This will be post #4,699 for me since starting CC in 2011. And it may be a while before post #4,700 goes up, as I’m retiring from CC. This has been a long time coming, and it finally arrived. And I’m very happy to know that I leave CC in very capable hands: Jim Klein, assisted by Jim Cavanaugh, Jason Shafer and the rest of the CC regulars (and other Contributors).
There’s not really a whole lot to say except that I’m burned out and need a serious break from blogging after twelve years. Possibly a permanent one. We’ll see. When I feel truly motivated to post something, I will. But I’ve learned it’s not good to feel pressure to keep up at something when the enthusiasm is missing. I don’t work that way, literally.
It’s time to spend more time reading books to recharge the mental batteries, and more outdoor activities. But most of all, just not to feel the pressure to keep posting.
And after 17,263 comments, I’m going to be cutting that back too. I’ll be popping in and out as the mood hits, but without any pressure.
I’m extremely gratified that CC has developed such a strong group of regular and occasional Contributors who seem eager to keep the site going. Jim needed a new challenge in his life, and I was more than happy to give it to him. 🙂 He has a lot of passion and energy, which is what it takes.
Thank you all for this great long ride. It’s been absolutely wonderful; I’ve learned more about old cars and automotive history than I ever dreamed possible. And met a lot of wonderful like-minded fellow travelers. CC has become an institution, with an incredible storehouse of information in its archives. I feel a very strong sense of stewardship about that, and any changes at CC will be made with that in mind. Preserving the site for the public good is the key priority.
I want to thank those that have donated to the site; if you chose to continue to do so, please know that it will be used to keep paying for the server and related support services as needed. And of course all of you contributors who have shared your wonderful personal stories and automotive knowledge. I determined from the start that CC would be a collaborative effort, and it quickly became one. And that’s what will allow it to continue. There’s many of you out there that have stories and knowledge to share; please step forward at this time when Jim and the others could really use a hand, or two. Sharing is caring, and if you care about CC, that’s the best way to show it.
I feel like a proud parent seeing their kid drive off alone for the first time. Safe travels!
Well, we’ve known this day was coming sooner than later. We came for the cars, and stayed for the people. It’s been really great reading your work, and getting to know you personally and even meeting you in person.
I hope our paths cross again, enjoy your retirement
And the three J’s, couldn’t happen to a better trio. Can we renegotiate our CC company car allowance. Perhaps a 50% increase?
Well said, and I concur!
Ditto
Good for you, Paul. You’ve built something wonderful and sustainable here. Congrats!
Paul-
I’m both saddened and pleased to read this announcement. Saddened because you are Curbside Classics, but pleasesd because man should not stagnate, but always pursue the next challenge.
You can also take pride in the community you’ve created and am confident CC will live on.
As a once regular, now occasional contributor, I’m very familiar with the pressure of publication, and completely understand your desire to step away.
I’ll leave it at that, except to say you will be missed!
Thank you Paul for creating this site and allowing people like me to find other like minded individuals who appreciate all the “humdrum” cars out there as well as the truly exceptional ones. CC has been a part of my daily life for about 6 years now. You have brought some happiness to each of those days for me by starting this site. It’s nice to know there’s a place where other people get just as excited as I do about a late 80’s B-body wagon or a 560 SEL!
Good luck to you Paul!
This is a great website–interesting, informative, and friendly.
Jim Klein and company have big shoes to fill, and I’m confident they will continue the CC tradition of excellence, and providing a great place for car lovers to visit and learn and inform.
All the best to you, and good luck to the new crew!
Paul.
I’ve only been around on this site since 2015, so i don’t know alot of the old school. It’s a good thing you’re retiring for yourself to do more things. We will miss you man.
The other gentleman at CC will be just as good. I’m confindent in that.
Best of luck to you man.
Being the office drone that I am, someone retiring means one thing — cake in the conference room. 🙂 Enjoy your retirement, Paul!
Nice but it should be Stephanie’s Black Forest cake – I’m still drooling over Paul’s description of that cake, not too sweet, European style. Can’t seem to find it made that way here anymore.
I hope this means the two of them will be traveling more and maybe we’ll get some reports back; those are always fun.
Cheers!
Thank you for this wonderful site, and best wishes for your retirement.
Enjoy your retirement, you’ve done well to create a worthwhile, civil website that will be sustained. I’ve learned a great deal from all the posting and comments here, can’t say that for every automotive history site available.
Take your ease, recharge, chime in when the spirit moves. You truly have done well!
Thank you. This site has been a refuge and my happy place since its beginning; actually, even before that when it was a regular feature in its previous incarnation at the other site.
Thanks for everything. Wish you peace and comfort in your retirement.
Enjoy your retirement Paul, you have done a magnificent job here and we are all grateful for it.
