This is OOTL

Out of the Lot is a show that discovers why cars really matter. Through stories, opinions, adventures, and reviews, Out of the Lot explores why cars are more than just machines. You may learn something, you may laugh, and hopefully, you'll be inspired to go Out of the Lot yourself.

Out of the Lot, a show that requires a host to sit still in front of a camera and stay on topic, was created by Scott Kindelberger, a man who can't sit still and thrives in a rabbit hole. That contrast, however, works perfectly for a show like Out of the Lot because it's a car show, and cars aren't meant to sit still.

With rabbit holes big enough for cars to drive through, Scott digs through facts, not as a journalist, but as an engineer. In the automotive world, facts are important, but if we all purchased a car because of facts, we would all own Toyota Corollas. So by applying a level of curiosity fueled by an obsession with film and storytelling, he uncovers the stories. Stories that cars express through the way they look, how they are made, or even how they have lived. With every design, every drive, and every race, there is a story to be told, and that story is revealed when you go Out of the Lot.

The name

The name "Out of the Lot" was breathed into existence by Scott's wonderful mother. While Scott's household was driving to an undisclosed location (because Scott can't remember where they were driving, and it doesn't really matter), he brought up that he didn't like the name "Scott's Thoughts (About Cars)" for his brand. Not only was "Scott's Thoughts" taken by another player in the YouTube battlefield, adding the "(About Cars)" was like winning a game of Uno with a wildcard… cheap. This thought was ever so circulating Scott's neuro-network during his 5-month hiatus, and he needed another opinion.

Everyone pitched in. Some names were good, some were less good, but eventually, as they always do, Scott's mom saved the day. Scott knew it was right as soon as it was spoken. "Out of the Lot with Scott". The "with Scott" was a prerequisite that Scott wanted his show name to contain, and for part of the name to rhyme with Scott. Eventually, after thoughtful consideration, and because he got annoyed typing the full thing out all the time, he decided "Out of the Lot" was good enough.

The Influence

Although Out of the Lot was born 23 years into Scott's life, it has been incubating since he was a boy. Scott has always loved vehicles, which eventually led him to discover, probably before anyone else, Top Gear in 2015. Top Gear taught Scott how to look at cars as more than just cars and that it's possible to have a career doing very little work and just driving cool cars. Scott wanted to do that because who wouldn't.

Fortunately, however, Scott didn't realize this fully until after deciding to go to college for engineering, which was a great financial choice as engineering makes more money starting out than, say, journalism or broadcasting. Learning engineering also gave Scott an interesting viewpoint of the world that helps with automotive presenting. However, his coursework did leave out important skills such as speaking in front of a camera and commentary writing.

The Imagination

Storytelling was also left out in most thermodynamics and calculus classes. That wasn't an issue for Scott though because he learned storytelling from a very young age, even without knowing it. Like all kids, Scott had a wild imagination. He loved filling other people's shoes, playing with action figures and becoming the characters, or creating complex storylines with Lego sets. There was always an adventure to be had, a baddie to stop or a treasure to find. This was the birthplace of Scott's love for story.

That supercomputer of Scott's imagination never shut down. It thrived when things got boring (school…), creating worlds in his mind where things could happen however he envisioned. Everything was possible from scaling skyscrapers with the powers of Spiderman, flying a Spitfire in a dogfight in 1940, or driving a Bugatti Veyron on the Ehra-Lessien test track. It was always more fun than listening to his teachers.

The Film Studying

His Minecraft creative world of imagination is also a big reason why he likes movies so much. Being able to visually see a world that someone else has created through a screen is a special gift. Scott would imagine himself as the characters, going through their story, and feeling what they feel. This enjoyment eventually became what some may call an obsession. On February 27, 2024, Scott started tracking all the movies he watched, ranking them in order from best to worst, and writing reviews for them. By the end of 2024, he had watched 205 movies. Thankfully, the endless movie marathon slowed down, but not in time for Scott to ignore the inclination to take up a Film Studies minor.

That film studies minor was the best decision Scott made in his college career, and also one of the worst. At the end of his junior year, Scott noticed his senior year was looking light on classes with the last semester not even meeting the minimum required class credits. With ambition, only to discover later that it was naivety, Scott filled his last two semesters with requirements to get his film studies minor, the only mechanical engineering student at Washington State University ever to do so (probably…).

