I suppose this may seem a silly question depending upon the extent to which you consider Curbside Classic to be a “car forum”. Actually, my question is about a different type of online beast than this site. What I am asking about is closer to what back in the dark ages used to be called a “BBS” or bulletin board system. Rather than primarily featuring photos and/or essays like CC, these more primal message-based systems are designed mostly for hosting asynchronous “conversations” around topics authorized by the system managers. This is what I mean when I say “Forums”.
Since forums can be used for a variety of different purposes ranging from purely factual to entirely social. I’m curious what you’ve found them useful for, or not useful for. Do you have any forum pet peeves? Have you had any particularly remarkable forum experiences? Or perhaps you have reasons for avoiding them altogether. Here’s an opportunity to discuss something that I expect plays a not-insignificant role in many CC readers’ online lives.
My own forum story relates to the changing relationship I have had with these things over the past 20 years or so.
I first discovered automotive forums in the form of a site called North American Motoring (NAM) in 2002. I don’t recall exactly how long I lurked on that site before officially joining on July 15, 2002 (according to my user profile page). Lurker or member, NAM absorbed a lot of my time during the early years of my new MINI ownership. It was there that I developed a sense of basic forum etiquette and protocol. Not that this was technically my first involvement with similar online environments. I was an avid user of dial-up CompuServe in the 1980s.
Some of you will know that this is an “acoustic coupler” modem. One just like this sat on my home desk, next to a VT-100 terminal, in 1984. Most evenings it was connected to CompuServe.
In fact, in its original incarnation CompuServe was really little more than an online home for a series of interconnected message forums. CompuServe itself was by no means the first online message board system – those had been developing among techie communities over the course of the 1970s. But what CompuServe did in the 1980s was to proof of concept that a growing segment of the general public could be interested in the sweet allure of (seemingly) anonymous conversation with strangers, electronic messaging (email), and of course using these technologies for buying/selling/trading stuff.
As long as we’re on a history of technology jag here, it should be noted that using electronic communications technology to buy/sell/trade stuff was in itself an established thing even before computer-based message boards. Surely some of you recall radio swap meets/flea markets. These still exist. In fact, selling vehicles seems to be what we would now call “evergreen content” on these programs. If you’re unfamiliar with the genre, consult your AM radio (huh??) dial. Apparently some are rebroadcast online and via Spotify.
Just amazing. All of the Vermonters you will ever want to hear (I think. But maybe not. I do love Vermont.) talking about the cars, trucks, tires, snowmobiles, pygmy dwarf goats, spare room rentals for single people, etc. that they have for sale. It’s a podcast too. Talk about history of technology mashups.
With the migration of 1980s message boards onto the World Wide Web came access to a larger segment of the public. Thank you Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and best of luck trying to put that genie back in the bottle. We’re counting on you.
Significantly the Web provided users the ability to link outside of the actual forum. This expanded available content as well as the user base. In retrospect, web-based forums were the beginning of what ultimately came to be social media. This brings us current to what historians of technology refer to as Web 2.0.
My point in all of this, winding up with social media, is to explain that while I may have initially been drawn to NAM, a car forum, for informational content my participation quickly morphed into a more socially-centered experience. I was enthralled with NAM and the clubby fun “lifestyle” that seemed to characterize MINI ownership in those early years of this century. Somehow, the fact that this experience was online (or as we now might say “virtual”) was particularly appealing to a person who is not naturally gregarious and does not participate particularly well in face-to-face, non-business, conversation.
Basically, I’m really not a lot of fun at parties.
Gen Zers – with their orientation toward virtual versus face-to-face activities – are probably pretty in line with where I’m at. To the extent that I might be better at parties now than I was 30 years ago could relate to getting a lot of practice socializing, online. Maybe I’m ahead of my time.
Just as online forums in fact recreated something that had been tried before via older technologies, the value of building a social community around marque ownership had of course also preexisted. A notable example of this was what Saturn attempted in the just-prior-to-the-Web era of the early 1990s. The Saturn Homecoming was basically like a car forum, except in a single weekend, with live musical performances by the likes of Wynonna Judd, and fewer photos of people in those really baggy 1990s jeans.
Indeed, Wynonna was there at the first homecoming in 1994.
She later was featured on Saturn’s 1994 promotional CD, another attempt to build the Saturn lifestyle experience through connections to non-automotive things. They’d stopped handing these discs out by the time I got my Saturn a couple of years later. Or maybe I got one and ignored it because “joining the Saturn Family” wasn’t high on my list of face-to-face activities back then. Nor for that matter was owning a Saturn as I let that car go before the warranty expired.
