Inside the race car, Jordan Taylor is a multi-time champion.
He earned a share of the last Grand-Am Daytona Prototype title in 2013 for his father’s team, Wayne Taylor Racing. Four years later, he and his co-driver claimed the first DPi class crown for his family’s team in a Cadillac, and in 2020 and 2021 he shared the final two GTLM class championships for Corvette Racing.
Taylor has also raced in the NASCAR Cup Series at Circuit of The Americas, the NASCAR Xfinity Series at Portland Int’l Raceway and in a CARS Tour Pro Late Model event at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway.
Outside of the race car, Taylor is a modern-day branding machine. The 32-year-old shoots and edits his own social media videos, he’s created a Jeff Gordon apparel-wearing alter-ego (that actually is featured on his Wikipedia page) and has one of the most engaging social media presences in modern motorsports.
Taylor credits this social media push with the decision to grow a mullet in 2013-’14. At that time, Taylor was a young, up-and-coming driver as he joined his father’s team for his first full season of Daytona Prototype racing. Still coming into his own, Taylor saw a Twitter follower challenge that helped bring him out of his shell.
Then-teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay turned that challenge into a dare, saying the Florida native wouldn’t grow a mullet even if he hit the follower goal, which Taylor did not.
“The whole phase of the mullet really kind of took me out of my shell and made me realize like, it’s all right to kind of be myself and show my personality and let people see the different side of me that’s not the race car driver,” Taylor explained.
While the mullet gave the world a window into Taylor’s creative talents, it also provided an unexpected amount of frustration when Taylor cut off it off, much to the chagrin of the CEO at sponsor Konica Minolta.
The videos give fans and others in the motorsports industry a chance to see Taylor when he’s at his creative best. His ideas come mostly spur of the moment, are written down, and when free time is available, those ideas get implemented into social media content.
The videos are shot, edited, produced and posted by Taylor himself. Other than someone filming some footage for Taylor at the track a couple of times, everything gets put together by Taylor using editing applications on his phone.
“I’ve found a way to do it as cheap as possible and I think people enjoy that,” Taylor said. “It’s not professionally done, it’s just done on my own time. Some of the edits are a bit rough, but I think that kind of shows that I’m doing it myself and it’s just for fun. So it’s not like we’re putting a big budget into production and writers and all sorts of things.”
Sometimes ideas and videos get sent to colleagues in order to gauge their reactions. If the feedback is positive, that video sees the light of day. Otherwise, troubleshooting takes place until it either works or the idea is scrapped.
Taylor realizes that all eyes are on his content. Driving for Corvette Racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, he knows that General Motors President Mark Reuss and U.S. Vice President of Performance Vehicles and Motorsport Jim Campbell will see what is posted on social media.
“I know the boundaries,” Taylor said. “I know where to kind of tread carefully. I mean, there are definitely ideas I’ve had that I would’ve wanted to do, but I know that it wouldn’t come across that well politically.”
In years gone by, Taylor would snap a photo of an unsuspecting traveler on an airplane and write a mini life story about that person. Now, Taylor believes that sort of content is out of bounds.