It was a great joy, but it meant his last two semesters, which could have been easy, became very time-absorbing. This took a toll on his other extracurricular activities (and classes), not enough though for him to not join the WSU film and theater club to learn acting, writing, and producing, all of which he did in some films that were released on YouTube unfortunately. But thanks to all these film-related classes and activities, Scott was enjoying his final year, especially his last semester, but not at first.

The Racing Documentary

In his last semester, Scott was taking a class called Advanced Digital Cinema. He was excited to finally make some proper films. He had many ideas for plots and characters and was ready to apply all he knew. However, as he would learn on the first day of class, none of those tricks would come out of Scott's hat. It was a documentary class. Scott was crushed because all he wanted to do was make fictional movies, not boring documentaries about topics only intellectual people care about.

Scott then realized a show he used to watch, one that wasn't for the intellectuals, was "considered" a documentary, a factual program. In fact, it won the National Television Award for the most popular factual entertainment program. That of course was Top Gear. This was revolutionary because the class team already decided to make their documentary on Wazzu Racing, the Formula SAE team of which Scott was president. This was primarily because Scott had contacts on the team for interviews and already knew all about the team, so it would be an easy A.

With a car topic chosen, a script written, and interviews scheduled, Scott and his team worked away to make something they were proud of. Scott asked to be the presenter and writer, and the other members filled in as cameraman and editor. Not everything went as Scott's script envisioned, but the final product was indeed something to be proud of. However, not everyone thought so. The teacher thought there was too much humor and non-documentary-related bits, so he gave the team a B. Yes, Scott was a little annoyed, but whatever, he was happy with the result, and it was his last project of college. He had finally graduated.

The Internship

Scott had been waiting for this moment since August 16, 2021, the first day he started college. He got pretty bored of engineering by his second year, and he just wanted to start a job and make some cash. Right after he left his college town, he started to read a book called "Talk Like Ted". This book was good, but not good enough to land Scott a job. Well, not a full-time job at least, because he would be going back to his old intern position from last year. The book did help Scott with something which was an idea for his intern presentation.

As an intern, with the company Scott was interning at, all interns have to present an intern presentation about their internship. Scott had done this the previous summer, as he was an intern with the same team. He accepted the intern position, hoping it would turn into a full-time offer. The fact that this company asked Scott to come back as an intern was a sign that his first intern presentation was a success. So, this time around, Scott knew he had to step it up.

The Presentation

At this point, you may be wondering, "How in the world does this relate to how 'Out of the Lot' actually started"? Well, in the book that was previously mentioned, Scott learned how to present, and one of the tips was to "share a story". Scott liked doing that, so that's what he decided to do for his intern presentation. He read this book at the start of May 2025, and before starting his internship, he had already written the beginning and end of his presentation. The middle would all be filled in with the work he did, so he had everything planned out. He was extremely excited for this presentation.

As his internship went on, and he started to make the presentation and fully flesh out the script, Scott started to realize something. He was at a professional company that was requiring him to do a professional presentation, so that they would give him a professional job offer to join full-time. The presentation that Scott was making wasn't necessarily unprofessional, but it had background-removed images of himself throughout the whole presentation with funny faces and he would be presenting in the third person, sort of like how he is writing this ootl-biography (see what I di--, I mean, Scott did there).

The Advice

With this thought of potentially overstepping his creative bounds, Scott almost defenestrated the idea. Thankfully, he had more confidence than sense and decided to at least present the final product to his team first and see how they would react. It sort of went as Scott expected…. Everyone loved it! Sort of… There were a lot of suggestions to make it better, which was great, and there were some ideas that it was too much and that Scott said Scott too many times (69 times throughout the six-minute presentation to be exact).

