• by Tanya Gazdik , December 10, 2019

Hagerty is partnering with MotorTrend Group to offer members new benefits.

The deal includes distributing MotorTrend automotive entertainment programming to members of Hagerty Drivers Club, the car lover’s club offering car insurance. 

MotorTrend Studios will also develop a Hagerty-branded video series slated for the second quarter of 2020. 

The partnership is not affected by an announcement earlier this week that enthusiast publisher TEN Publishing will shutter the print editions of 19 of its 22 auto-focused titles by 2020. MotorTrend is one of three of TEN’s automotive publications that will continue to print. Since TEN Publishing and MotorTrend Group are separate companies, the Hagerty deal is not affected.

With this new partnership, Hagerty customers will automatically receive a year’s subscription to the MotorTrend app.

Hagerty created a 40-second video promoting the partnership. 

Category-specific services such as the MotorTrend app cater to car enthusiasts, and offer a deep library of enthusiast content (nearly 8,000 episodes of automotive series and specials) that Netflix and Hulu are unable to provide, according to MotorTrend Group. 

The partnership is the product of months of brainstorming on both sides, and is only in phase one, says Alex Wellen, president-general manager of MotorTrend Group.

“Technically, MotorTrend may have come to Hagerty with the initial kernel of this strategic partnership,” Wellen tells Marketing Daily.

“But the reality is that Hagerty CEO McKeel Hagerty has been the driving force from the moment I arrived at MotorTrend just over a year ago, inviting us to signature Hagerty events, advertising on Discovery and MotorTrend TV and digital properties, and collaborating with MotorTrend at auto auctions and panels. McKeel and I instantly felt there was so much that only our two companies could do together.” 

The MotorTrend app is available across iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices, as well as media players and streaming devices, and on the web.

Hagerty Drivers Club is made up of nearly 600,000 members, said Doug Clark, publisher and vice president of development for Hagerty.

“With this partnership, we see the opportunity to increase our value proposition by giving them access -- on us and for a limited time -- to the No. 1 automotive streaming video service out there,” Clark tells Marketing Daily. “MotorTrend, in turn, will benefit from a lot of new eyes on their engaging and wide-ranging content.”