THE INFLUENCER ALEX HIRSCHI
FOR ALEX HIRSCHI, who grew up in a small town in rural Australia, taking the road less traveled was usually the only option, and so she realized early on that the automobile was her connection to the larger world. “Whenever we had to go anywhere, it was always a car ride for hours, even to the nearest city,” says Hirschi, who admits that her interest was initially “less about a passion for cars than a passion for driving.”
It wasn't until hosting a local radio show led her to cover car launches, and Bentley loaned her a press vehicle for a couple of days, that she developed an obsession—one she shared with her husband, Nik. “The two of us went to every car event we could find on the weekends, apart from our full-time jobs,” Hirschi says. They'd film and post snippets that, as she puts it, “tapped into the layman's perspective on cool cars.” The result: 50,000 Instagram followers within a year.
Since just 2017, her social-media persona, Supercar Blondie, has garnered 110 million followers and currently attracts about 2 billion views per month to the reviews, car reveals, and profiles produced under the auspices of the Dubai-based couple's 65-employee SB Media Group. Now courted by the world's most exclusive automakers as a potential collaborator, Hirschi parlayed her global reach and rarefied collector connections this past April, when she launched the online-auction platform SBX Cars. While internet-bidding sites are ubiquitous—and known for offering vehicles of varying quality—Hirschi's version is international in scope and focuses solely on the most coveted supercars, hypercars, and classics for an elite community of buyers and sellers.
While it's too early to tell how this latest venture will fare, Hirschi's success and influence undeniably include a trickier metric to gauge: her impact on younger generations of women inspired to make their own mark on a historically male-dominated industry. Viju Mathew
THE BUILDER MARK GRATTAN
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