Meet Chris from Autosocial

Chris manski

If you’ve come across AutoSocial online, at a car meet or through one of my videos, you might have wondered who the person behind it actually is. I’m Chris Manski, the founder of AutoSocial, and at the end of the day I’m really just a car guy who wanted to build something useful for the automotive community.

Cars have been a massive part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve owned them, built them, modified them, worked on them and probably spent way too much time talking about them. Some of my best friendships, memories and experiences have come from the car scene, so in a lot of ways AutoSocial grew out of something that was already a huge part of my life.

My background is a bit mixed. I’m a qualified mechanic and Queensland safety certificate inspector, I spent six years in the Australian Army, and I’ve spent around 20 years working in business management and running different ventures. No matter what I’ve been doing though, cars have always been the constant.

I’ve always loved the social side of the car scene just as much as the cars themselves. Standing around at a meet talking to people, going for a drive with mates, helping someone with a problem on their car or meeting someone completely new because you both happen to be interested in the same thing. That side of the community is probably the biggest reason AutoSocial exists.

The problem I kept noticing was that there are thousands of enthusiasts looking for car meets, cruises, events and clubs, while organisers are putting huge amounts of effort into running those events and trying to get people to actually see them. Most of it is still scattered across Facebook groups, Instagram pages, stories, messages and social media algorithms. You can live ten minutes away from a great event and never even know it happened.

I thought there had to be a better way to connect those two sides of the community, so I started building AutoSocial. AutoSocial is an Australian automotive platform designed to help people discover car meets, cruises, events and groups happening around them, while also giving organisers another way to reach the people who genuinely want to attend.

For me though, AutoSocial was never meant to just be another app. The bigger goal is to help strengthen the Australian car community and make it easier for people to actually get involved in it. A lot of my content reflects that as well. I talk about mechanical topics, cars, events and builds, but I also like talking about the side of car culture that doesn’t always get discussed.

That might be supporting organisers, welcoming new people into the scene, encouraging experienced enthusiasts to help younger people, or simply remembering that sometimes the car is just the reason we all ended up in the same place.

I’m fortunate enough to have owned and experienced some pretty special cars over the years, and one people probably associate with me most is my Superlite SLC. It’s a serious car and something I’ve spent a lot of time developing, modifying and learning from, but I’ve never believed owning an expensive or fast car makes someone more important in the car community.

Some of the most interesting people I’ve met have owned completely standard cars. Some haven’t owned performance cars at all. What matters to me is the passion and the willingness to be part of the community.

That’s what I want AutoSocial to become. I want someone who has just bought their first interesting car to be able to open AutoSocial and find something happening near them. I want organisers and clubs to have a better way to reach people without relying completely on social media algorithms, and I want someone who might normally be nervous about turning up to a meet alone to be able to find a community where they actually feel welcome.

The Australian car scene is huge, but sometimes it can still feel surprisingly disconnected. Hopefully AutoSocial can play a small part in changing that.

Alongside building the platform, I’ll keep creating content around cars, mechanical topics, events and car culture. Sometimes that might be explaining how something works mechanically, and other times it might be talking about the friendships, memories and experiences that come from owning cars. I don’t really want my content to just be another highlight reel of expensive cars. I’d rather start conversations and hopefully add something positive to the community.

So if you found this page by searching for Chris from AutoSocial, Chris Manski, AutoSocial Australia or the AutoSocial app, welcome. And if you ever see me at a car event, come over and say hello.

Because despite all the technology, apps and social media involved in AutoSocial, the whole idea really comes back to something pretty simple: getting car people out from behind their screens and actually meeting each other.