Anyhow, the new MINI by coming along half a decade later and in a different technology environment took an online approach to community building. NAM was never sponsored by MINI, but I was initially told about it by my MINI dealer. On NAM, one could share pride in ownership, explore frustrations about an early and pretty buggy vehicle, and learn various aspects of what was portrayed as MINI motoring culture. Most significantly, NAM had a thriving “Off-Topic” section and over time this came to be my – and I think many members’ – go-to destination on the site. In Off-Topic, everything from politics to lifestyle choices came to be discussed. That is, everything that ultimately came to define social media.
Eventually though, despite having hit “6th Gear” – the designation for members who had high post counts – I burned out on my MINI community. NAM back then (it could well be different now for all I know) had relatively weak technical discussions. Part of the problem of course was that in the beginning, everyone’s car was under warranty, thereby dampening much of a DIY movement. There was some gear-head discussion of MINI modification (endless posts about changing the supercharger pulley and the potential warranty-voiding problems therewith), but this paled in relation to the forum’s much more diverse Off Topic discussions.
For my part, I ultimately wanted more information about how to actually fix my car than discussion around headlight flashing and various takes on 2004’s dating culture. There simply wasn’t enough content there to keep my interest in a car that I frankly was losing interest in as well.
Not long after trading in the MINI, I moved on to BMW and BMW-related forums. I migrated armed with a more informed opinion on what I was looking for in a car forum community.
I’ve also participated in several old-Volvo forums and am an infrequent visitor to the Toyota Nation forum. Both the BMW as well as Volvo forums have what I assume to be thriving Off Topic sections. I wouldn’t know since post-NAM I swore off “Off Topic” participation in any forum. This aligns with my personal pro-mental-health policy to mostly avoid things such as Facebook. I have grown more than a little apprehensive about Web 2.0 (present company aside). Don’t even get me started about Web 3.0. To paraphrase Borat, Web 3.0, “Everybody know is for ROBOT!”
The Turbobricks Volvo forum was notable for its strong personalities and their ability to guide the conversation to their point of view…a point of view that was reasonably-well technically-informed and that I often agreed with on subjects such as 700 and 900 series cars and the need to punish poser hipsters. I enjoyed that forum for some time and appreciated advice from some of the more technically-knowledgeable members. But as the availability of mechanical information grew over time (Hello YouTube) and my expertise grew as well, I eventually got weary of Turbobricks. Though the orientation of the forum sections I frequented was technical, there was still a bit too much social club for my tastes.
Which leaves me as far as online forums go with E90Post.com, a sub-forum of the expansive Bimmerpost.
I have been a member of that forum since the time when E90 (etc.) BMWs were common. Yes, they’re still common but many if not most have passed into the realm of hooptie, collectable, or “I’m working hard to keep this car on the road.”. That latter designation encompasses yours truly for sure. The upshot is that the percentage of members who post worries about depreciation, feats of strength evidenced by “pulling” dyno tests or conducting stoplight drag races, and whether or not their obsessively-maintained low mileage cars can be trusted to drive from Orange County to the Bay Area without grenading has steadily decreased.
Presumably the rest of the remaining BMW owners are ok with 7 hour road trips.
The point is, E90Post has settled down to being mostly frequented by regular people and shares (mostly) regular people’s concerns. Which brings me to my last point/part of this QOTD; which is the extent to which forums for you are a source of valuable information or perhaps just entertaining reading that serve to alert you to a fascinating range of problems that your car may never have.
This from a post entitled “Please help me identify this wire under my car.” Akin to the post associated with our lede photo, entitled “Need help identifying rubber part from N52 engine bay”.
Not to say that reading worried posts about random bits of rubber, wires and fluids that forum members find beneath and within their cars is not entertaining, but the extent to which this has any impact upon my own technical awareness is dubious. If I were to pay much attention, it would mostly raise my anxiety about my own car…a car which remains quite capable of driving 700 miles at a time and doesn’t typically shed screws that I don’t personally drop. I now mostly read forums for entertainment and occasionally comment to assure folks that their cars will be ok regardless of their tragic, life-altering, mistake of substituting 5w-40 oil for 5w-30.
I’ve also not entirely given up on in-person car clubs (perhaps a whole other subject). While I’ve recently exited BMW CCA after nearly 30 years of membership since it was simply irrelevant to me, I replaced that with the Volvo Club of America. VCOA’s dues are less expensive and its magazine has fewer articles that make me feel bad for not playing golf/polo or driving the Amalfi coast. I’ll see how that goes.
So what’s been your experience, and possibly Internet life-history, with car forums?
It turns out that CompuServe is still around. You can visit its website, and it looks very much like something that your extraordinarily-elderly in-law might use. It’s freaky-weird to see a site design right out of 1995, with 2024’s news on it. Enter that rabbit hole at your own peril and don’t blame me.
None of the car forums mentioned in this article are officially associated with or sanctioned by the manufacturers their members are fans of.
