workshop who called the fire service, as well as the firefighters for arriving at the scene so quickly.

Harry, who used to work in printing, said he started his YouTube channel roughly six years ago but has only been doing it full-time for about a year. He said he has always had an interest in classic cars, adding: “The whole ethos of the channel is ‘these cars are so neglected, let’s try and get them back on the road’.”

Harry said he has been restoring classic cars for the past ten years and then decided to start putting it on YouTube. His videos frequently get hundreds of thousands of views. People can watch Harry’s YouTube videos at www.youtube.com/@cashmachinecars/videos.