What killed the forums?

Any car mad Kiwis of Gen X around my age will remember the buzz and excitement around the early PHPBB-style New Zealand car forums. These were somewhat institutions back in the early 2000s. There was one for every marque and new ones seemed to be popping up all the time. Even respectable media like NZ Performance Car Magazine wanted in on the game and set one up back in the day (now long since dead). Early internet days – hobby sites and the birth of the ‘forum’ Back in the mid to late 90’s I was a Mazda Rotary guy and a fairly early adopter of the whole internet game. I had a 486DX4-100 which I paid to have upgraded to a Pentium II with a 56K dialup modem. I remember the ‘hobby website’ humble beginnings. I started creating my own website aoteaotor.co.nz in 1999 due to seeing an opportunity to combine my interests of cars with computers and the desire to get creative with this new thing called HTML scripting language. Anyway, more on my exploits later! Badrotor.co.nz was one of the first - an Auckland-based website ambitiously described as an ‘e-zine’ - an online magazine run by Andrew Smith and co. We were both online and building our presence around the same time. Although Badrotor wasn’t updated near enough to live up to their moniker of an e-zine, what Badrotor did do well, was to realise that their Guestbook was becoming a lively place for debate (and insult)! If I recall they were the first site (at least that I was aware of) to migrate from that of a hobby website to a predominantly online forum format (with the e-zine concept soon relegated). With Aotearotor I was never motivated to make the shift to a forum. I remained purely an HTML-based hobby site with tech articles, projects, reader’s rides, links, etc. (pretty much how Badrotor started out). I stuck with a traditional e-mail ‘contact me’ page for correspondence and ‘reader’s rides’ submissions, etc. I actually ‘remixed’ my Aotearotor site and got it back online post my return to NZ. I’m not sure how long it will hang around as I have borrowed webhosting off a friend who I’ve since lost contact with. It’s also linking with a cheap ($10 for 10 years introductory offer) ‘.maori’ domain. When that expires I doubt I will be able to afford anything else as prices have gone through the roof on these. Forums reign Needless to say Badrotor and the forum concept took off amongst the NZ Mazda scene and soon there were a bunch of copy cats to choose from. My memory fails me (badly) but at the very least I can at least recall ‘NZPerformance’ (Paul), ‘Rotary Motion’ (Tash from Auckland MREC) and ‘Jasco Automotive’ (had to google that one - [UZNGAS] / [BZNOUT], the workshop still exists) and various others. Around this time (or maybe a little later) there was a forum established dubbed kiwirotary.com which I was invited to be involved in from the outset (I was ‘MRRX2U’, the second registered user after ‘mr777’ who was the owner). Mr777 was based in Christchurch and I was in Wellington so I never actually got to meet him in person (even though I did a stint living in Dunedin), he had just found me via Aotearotor and asked if I was interested in being involved. Mr77 also gallantly set up a Christchurch arm of the Mazda Rotary Enthusiasts Club (NZ), although unfortunately it didn’t appear to last very long. Wellington is the only surviving chapter, being the initial one which dates back to the late 70’s! Now only present on Facebook so I have no idea how they are surviving as I refuse to partake in Facebook! It’s pretty safe to say some of the biggest upsets and fallouts probably had their laundry day on the forums. Photos were posted of vendors shitty rebuilds that didn’t last, thieves were outed – “does anybody know XXX XXX” was always bound to become a popcorn thread! Does anyone remember the screen shot below? I’ve had this on my machine for a long time! I’m pretty sure the site did open again, but the latest registered user obviously upset the owner enough for him to temporarily close the site. There was a lot of trolling going on back then.

There was also a lot of damn good advice; some insane knowledge shared; event photos and amazingly diarised build threads. These were all indexed and easily searchable in a way like no other service in these ‘disposable media’ days can offer - now lost forever in cyberspace. Possibly a lot of friendships too which were forged online have now fallen by the wayside as we’ve all gotten older and moved on with our lives. The demise I don’t know exactly what happened because I did some pretty lengthy stints overseas (including setting up my own UK-based Mazda Rotary forum/club in 2006 which ran successfully for 10 years while I was in London) so I didn’t actually get to witness the decline or understand exactly what drove it, but when I returned to NZ at the very end of 2013 it all seemed a distant memory. I assume the uptake of internet capable mobile phones, the blue behemoth called Facebook + Twitter, etc. gained traction and with the younger generation coming through the ranks (all these are my assumptions by the way!) the PHPBB format just seemed to get too hard and the forums I had seen rise to power had died a death. 2020 Amazingly, from its humble beginnings in 2005, the Kiwirotary.com forum is still online and working! At least it is at the time of writing this article in April 2020. That’s 15+ years online! I tried to login for old time sake, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten my password! Other notable mentions that are still online since way back include skylinesdownunder.co.nz and nzhondas.com. I remember the buzz around Skylines Down-under when it started so I know it’s fairly old. I had a 1989 Skyline (R32) as a daily driver at the time so was slightly interested. It seems mostly dead now with ‘news and events’ posts on their main site from 2014 and 2018 respectively and the club events section in their forum last updated in May 2016. Even their Facebook page only has one post from 2020, before you’re back to the end of 2019. Not sure what’s happened there either. NZHonda’s – well, obviously being a Mazda guy I’ve never followed their scene so have no clue, but Honda’s continue to be manufactured which I guess helps. Some others still going, although possibly not as old include oldschool.co.nz and bimmersport.co.nz. There are bound to be others but I’m betting traffic is slow. So my question to readers… where did everybody go?