The only three I look at, maybe two to three times a week, would be ForCBodiesOnly, Ford-Trucks (FTE), and Bob is the Oil Guy. Hagerty maybe twice a month. Yet are they what you are talking about? As for CC it is everyday just before taking off for the carrier at 0700 hours on Saturday.
I haven’t been on a vehicle-related forum for over a year, the last one being Modern Buddy (for riders of Genuine Buddy scooters). I’ve poked around a few, for makes and models I’ve been considering buying. I don’t find the signal-to-noise ratio to be very good these days. 80% of the information requests could be solved in 30 seconds on Google.
Seems like many forums have been replaced by Facebook groups, which I find to be even worse!
When I owned my 1997 Miata I was in the Miata forum daily. I could post a question in the middle of a project or repair and get an answer in minutes. I miss that community.
Wow, nice forum history! I’m impressed your personal use goes way back to cradling your phone receiver on a modem.
For me, my forum use goes back to the late 90s but I was never a major user. The first forum I spent serious time on was the now-departed Yahoogroups, specifically the 9C1 List (i.e. Chevrolet former police cars). It mostlycentered on technical topics but occasionally went off on tangents. That forum was very well trafficked in the early 00’s then gradually dwindled to almost nothing its last several years before Yahoo pulled the plug on the whole platform. This time frame of its decline
matches up very well with the ascendancy of Facebook.
Facebook took over much of the terrain of traditional forums. Personally I hate FB
and refuse to use it for automotive interests, and not much else either. Forums are
great for being able to choose particularular threads and coming and going back to
them over time.
I still belong to a few forums. The Mustang ones are actually pretty active which is
encouraging. I think maybe the shine is off Facebook a bit as people have realized
it’s not the best for that type of exchange. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking!
” not naturally gregarious and does participate particularly well in face-to-face, non-business, conversation.”
Did you mean “…does NOT participate…”? I had to read that a couple times to figure it out.
I’m on the HR-V forum because I drive one. I don’t learn much, because so many there are first time car owners, so mostly I try to impart my vast knowledge of automobiles. On the other hand the Lotus forum is excellent. Otherwise I just look at pictures. Part of my morning news/internet routine.
I love forums and am on more than a few .
As a Journeyman Mechanic I enjoy reading about the current mind set towards whatever repair I’m doing right now, I also enjoy helping out others who don’t really understand Mechanicing in general and just want to keep their auld crate running .
For me the best aspect of forums is when the discussions begin to meander .
I learn -so- much from these detours .
The only down side is the occasional mouth breather who insists on inserting politics, always to some right wing nutball theorem .
I also find parts through forums .
I didn’t discover the BBS format until they were all almost gone, they were neat because I could read through a thread so quickly .
The down side was : no pictures / images / torque spec. charts and so on .
I hope to never get on facbok but I have enjoyed my recent forays into specific tech. forums on reddit .
It’s nice to be helpful, I try to convince those who contact me outside of the forum to post their entire issue and solution to the forums as often others will know where to get a tool or part necessary and ask if I’ve tried doing a thing this other way so I’m still always learning .
-Nate
(still looking for a fuel tank and rack for a 1984 HONDA CB125S, will buy a complete bike for parts)
To answer your first question, way too much time. But far less than I used to. I’m finding that the forum signal-to-noise-ratio and “social” aspects are just getting worse and worse. If I need repair (or for my late model vehicles, mostly maintenance) advice, I turn to YouTube. I do follow a couple of Facebook groups which despite FB’s bad side, often have good info.
As for my history on line, it goes back about 40 years now. Working in the computer industry (I don’t remember people calling it tech back then) we got access to the Internet’s precursor, the Usenet, through character-only terminals in around 1983 or ‘84. No access to Compuserve, I think, but there were so-call newsgroups which were like bulletin boards. One was rec.autos, which spawned subgroups like rec.autos.tech, if I recall correctly, as well as rec.motorcycles and rec.music, where I spent more time than on rec.autos in those days.
As for the more modern forum format, I don’t remember when I started on those. Work and parenting were keeping me distracted, but I remember being a fairly early member of adventure rider.com, some Subaru Forester forum, IH8MUD which is a Land Cruiser forum, and mtbr.com for mountain biking. Today I look at TacomaWorld and FordTransitUSA daily (maybe) but that’s about it. CC is my favorite automotive info and community involvement.