However, there was one suggestion that stuck with him the most. Afterward, someone who could only be considered as a mentor to Scott pulled Scott aside to speak with him. Scott presented it to this mentor before he presented to the full team, just to make sure he wouldn't ruin his chances of getting a return call, so this was the mentor's second time seeing it. This mentor thought it was pretty good the first time but was visibly concerned about how different it was compared to the 'normal' intern presentation. However, when he pulled Scott aside after seeing it again with the whole team, he said, and Scott quotes him "Don't change a thing". That was all Scott needed to hear. Scott wanted to get people to remember him and saying his own name 69 times was the best way to do that.

The Big Day

Scott presented his presentation in front of the company, including the assistant general manager and general manager. He was so nervous that his legs started to shake while he was up at the podium but thankfully, they were covered by the podium. The upper half of his body was blasting off in a TED Talk rocket ship, and he in fact, landed on the moon of applause safely. Everyone seemed to be astonished by a presentation that was by far the most different and extravagant. One manager told Scott's boss's boss that it was the best presentation ever. Yeah, that went straight to Scott's head…

The aftermath of the presentation wasn't what Scott thought it would be. There were no fireworks, no gold plaques, no "AND HERE'S YOUR BRAND-NEW CAR!". There wasn't even a return offer. But what Scott did have was a sense of direction. He loved the process of writing the script for his presentation, producing it to what he first saw in his mind months before, and executing it in front of people who could fire him on the spot. So, what did Scott do with this information? He took an acting class…?

The Aftermath

Yeah… not something he was expecting either, it just happened. He did really enjoy it, and it did help him with presenting, and at the time, he did want to do acting stuff. This also led him to audition at a local theater for a play. He did get a couple of roles in that play, nothing in a leading role, but his mother liked it, and that's all that really matters. The experience also showed Scott that he doesn't want to do plays…

It was November 2025 at this time. Scott didn't have a full-time job yet, even after 6 months of being graduated, mostly because he was too lazy to look for one, and was really banking on his current company to supply him with one. In all honesty though, Scott was getting nervous. He had a wife, was living with his parents, making $25 an hour in one of the most expensive states. When Scott started college going into engineering, he thought he'd be making triple figures right out the door. That was not so, and things were looking bleak since his company wasn't actually able to hire him either. So, Scott did what any sane, normal thinking person would do. He started a YouTube channel.

The Beginning

He knew it was coming. He had wanted to start making short films ever since he made that first video back in 2022 for his English 402 class. This video was an assignment to present information to a pretend board of directors using PowerPoint. Scott decided to turn it into a skit, pretending to be sitting in a board room talking with Scuderia Ferrari executives (without PowerPoint) about how bad the F1 team was doing. He wrote the script, adding jokes, being super dramatic, and as wifty as possible. The whole process had Scott smiling and laughing at his own jokes and genius ways of making it fun. This one assignment was the tipping point in Scott's life that showed him that while engineering was critical to his growth and career, his passion lay somewhere else. There was something that he enjoyed much more (and that was a lot less work).

Although this quarter-life crisis occurred in 2022, it wasn't until 2025 when Scott officially started his channel. On November 15, 2025, Scott's parents were out of town, and he had the house all to himself for filming. He had this plan to make a trailer for his new show that he wanted to call "Scott's Thoughts". Again, he had been planning the name for over a year, and the idea for the trailer even longer. He recorded everything that day and started to work his editing magic. When Scott says magic, he really means, splashing things into a cauldron and hoping it comes out as something that won't turn him into a giant frog. Thankfully, Scott took an editing class in middle school, which he couldn't remember a thing from.

The First Show

Scott wanted to do everything himself through this process, including making the music. It wasn't the first time Scott had made music, but this time felt different because he would be posting it for the world to see. That led him to stay up until the eye-sagging hour of 3 a.m. so that the trailer could go live at 10 or 11 a.m. (Scott can't remember when). It did in fact go live, but the world did not see it, believe it or not (and thankfully so because it was horrendous). But that didn't matter to Scott because he had started and finished something no one required him to do. That was a win.

Scott encountered a couple of problems pretty early on. Although Scott had a lot of thoughts, especially about cars, he didn't know which ones to share. Was he supposed to only talk about the news? Could he talk about past cars even though they came out before he was born? Scott also found that writing scripts for these episodes was really time-consuming, and he would have much rather been watching YouTube shorts or Friends.

