(EXPANDED FROM 5/1/2020)
Today someone commented on this post, which I wrote more than four years ago. So perhaps it’s time for an update on automotive-blog comment threads.
Around 15 years ago I started to regularly submit comments to a handful of car-buff websites. Because I was a former journalist, I didn’t do it just for fun — I was trying to build my skills in writing about cars. That meant striving to offer a thoughtful take and steer clear of flame wars (ha!).
One of my weaknesses as a writer is that I am fairly slow, so posting comments could interfere with more pressing tasks. When the quality of the conversations deteriorated too far, I began to question how I was spending my time.
The ‘best and brightest’ no more
I have been around long enough to remember when Jalopnik’s comment section was quite good. Someone should do a case study on how corporate micromanagers screwed up this innovative media outlet. I finally left when Jalopnik instituted a comment-ranking system that had a decidedly high-school vibe. I should add that in recent years their comment threads have gotten better; the main reason I don’t hang out there much is because I’m not very interested in most of their articles.
Meanwhile, The Truth About Cars, which at one time could accurately describe its commentariat as the “best and brightest,” devolved into a virtual daycare center for cranky libertarians — some of whom have espoused violence against the government. A format update seems to have toned down the wild-west quality of the threads, but they are still a shadow of their former greatness, when knowledgeable industry insiders would routinely offer sophisticated takes.
Automotive News’ comment threads have traditionally been embarrassingly low in quality for what is supposed to be the industry’s leading media outlet. However, once in a great while commentators have challenged industry groupthink (here is an example). Two years ago web-based comment threads were discontinued in favor of Facebook page comments that require using one’s real name. This appears to have increased civility, but controversial issues can still bring out a rather knee-jerk quality to the discussion.
Substantive historical discussions are getting rarer
Among auto history websites, Ate Up With Motor has tended to have some of the more substantive comment threads. Unfortunately, this website has not been very active in recent years and its publisher, Aaron Severson (2023), has discussed shutting down. This is not the first time (2020), but he recently sounded more definitive.
Hemmings has occasionally had substantive discussions about automotive history. Two of my favorite threads focused on the origins of the 1968 Dodge Charger (Strohl, 2019a) and Fred Hudson’s late-50s designs (Strohl, 2019b). However, since Strohl departed, most of that website’s articles have focused on idle reminiscing or gearhead topics.
Curbside Classic has tended to follow Hemmings’ pattern, although in its earlier years the comment threads were more likely to have substantive discussions (go here and here). Meanwhile, Mac’s Motor City Garage has had a decent mix of substantive comments but relatively few of them. And like all buff websites, Mac’s can get indignant fanboy comments lacking in accuracy (go here).
Dean’s Garage often has comments from retired designers that add useful information to the historical record, but they tend to steer clear of discussing in any depth why Detroit was eclipsed by foreign automakers.
Also see ‘What would happen to auto history media if they outlawed clickbait?’
I have never been moved to comment on Collectible Automobile’s Facebook page. In recent years they appear to have dropped the vapid, “if you had to pick one. . . .” posts, but the comments tend toward “I love my original _____.”
That’s fine if one is a collector, but not helpful to people like me who are more interested in the nuts-and-bolts of auto history — which is ironic given that Collectible Automobile is arguably the leading U.S. auto history magazine. Curiously, editors appear to have deleted comments that were rightly critical of an inaccurate, anti-Ralph Nader rant that is still online (go here).
Welcome to the weird world of auto blog censorship
As a commentator I could get frustrated when moderators deleted my missives for reasons that didn’t make sense. Robert Farago was arguably the most notorious censor. Particularly toward the end of his tenure at TTAC, he seemed unduly thin-skinned with those who disagreed with his increasingly controversial takes.
Farago was hardly the only comments moderator who was on friendly terms with the delete button. For example, one day another automotive blog reposted an entire article from a major magazine still in existence. I didn’t see any mention that the material was republished with permission, so I politely inquired as to whether the blog’s editorial team was familiar with copyright law. My comment was summarily deleted, and the website has continued this practice — which is a big no-no in journalism circles. That led me to stop commenting there.
Around this time it occurred to me that comment sections play an important role in building the ad revenue base for most of these car-buff websites. Regular commentators essentially function as contributing writers who are donating their automotive knowledge and writing skills to for-profit enterprises. Was this worth my time, I started to wonder?
If you’re going to play, why not really play?
Eventually I decided that if I really wanted to write about cars, it would be better to spend my time producing articles rather than merely responding to someone else’s postings. I further decided that I would only write about what was interesting to me. I already had a day job, so I wasn’t going to turn this hobby into a slog that felt like work.
As I began to write articles I realized that most of them didn’t fit very well into the formats of existing publications. This wasn’t just wild speculation — I have had a number of articles rejected by an auto history website that relies largely on volunteer writers. So I stopped trying to get them published elsewhere.
Initially, I plopped my articles into a freebie WordPress blog. But once I retired, I upgraded to the format you see today and began to post more regularly.
I greatly appreciate the thoughtful commentators who have gravitated to Indie Auto. The number of comments is relatively small but I’m okay with this because moderating threads can eat up limited time that I would rather spend on researching and writing. In other words, Indie Auto is oriented more toward being a writer’s blog rather than a discussion board.
Auto history needs an online venue for deeper thought
My motivation to comment on existing automotive websites continues to be quite low. However, I would enthusiastically contribute to a website that placed an emphasis on substantive auto history discussions.
What would be ideal is a venue that attracted the participation of both car buffs and scholars. Cultivating greater dialogue between those two groups is crucial to improving automotive history (go here for further discussion).
The commercial media are not likely to fill this need consistently because it works against their business model, which is more entertainment focused. Perhaps a more likely sponsor would be one of the nonprofit auto history associations. The Society of Automotive Historians has a promising discussion board (go here) but it has thus far elicited relatively little participation.