And thanks for every time you helped me polishing my writings and every time you backed me up in my views.
Fair Winds and Following Seas.
Thanks and good luck Paul.
Sorry to see you go Paul, but I can well understand the rationale. You’ve created a unique site, one with consistently intelligent and interesting content, and ultimately that comes from your vision and direction. I hope we see the occasional piece from you in the future – a Paul Niedermeyer byline always guarantees an interesting, and often fascinating, read.
Thanks and best wishes.
I’m one of those readers who was in touch with Paul after he left TTAC and encouraged him to create this site. Here’s what he ever so kindly wrote me in 2011:
“Did I ever tell you that it was your comment on my farewell piece at TTAC that crystallized my decision to start CC? I’ve been wrestling with this on and off for years. As long as I own this little fleet of rental houses, it will always be an ongoing issue, but I’m done trying to pretend I don’t enjoy this a hundred times more. Thanks for helping to push me over the edge on that! :)”
Ever since Paul wrote that, I’ve been gratified, but also felt a little guilty for having landed him in all this. I’m happy knowing how everything turned out.
I’m sure you’ll be around here, Paul, as well as having many many years to enjoy your travels, so maybe it’s a bit somber to talk about “legacy.” But ever since 2011, this has been the Internet’s “must read” web site, the one I send friends links to, and the only one I know of with a long-lasting, non-contentious commentariat. And considering the nation’s political climate, have we ever needed that!
If I hadn’t been a car fanatic before, I probably would have become one after reading CC, just because!
It’s hard to build something. It’s harder to build a community of people.
It’s much harder still to moderate such a community to ensure that the backbone is respect and tolerance for the others. The contributors and commenters that feature their ideas in CC live up to that standard. And obviously, Paul set and monitored the path from the beginning. As DougD says in the first comment, we came for the cars, and stayed for the people. People is what everything humane is about.
Paul, I’m very grateful to you. You have been most courteous to me when I reached for questions. I’ve seen you weather tense situations with comments that were not easy at all. And, most of all, we must be grateful to those who give us their time to build things we learnf from and enjoy.
So long Paul, and thanks for all the fish.
Congrats! Let us know when you trade that Scion for a LeSabre Limited! 🙂
Paul, in your blog you say “Thank you all for this great long ride. It’s been absolutely wonderful; I’ve learned more about old cars and automotive history than I ever dreamed possible. And met a lot of wonder like-minded fellow travelers.”
In fact, we fellow travellers should be saying exactly that to you. Thanks for your efforts, in your blogs and helping others with their’s, in keeping CC as a quality source with relevant and varied content.
Enjoy your recharge, and I look forward to occasional inputs. I hope we contributors can keep the CC flag flying high.
thank you Paul.
It’s been said here many times before, but what you have created here is nothing short of amazing Paul, and everyone else. I have been unable to post lately due to work and family obligations, but CC is the one website I visit daily since I first discovered it. I have the highest respect for this place and everyone who keeps it going.
So Farewell, Paul, safe travels, and come visit us anytime!
Jim, Jim and Jason – off you are to a great start but wait, you have started a long time ago, so – keep those engines firing!
Thank you Paul for starting this wonderful site, one of my daily ‘go-tos’. I hope that you’ll still come back an enjoy it as both a visitor and occasional contributor, though with the added satisfaction of being able to say ‘I started that’.
Thank you Paul and good luck!
Paul, thank you very much for all the time and hard work you’ve put in this unique place on the web and for pulling me aboard the CCCC (Curbside Classic Contributors Club). That was in the spring of 2014, it has truly given an extra and very pleasant dimension to visiting museums, shows, events and my strolls through the neighborhood.
All the best to you and your family, I certainly hope your name keeps popping up here in the future!
Now let’s all do our best to keep this show on the road!
Best car site on the web Paul, you built something truly great, enjoy your retirement and hope to see you back occasionally. Churr.
Congratulations on your retirement!
I have already mentioned this to Paul but it was been a real growing journey for me to be a part of CC. I think in the early days my contributions required heavy editing but over the years I feel I have become better at writing. That impacted not just my material on the site but throughout many aspects of life.
Plus the opportunity to be exposed to some many of the good people that this site brings together has been an experience all to its self.
As an occasional contributor (less often than I would like), thank you, Paul, for building this forum for all of us with similar interests to get together.
From its humble origins, I believe Curbside Classic is now the single largest repository of automotive knowledge on the Internet. Any automotive Google search will bear this out – CC is almost always near the top.
You should be very proud of what you’ve built, and confident that it is in good hands.
It was an absolute honor to meet you last year in August. The Baltimore CC Meet-Up was a personal highlight of the summer for me last year, and I will remember it fondly.