The Sabbatical

Well, thankfully (not thankfully), when the holiday season came around in 2025, Scott's brother came back home and commandeered his pre-commandeered room where Scott had set up his studio. This left Scott without a place to make videos, so he decided to pause long-form videos until after the holidays and instead make short-form videos. Scott hated this. These short-form videos were all terrible. They were made sitting in his closet, and he would just talk on topics that might get the most views, like what car Santa's elves would drive. For some reason, that is still the most viewed video on Scott's YouTube channel as of writing this.

Eventually the holidays came to an end and Scott got his studio back. He was supposed to make a short to go out that night, but Scott didn't really want to make any videos. He wanted to, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He felt distracted, preoccupied with… nothing. Scott figuratively looked in the mirror and said he had an issue. YouTube Shorts, and other social media platforms were taking his attention away from where it should have been. It made it harder to sit down and write or even decide what to write. Something had to change.

The Change

On January 6, 2026, Scott decided to go on a sabbatical, I guess you could call it. Not because he wanted to quit, but because he needed to build a foundation for his show that could last. Scott uninstalled all of his social media apps (except LinkedIn because he had a year streak on the daily puzzles and didn't want to give that up) and set up some daily habits that were meant to help him build skills.

One of these habits was writing. Every day for 20 minutes, Scott would write. He would write about his feelings, write about a topic that interests him, or even write poetry. The hidden poem on this website is one of those that was written during a 20-minute writing rep. He was pretty fast at it too. Depending on the topic, Scott would spit out 1,000+ words in 20 minutes. This writing was meant to turn into script writing when the time came. Scott is happy to report that Scott has not missed a day of writing… ever… since January 7, 2026. Except one, August 22nd, 2026, so Scott guesses there was one day Scott missed.

The Return

Throughout the whole hiatus, Scott was planning his return. He would make his first episode back on the story of his first car (which felt fitting) and he would have a new, more professional name. However, Scott didn't exactly know when he would come back. He wasn't sure if he would feel he was ready, or if a little elf would bring him an envelope saying today was the day. So, he waited. (Not for the little elf, but to feel ready).

Scott doesn't remember what brought him to make the first video back. There was no flash of light from heaven on the road to Damascus, no soldier standing in the opposite trench waving a white flag, and no little elf. He just decided… okay, let's do it. It was probably more planned out than that because he purchased the 'necessary and reasonable' gear ahead of time, but Scott doesn't even think he "felt ready". It just happened.

Obviously, the episode about the Civic had been planned for months. Scott was looking back on it and if he had gotten rid of the Civic when it broke down, this "first episode back" probably would never have happened. That video went live on May 3, 2026. Scott loved the outcome and thought it was a work of art. He used this new wave of enthusiasm to proceed to not make any videos for the next two weeks.

The Studio

He had a good reason though because his brother had returned to commandeer his commandeered space. It was all happening again. Scott would have to go back into the closet. But Scott is smarter than that (or so he thinks). So, he asked his dad if he could commandeer some of his space. Not his room, that would probably be weird, but his garage. His father, although reluctant as he should have been, let Scott commandeer the garage (a corner of it).

Those two weeks between the first episode and second episode were taken up making the new studio. Once it was finished, Scott had a more permanent, reliable spot to talk in front of a camera all alone. The next episode came out, following an easy 'one-episode-a-week schedule', but Scott realized he had more time on his hands than he wanted, and he wasn't working hard enough. He decided to upload three long-form videos a week and four Shorts. That shouldn't be too bad, right?

The Start

The studio progressively changed over the course of the next eight episodes, but it eventually got to a spot that Scott was happy with. Out of the Lot was created. It felt more professional this time. He started to color grade his videos. He was writing better scripts. Things were going well. This is where you would expect a 'but' or a 'however'.

But… there isn't one. Not yet at least. Scott is still grinding away at the time Scott is writing this (still not sure why he is writing this memoir thing in third person). Scott has big aspirations and goals for where he wants his life to go, and Out of the Lot is just the start of that. Some days are harder than others and he probably doesn't spend enough time with his wife, but he's enjoying what he is doing. Maybe one day it'll be a full-time gig… on TV…

Anyway, that is it for now. As always, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you soon, Goodbye.

Money.