I hope that will change. Analytically robust but civil discussions can be enormously helpful in sharpening one’s thinking. That is important if we see automotive history as a serious field of inquiry rather than merely entertainment for bored retirees.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on May 1, 2020 and expanded on Jan. 15, 2024.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Severson, Aaron; 2020. “Update.” Ate Up With Motor. Posted Feb. 17.
- ——; 2023. “Status Report.” Ate Up With Motor. Posted Dec. 23.
- Strohl, Daniel; 2019a. “Richard Sias’s 1968 Dodge Charger design both defined and ended his career at Chrysler.” Hemmings Daily. Posted May 8.
- ——; 2019b. “How Fred Hudson designed a Predictor-ified Packard future that never came to pass.” Hemmings. Posted Dec. 17.
Yes, you are right blog share is better than commenting on automotive posts.
What you do? Commenting or sharing?
Steve, I really appreciate what you said and are trying to do.
Being an engineer who has been fortunate to have worked at two of Detroit’s OEMs, I came to appreciate the benefit of an ever-deepening understanding of automotive history as I took part in creating cars of the future. I say this particularly because once a vehicle program begins to ramp up, a fog of detailed work and responsibilities quickly forms and it becomes difficult to maintain a broader perspective. And yet, this is exactly when a program needs to be flexible as it discerns which course to take in a multitude of areas. I am specifically referring to the front side of a vehicle program, prior to what at Ford is Program Approval (PA) and at GM is Design of Strategic Intent (DSI) or soon thereafter (its been a few years since I left, and have forgotten many of its gateway acronyms). Once a program is approved, it is important for every team member to do an about-face, removing all mental and other distractions, and pressing forward to complete the program through to launch.
Where a deep understanding of automotive history is most critical is way upstream in the process, in portfolio strategizing and prior to that, in Executive leadership vision formulation. This is where companies establish a trajectory that leads them to ever greater heights or depths.
There is also the question of what is “truth” in automotive history? Is it what has been written in a published book? Settled and static. Or is it a continually unfolding process of revelation? I believe that it is both, the quantitative leaning towards static and the qualitative towards dynamic.
There are big bets being made in today’s auto industry, and my understanding of the industry’s history, as well as its present day affairs, leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling. Am trying to do something about it but am only at pre-seed, so the history of tomorrow will need to remain imaginative until all the chips fall where they may.
Aaron Severson over at Ate Up With Motor has quite rightly stated that “one of the things you notice when you do a lot of research in a particular field is that certain pieces of information are repeated over and over again even though they’re wrong.”
Factual mistakes and misinterpretations are inevitable in any kind of historical research, but it strikes me as a particularly big problem in American auto history because so much of the field is driven by commercial media outlets and book publishers. Making a profit all too often seems to be more important than advancing the field in an intellectually robust way.
Meanwhile, I sense that the field suffers from a relative lack of new blood. There are some older historians who appear to be unwilling to reconsider their narratives despite reasonable questions about the facts and logic they are grounded in. Meanwhile, a newer generation of writers has tended to come up through the popular media, where little if any effort goes into analyzing the past. It’s all about the gear, man.
In all honesty, American auto history is looking increasingly like a dying field.
TTAC commentary and the “moderation” therein degraded to the point that I completely stopped visiting TTAC altogether one day (“Why do I need this toxicity in my life?” may have been said) except to finish reading Merilee’s Hell Impala series and avoided the commentary on it. Haven’t been back since. It was just about then Paul N was starting CC so commenting became enjoyable again.
GM even deleted the brochure and Vehicle Information Kit section of their historical archive section.
The GM vehicle information kits are still available, just a little harder to find on the site.
https://www.gm.com/heritage/archive/vehicle-information-kits
Thank you for the link. I’ve added it to the “Bibliography of Links” page under “Automaker-specific research sources.” Additional suggestions are always invited.
Of course, the Society of Automotive Historians also has a great links page (go here). We’re not trying to duplicate that, e.g., our focus is on postwar American cars. Few readers appear to use our links page; my main goal in maintaining it is to make it easier for me to do research on Indie Auto stories.
Severson’s post references the retired designers often featured in Deans Garage- who manage to steer clear of ” discussing why Detroit was eclipsed by foreign automakers”. This struck a nerve with me. For instance, something led GM to offer Euro versions of their standard models. Did it occur to their designers that there was no Euro ’87 Legend?. Euro was baked into the standard model. I remember convincing my father to order his ’92 Park Avenue with blackwalls- something that finally became standard on his ’96 Park Avenue. I’d like to know why GM didn’t field a Chevrolet H body sedan- to match the Taurus if nothing else. So many questions, so many missed opportunities. Please discuss.
Oh thanks! I wanted them for some specific cars. I like seeing just how would I have ordered a 70 Chevelle, for example, or some others of that era with foreknowledge of the next 50 years, right?
May I suggest the small, Irish-based site Driven to Write? Most vehicles it discusses are British, European, or Japanese, but the features are extremely well-written. In depth they’re somewhere between Curbside Classic and Ate Up With Motor, and often with references which may be in foreign languanges. In its comments it has a feel of being a group of friends having a chat – only they’re all friends who really do know their stuff.
Peter, I’d agree that Driven to Write is worth paying attention to. I did a short story on them here.
I genuinely respect and greatly enjoy all of the ideas, concepts, presentations (Thank you, Steve and others), opinions, corrections and criticisms from everyone here. I try to add something to the mix, often personal recollections, mainly from an era too far past. All of you are like an extended family with a common interest, and I hope that my submissions are worthy.
James, I always appreciate your comments. It takes time and effort to write thoughtful comments, so thank you for choosing to do so here.