We knew you were scaling back, but it somehow still seemed so far off. I’m both happy and sad at the same time! Happy for you that you will have more time for new adventures and happy that you created this amazing place on the web where we all can gather. Sad because, well… we’ll seriously miss you man! Please don’t be a stranger.
It’s good that the site has been left in very good hands with Jim, JPC, and Jason.
Take care and safe travels to you and Stephanie!
Best of luck, Paul. What you’ve built here is something that I check on periodically throughout my workday to break from the monotony and CC has been a wealth of knowledge for the 5 years since I discovered the site. You chose well with the 3 J’s, they’re proven capable.
THANK YOU PAUL for all these years of CC. What a wonderful community it is, and it is due to YOUR tireless efforts. I couldn’t have said it better – who knew that our collective knowledge about even the most ridiculous of automotive heaps could be shared like this, and for so many years.
It’s another milestone, I suppose, just like when you left TTAC to start this glorious machine, and when Robert Farago left TTAC (and that site was never the same BTW); and all I can say is what a huge debt of gratitude we all feel towards you for all these years.
Also, much much gratitude towards all of the others who have been so heavily involved – and are now running the show. Thank you Jim Klein, JPC, Jason Shafer, and many more.
Cheers!
And ditto to that too. No need for me to add more than my humble and heartfelt thanks.
Thanks, Paul, for starting CC and for your stewardship all these years..and for recruiting a talented cadre who will carry on!
Still, you’ll be missed and it will be great to see an occasional by-line from you!
Enjoy “retirement” though I suspect your real estate interests will keep you busy, hopefully not infringing on your much-deserved time in your Ram conversion van.
Paul, as others have said, many thanks to you for creating something unique and lasting here – great articles about cars and other topics, and a great community, including the occasional gathering! I started commenting here about 4 years ago, and it is still the only forum that I participate in, though I view many others.
In business today, it is becoming rare to give any thought to succession planning. I am most grateful that you have cultivated knowledge and passion in Jim, JPC, Jason and others so that the site may continue. You are a class act and will be missed, but those you leave to carry on your legacy are class acts in their own right. Best wishes on the road ahead, whatever it might hold!
Makes sense Paul.
CC is a tremendous achievement you can be very proud of. Not least its community, which will surely continue to keep things both lively and refreshingly good spirited. To have kept CC flying on top of your primary work must have been terribly demanding at times.
Thanks very much indeed for all you’ve done on CC. Enjoy!
And not least, thanks to Jim Klein & Co.. for picking up the keys.
Thank you Paul, for a wonderful job. Good luck in whatever’s next.
Enjoy! Hopefully you’ll at least stop in and give us periodic updates on your travels in the Promaster and some of the things you see along the way, whether automotive or not.
Well just a short note from me. As a dedicated reader from the TTAC days, thank you for everything!
Thank You Paul for creating what I think is the best automotive site on the internet. I will miss reading your articles. Hopefully you drop in every once in a while.
Thank you so much Paul! I have been reading your stories since TTAC, and eagerly followed you here, but this is my first comment. I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the site; it has given me great joy to reminisce about my own past car experiences while reading about yours and other’s. You are the only website that is whitelisted from my adblocker, that’s how much I love this site. I wish you all the best, and look forward to the new team carrying on your legacy.
Thank you,
Joe
Welcome to the commenters! Hope you make a habit of it!
Thanks for making this. I can’t believe I’ve been checking in here for 8 years! This has been the friendliest place to discuss cars that I’ve ever encountered and it has entirely to do with your diligent and often thankless moderation.
I’ve found in the last five years that this is the sweet spot of modern social media – islands of passion, disconnected from the ads and oft-toxic brigading of the gigantic entities like Facebook and Twitter, with regular comment pool sizes hovering around a medium-sized high school or business. It’s how we were built to talk.
I’m happy that Paul is giving himself a well-deserved change of pace. Curbside Classic looks like a huge amount of work. I’m also saddened about his retirement because Paul is a “purple squirrel.” This is an HR term that describes someone with an utterly unique mix of experience and talent.
Curbside Classic has been a breath of fresh air at a time when the rest of the automotive history media has been rather staid. To me Paul’s most important decision was to treat readers as thinking adults. Sure, Curbside Classic has been an entertaining way to get my automotive nostalgia fix. However, it has also offered a steady stream of provocative historical analysis. That’s surprisingly rare among the big-name websites and Facebook pages, which seem more focused on “What do you see here?” or “If you had to pick one” click bait.
Paul has never been afraid to call a spade a spade, such as with the “Deadly Sins” series. I hope that this part of Curbside Classic will survive his retirement. I could contribute some articles.
It’s good to see that a solid crew is picking up where Paul left off. Thank you, Jim and friends, for keeping a really good thing going.