I was active for years on the original QuattroList and then the S-Car-List, both of which helped immensely with keeping my ’93 Audi S4 and then ‘95.5 S6 alive and healthy. The amount of hugely knowledgeable and creative people there was immense and went no small way toward saving me heaps of money (and also discovering create new ways to spend more heaps of money), a number of people on there became personal friends as well, both over here and in other countries leading to several fruitful and interesting in-person meetings and experiences. I think my first useful thing occurred in around 1999 when I acquired my ’93 and it developed an issue where the boost would build but then cut out around 4000rpm in high-load situations. I posted a query late at night and within half an hour had a response from Iowa, 1am-ish local time instructing me to take off the cowl cover and under there discover a valve with a vacuum hose that would surely be at least partially disconnected due to an undersized clamp that would need replacing with a better one available at any hardware store. Sure enough, that’s exactly what the issue was. My thanks to Darin Nederhoff, the curator of the S-Car-List, for answering that question and becoming an online friend for many years after.
Brickboard was very helpful with the 740 Turbo, and then there were many, many other forums that I’d join depending on what cars I had, all of them useful at one time or another through the present day whenever an issue or a question presents itself that isn’t obviously answered in the owner’s manual. There’s a Jaguar X-Type forum that I frequented in its early days when we had the ’02 when it was near-new that I’ve re-engaged with since getting the ’05 and been completely amazed at how now virtually ANY issue has been seen and solved multiple times making ownership far less of a worry.
VWvortex has been visited for decades now as well to help with Jetta and several GTIs along with the Touareg. Multiple Subaru forums and a couple of Jeep Wrangler ones have been helpful too but mainly as a perusal tool rather than active membership.
And of course Rennlist, probably the main Porsche one that helped with the 996 and was one of the reasons why I felt confident in having been able to own one without a massive wallet.
Nowadays if something happens I’ll usually just ask Google and then click on whichever forum it suggests with a topic that seems to approximate what I need. I’m not currently actively “active” though on any kind of forum and avoid Facebook like the plague I think it is, no clicks to there.
At the end of the day there is no doubt in my mind that Forums, especially the earlier ones, were a huge contributor toward making cars last longer and especially making more interesting or exotic ones far more viable for a “regular Joe” to own and maintain; in some ways they perhaps ended up taking some business away from specialist mechanics but likely also added to their volume by dint of more cars simply surviving longer or having demand for them rather than being scrapped due to lack of funds or local talent to deal with issues. Clear explanations and advice as to how to solve issues, resources and tips on where to find a part, what other parts might work (cheap Audi A4 ignition switch is the same as expensive Porsche 996 ignition switch for example) and just a resource for a mid-repair hiccup to go to and receive remote help makes almost anything achievable or at least doesn’t leave one at the exclusive mercy of an expensive shop.
Interesting topic – and something I haven’t given too much thought to before now.
I don’t spend much time on car forums, and actually less time than I used to. Forums aren’t the first… well, forum… that I check out when seeking an answer to a car question. General internet and YouTube searching comes first. But I do resort to a handful of bookmarked forums occasionally. Sites like TCCoA (Thunderbird Cougar Club of America) and Kia-Forums have yielded answers occasionally, though most forums tend to have frustrating search capabilities, especially for non-members, so that tends to keep me away.
And to wander down a few rabbit holes from your post here – just a few weeks ago I unearthed a Judds CD in our basement that I’d forgotten about, and put it in our 2010 Odyssey (which still has a CD player). Great music to catch up with after a long time.
I loved the idea of the Saturn Homecoming, however cheesy it seemed/seems. I was rooting for Saturn from the sidelines, and its failure was sort of heartbreaking since I was one of those who held high hopes for the brand.
Also, thanks for the CompuServe link. It’s an amazing time warp. Just this year I ditched my “Mindspring” email, which I’d had since 1999. (Mindspring was an ISP in the South that was later absorbed by EarthLink, which itself has become a living dinosaur like CompuServe.) The reason I signed up with Mindspring to begin with was because a co-worker used it, and by signing up, I provided his name as a reference and he got a $5 referral bonus. It’s funny to think now that that’s how internet service used to work!
Somerset Maugham said “There is a certain elegance in wasting time. Any fool can waste money, but when you waste time you waste what is priceless.”
I’d like my early 40s to mid 50s back for a do-over.
I have typically joined a forum for almost every car I’ve owned for the last 20 years. I was never a fixture on them, but mainly logged in to either investigate a whether a particular problem is common and how others have solved it, or to investigate a model’s common issues so I can watch for or avoid them.
Grandmarq.net was a great source of info for my Panther cars, and there was a great Honda Odyssey forum with a pretty tight group of Gen1 Oddy fans. I was on FitFreak.net for a long time, and also followed Miata and Kia forums when I owned those. I could occasionally go down fun but useless rabbit holes like threads for turning a lopo 5.0 in a Panther into the hipo version like in Mustangs, or the guy who converted a Crown Vic to a 5 speed stick.
I need to join a good forum on my Mazda3 but YouTube has a lot of info on the older ones. My Charger, as a new specimen of an older model, would benefit from a forum dive so I can stay abreast of knowledge about currently known issues like the Pentastar tick.