YouTube star from N.J. apologizes for driving Lamborghini nearly 100 mph on 35 mph road

A New Jersey tech reviewer with nearly 20 million subscribers on YouTube has apologized after allegedly driving a sports car nearly 100 mph on a local road.
Marques Brownlee — known as MKBHD on YouTube and one of the site’s biggest stars — posted a video Monday that included a five-second clip showing a Lamborghini barreling down a suburban road.
The video blurred the speed on the Lamborghini’s main speedometer. But, a second speedometer on the sports car’s center console could be seen climbing to 96 mph as the vehicle accelerated.
A road sign that appeared in the corner of the screen showed the speed limit on the unnamed road as 35 mph. Another sign on the tree-lined road seen in the video warned drivers to slow down for children.
The speeding clip was cut from the nine-minute video, which was supposed to focus on touting new video gear, shortly after fans began calling Brownlee out online for appearing to break the law.
“Cut out the unnecessary driving clip that obviously added nothing to the video,” Brownlee wrote in a pinned comment on the YouTube video, explaining why the video was edited to remove the shot inside the speeding car.
Brownlee quickly followed that up with a lengthier statement on X, calling his behavior “pretty stupid,” as well as “inexcusable and dangerous.”
He was aware that deleting the clip looked like he was trying to hide the incident, “but I think it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
“All I can do apologize and promise never to do anything close to that stupid again,“ Brownlee said. ”That’s a terrible example to set and I’m sorry for it.”
Brownlee declined a request to comment by NJ Advance Media, saying his statement on X would be his only comment.
It is unclear in the video if Brownlee was driving the sports car in New Jersey or out of state. He lives in Closter in Bergen County and produces much of his content out of a studio in Kearny in Hudson County, according to public records and business records.
Police officials in both towns told NJ Advance Media that they had no information Wednesday about the alleged speeding incident.
Kearny Police Chief Scott Macfie said he has been swamped with demands for Brownlee’s arrest in the days after the speeding video was posted.
“They’re upset with me for not doing anything about it,” he said of the callers, “but it didn’t happen here.”
With the exact location of the road unclear and Brownlee’s face obscured in the video, Macfie said it could be difficult for law enforcement officers anywhere to follow up on the case. His department had never received any complaints to do with the YouTuber or his South Kearny studio space prior to this week, the chief said.
Brownlee, 30, began posting gadget reviews to YouTube as a Maplewood high schooler in 2008. Under his name MKBHD — which stands for Marques K. Brownlee and “HD” for high definition — he is one of the platform’s biggest tech YouTubers with more than 4.69 billion total video views across all of his channels.
He graduated from the business school at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken in 2015. He was invited back last May to accept an honorary doctorate and address graduates at this year’s commencement.
“This is the perfect time to take a minute and ask yourself those big questions. Like, who am I? What do I really want to do? What do I care about? How do I want to make an impact?” Brownlee told the graduates.
He has faced controversy in recent months for posting videos for sponsored products, instead of independent reviews, including the one featuring the alleged speeding clip.
He was also criticized recently for launching an app offering online wallpaper for computers and cell phones with a subscription fee of $49.99 per year. He later acknowledged that he’d “failed on the price front” and made adjustments to the app.
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AJ McDougall may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @oldmcdougall.