[mhh]

Is there a general Australian car forum with sections for ALL brands, not just exotics, like say Pistonheads in the UK?  Is there a market for one?  Or must it be for sports cars and supercars only to have credibility?

[dkabab]

not sure, but there are some large ones.

hardtuned.net is probably the biggest one i know, but its very much a modified map car forum.

[dodger]

Is there a general Australian car forum with sections for ALL brands, not just exotics, like say Pistonheads in the UK?  Is there a market for one?  Or must it be for sports cars and supercars only to have credibility?

I think Australia is too small a market.

Ash sold this on the basis of a shitload of images that are picked up by Google and pushed traffic to reasonable levels but there are only a handful of people active in the forums.

It's a great idea and I'd love to be in on it but from what I've seen the market is too small.

[mhh]

So there isn't a major forum covering all parts of the market?

[dodger]

So there isn't a major forum covering all parts of the market?

There's no major audience I think.

[mhh]

There's no major audience I think.

Maybe not but when I look at the brand-specific forums, I see good activity...

http://www.vwwatercooled.com.au/forums/

[dkabab]

shannons have a forum/profile setup that i think would work if not based on an insurance company.... but you never know.

It is a general car forum, but you have a garage. you can list and profile all your cars in your garage.

I was thinking further to this, it would be the perfect forum setup to pitch very specific advertising.
lets say UserA has 3 subaru's in his 'garage' all ads could be targeted to his interests.

this would also be a cool way to catalogue a lot of rare cars, and potentially link people wanting to buy with sellers.
they could setup notifications if a certain car gets posted for sale etc...

just thinking out loud.

[Paulstar]

Forums in Aus seem to be very cliquey. Fast Fours forum wayyyy back more than 10years ago was probably the most general car scene forum, Aussie based that I've seen. Then I think a mixture of offline police activity busting up meetups at least here in NSW meant that the forum got together offline less, JDM imports rose in popularity and the turbo imports wanted nothing to do with the emerging AutoSalon (fibreglass, chrome, white pleather) scene, turbo imports and ASM style took away from FastFours which led to a decline in circulation and thus a decline in organic growth/activity on that board - all this combined plus a few savvy members of those forums equalled smaller and even private invite online forums popped up.

[mhh]

Forums in Aus seem to be very cliquey. Fast Fours forum wayyyy back more than 10years ago was probably the most general car scene forum, Aussie based that I've seen. Then I think a mixture of offline police activity busting up meetups at least here in NSW meant that the forum got together offline less, JDM imports rose in popularity and the turbo imports wanted nothing to do with the emerging AutoSalon (fibreglass, chrome, white pleather) scene, turbo imports and ASM style took away from FastFours which led to a decline in circulation and thus a decline in organic growth/activity on that board - all this combined plus a few savvy members of those forums equalled smaller and even private invite online forums popped up.

Lots of tribes that want to stay apart. I guess that's why the mob that bought AE likes to buy established communities and leave them as they are.

[anotherforumuser]

Lots of tribes that want to stay apart. I guess that's why the mob that bought AE likes to buy established communities and leave them as they are.

I think a forum like pistonheads in OZ is possible. I dont see them as an all car forum, more as a sports car forum. If you build it to run as a business on the same format you could do well with it I think. There is no website to go to for sports cars for sale in Australia that is set up like pistonheads. There are fragmented sites and race car sites but not a sports car site.


Takes a bit of a team to run the thing. So pistonheads is where Chris Harris made his name, I never knew that.
http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=27504