While doing some research for an upcoming story I'm working on, I stumbled upon a relic of the past:
http://www.beforeblack.net/
To my surprise, the site looks EXACTLY like it did when I first found it, via HotBot or Lycos, in my high school's computer lab back in 1998. It's still full of good knowledge on the pre-EFI Turbo Buicks.
Then, that jogged another memory of another website I used to go to for knowledge for my then-daily driver Mercury Cougar:
http://www.coolcats.net
That's also still a thing! The site covered the 1983-88 Cougar/Thunderbird twins, and was the definitive resource for anything pertaining to those cars. It actually has been maintained all these years, with a substantial redesign two years ago. The "Reader's Rides" section is still full of mid-late 1990's gold, as viewed by terrible quality bitmap pics:
What sites that you used to frequent still exist?
I think myspace is still going? That is about as far back as my internet-ing goes.
Duke
MegaDork
3/15/18 4:15 p.m.
www.neons.org is still going, and the FAQ I wrote using Nutscrape's crappy HTML editor in 1997 through 1999 or so is still available.
www.spacejam.com
Jay
UltraDork
3/15/18 4:15 p.m.
Most of the original rice rockets are long gone, but astonishingly Bryan's Rice Boy Page is still around. Good times.
The "mono blade" wiper 'conversion' never went out of style. Nope nope.
In reply to Jay :
MY GOD THAT STILL EXISTS!!!! Wow.
My go-to pages in HS Computer Lab were the two I posted, Rice Boy, and the dearly departed Mullets Galore.
What was the one that was like Myspace for your car?
MazdaFace said:
What was the one that was like Myspace for your car?
http://www.cardomain.com/
Red Pepper Racing is still around, but has effectively died and been replaced with a FB group. I am sad to see that StreetKiaz.com has apparently shut down, it was a terrible place.
I used to check out Matti Kalalahti's site from dial-up in my dorm room back in college...some of the best Toyota technical info available online in the mid-to-late 90's....and still there:
http://www.kalalahti.com/tm_index.html
A few years later Billzilla's site came along...or maybe I just found it a little later! It got some edits along the way, but has been frozen in time for probably fifteen years anyway, and still a good resource.
http://www.billzilla.org/carindex.htm
Suprf1y
PowerDork
3/15/18 5:44 p.m.
One of the very first times I was on the internet I found Turbo 3 haven by accident. I was actually looking for a Mk1 VW GTi at the time, but had a mild interest in the Canadian market Suzuki turbo cars. The rest is history.
The forum is still there but its been dead for some time
EDIT: I looked around a bit there and saw some of my posts from the early 2000's. Doing nitrous trials on the turbo3, building a challenge car, and land speed racing. The good old days!
http://www.nsxfiles.com/stories.htm
With beautiful frames even. Great rambling stories that will eat hours.
http://www.thedodgegarage.com is still running in all of its framed goodness.
Ian F
MegaDork
3/15/18 5:56 p.m.
TDiClub
The site and forums haven't changed in the 16 years I've been interested in TDI's. The home page hasn't changed much since 1996. The site is still the best place to go for TDI info or even just basic (non-gas engine related) VW repair info.
Pour one out for turbosaturns.net, although there's a mirror of the front page at http://www.scottjsousa.com/tsn/
I killed a lot of time between that and Gus Mahon's turbo minivan page.
Moparchat.com
Bigblockdart.com
Hotrodders round table
All still there. All about the same.
Which is why im here.
NOHOME
UltimaDork
3/15/18 6:20 p.m.
NickD
UltraDork
3/15/18 6:45 p.m.
Keith Tanner said:
MazdaFace said:
What was the one that was like Myspace for your car?
http://www.cardomain.com/
Red Pepper Racing is still around, but has effectively died and been replaced with a FB group. I am sad to see that StreetKiaz.com has apparently shut down, it was a terrible place.
There's someone in my area that has a Kia Spectra that is wearing a constantly-changing array of horrendous body kits and terrible paint schemes and is rocking StreetKiaz plate frames.
We used a Kia block in a high power build back in 2002 - it's the same as a Miata block. Unfortunately, this signaled to the StreetKiaz community that we were now supporting their cars. I eventually had to go back and erase all mention of the Kia block on our site, to the extent of photoshopping one of the pictures to remove a Kia logo.
pheller
PowerDork
3/15/18 6:59 p.m.
First car website I was on was way back in 2000. I frequented the Fox/Quantum forum on VWVortex.com
Then, in 2001ish I moved over to Turbododge.com.
Both are still going strong.
Car websites/communities are much better about integrating new models into their forum's community than in the past.
In reply to Tony Sestito :
Back around the late-90's/Y2K there was a group of (primarily) import guys around Bloomington-Normal/Peoria, IL that started a club & forum called Central Illinois Imports. A bunch of them got seriously into autox and still do to this day. There were some ownership/financial issues and everything died probably by 2010 or so. Some of the guys started a new site - Central Illinois Car Enthusiasts - but it looks like that site is down now too.
https://www.aol.com
Back in my day, there was no way onto the web other than AOL. You grabbed the CD from WalMart (or one of the ten they mailed you a month) and created a free account that was your e-mail and web access as well as your landing page and source for most news.
Before that, I used to dial a phone number on a headset, then put the headset on a cradle...oh never mind. Get off my lawn!
Before AOL was the BBS. I frequented one called The Blue Ridge Express back in the early 1990's. It appears that some still exist.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-lost-civilization-of-dial-up-bulletin-board-systems/506465/
www.corral.net
Been off and on since 96? I remember when that was one of the last mustang sites to upgrade to use vBulletin. Before that it was still a threaded board.
Damn I’m old....
My site is still up and mostly unchanged from the late 90's. I need to update it. Eh.
Billzilla is a great guy. He got me the ECU for my 4AG 20v back about 1998 out of NZ, where he was living at the time. That's way before you could get them with a couple clicks on ebay. After he got his 747 pilot certification and copilot job, I think he moved to Oz. That's about the time he stopped updating the site. I think he ran out of time.