You will be missed Paul. Your website is perhaps the most valuable source of anecdotal and biographical information on such an incredibly wide and diverse collection of automobile and transportation related topics on the web. Virtually every automotive subject is covered here.
Hopefully, you will continue to add you insight to the latest automotive news, as your expertise and insight is invaluable to all topics on your site.
I will admit, I used to wonder the past several months if there was anyone in the CC universe that could fill your shoes. The immediate answer is ‘no’ of course. There is no one with your breadth of knowledge, and balanced perspective on so much automotive information. Plus, your excellent editing and writing skills. And patience. Honestly, I thought your pace of pumping out 4 to 5 fresh topics every day, rain or shine, was herculean. While still living a life away from this labour of love. As well as professionally moderating the often lively comments. Grooming a consistently excellent comment section, worthy of the great stories.
You made a great choice choosing Jim as the new managing boss, with JC, and Jason completing the trio. Each are very knowledgeable, and people friendly like you. I wish you, Jim, JC, and Jason much success, and enjoyment in future endeavours!
Thanks, Paul, and good luck to you, Jim, JP and Jason.
Paul, your body of work and the thoughtfulness by which you’ve built it has enriched me time and time again. Thank you. I’ve enjoyed your creativity and candor, and especially stories about buses, Austria, your dad, boys, and wife. Every time I see a vintage recreational vehicle, I think of you. And we’ve never even met.
The internet is at its best with Curbside Classic. Grace and peace.
I fear Jim might admire and focus on 124s as much as Paul.
Thank you for this great site! Know that your Promaster updates will be missed. I am glad to see the site being led on by the very capable hands mentioned above.
-Bertolini
It sure has been a pleasure reading this website over the years and it sure was nice meeting you in person Paul. I wish you happy travels on your future voyages. I am sure the three Js will do a fine job of running the website.
Thanks for the ride, Paul. I was a late comer to CC and was immediately hooked when I saw the banner: Every car has a story.
Paul, congrats on the decision and good luck in your future endeavors.
To the Three J’s (which sounds like a Saturday night in my college years), the best of luck with this. I know you guys got this.
How odd it seems to have such a personal creation moving on sans creator! But it is an inevitable day, and you have hinted a bit at exhaustion. That is more than understandable.
Such an idiosyncratic place here, one that sets a high bar, but equally includes those who get things a bit wrong (politely, until that itself gets exhausted). These features alone make it unique. It’s like a club of kindly experts where the fact of that expertise is not lorded over others who aren’t. There isn’t any other car site where the bores and the aggressive don’t spoil the place at some point. That is a great product of the (occasionally startling) personal openness with which you have written here. I believe too that that has inspired such fine work from so many. Personal yet highly communal, which is also unique.
And ofcourse, endlessly, entertainingly informative.
I suspect, with a touch of sadness, that you won’t be back. You have have described that about yourself before. Since that same singularity has powered you do to do this, and much else as well, this day had to arrive. It was part of the price of having the place at all.
You leave it all in very fine hands.
Thanks for the site, Paul. It is not overblown to say that it is a proper, meaningful contribution to the world, and a daily reminder that generous folk are everywhere, despite what too much of the internet might seem to tell us.
Maybe time to divest the rentals now, and put up with some bank paying a modest return (and attending to the plumbing and wiring of finance), and get in that van and go west. And east, and all the other ways too.
Enjoy.
Thank you, Paul, and I hope this gives you more time to travel and see our wonderful country. We still need to meet in Dayton and tour the Air Force Museum and see the Packard Museum. If you do come, I’m sure we can also find an old John Deere for you to drive, or maybe even a Farmall Super M.
My bit to add is to express my wonderment at how you have been able to keep this such a positive site, dedicated to old vehicles and the people who love them, at a time our country and its digital airways have become filled with such acrimony. I do not know what kind of “hall monitoring” you have had to do behind the scenes, but I have learned from watching you immediately and directly challenge the negative voices as they have emerged. I hope that we can keep this aspect of the site going, it has been such a haven for those of us who need this pleasant beginning to our days. Happy Trails!
I thought nothing could top Collectible Automobile in writing the histories of great and not so great cars – then I found Curbside Classic. Paul, your contribution to auto history has been epic – whether stories like the Chrysler B-bodies, the Deadly Sin series or many one off articles, I have learned tremendously by the writings of yourself, your fellow authors and the many posters. I wish you the best of luck in the next chapter of your life and hope you will continue to drop in now and then.
Thank you Paul for the the best automotive blog bar none. The breadth and quality of the articles at CC are truly second to none. Without your encouragement I wouldn’t have started writing at CC, so I will forever be thankful to you. Wishing you all the best in a well deserved retirement.
To the three J’s, I am looking forward to continue to contribute to CC and helping in any way I can. Although summer is a very busy time for me, I have a few articles in the works, that I hope to get up and running soon.