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Old 05-15-2014, 03:51 PM
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Default PY Newsletter - Pontiac Owners Unite

Performance Years - August 2013
PONTIAC OWNERS UNITE!
A message from PY owner Chris Casperson
on the state of the Pontiac hobby online.

Here's a fact that most of you are probably not aware of. Literally 90% of all the popular automotive forums were bought out by two very large investment groups over the last 10 years. Originally, most of them were all run by automotive enthusiasts. Chevelle guys created Chevelle forums, Camaro guys created Camaro Forums, Mustang guys created Mustang forums. I don't know about you, but it would seem to me like we should try our best to keep our allegiance within our own communities. The more we reinvest our resources in our own hobby, the better off we will be.



PY was started by Pontiac enthusiasts, is still owned by the same Pontiac enthusiasts and has always been moderated by long time Pontiac enthusiasts. The big internet .coms didn't get to us. These big guys have gobbled up all automotive forums in site and have literally turned into a monopoly. Advertising on those forums increased by as much as 250%! Eventually we all pay for that, no? And if you think there is a lot of politics going on here at PY, take a good look around the big automotive forums. Most of these forums communities rely on their advertisers for their sole source of revenue. It's the only reason they exist! So if an advertiser pays good money for a banner on a forum and a member trashes that advertiser, you don't see much patience with that on those forums. Member comments and topics get deleted all the time. It's heavily 'Advertiser favored.'



On PY, take a look around as well. We rarely pull a topic. We NEVER pull a topic for political reasons. We've been threatened and sued numerous times. Heck, your host PY has been trashed many times right here on their own forums. Yet those topics are still available for all to see. We've also lost prominent advertisers because we wouldn't bow to the pressure of deleting unflattering threads or posts just because 'we're an advertiser'. Since 1991 when PY created the very first online Pontiac Forum community, PY has tried very hard to be all about doing the right thing for the Pontiac hobby with this venue. Our value system has not changed in 22 years! And we think because of this, many of our members have adopted this same philosophy and have both supported and helped us be even more successful. And the reason we haven't had to change is because we DON'T rely on advertising dollars for success. Sure we have some advertising revenue but we're not going to retire on it any time soon! It barely keeps the Forums lights on. Rather, we choose to let our customer's support generate the product sales that covers us for these forums. And we choose to do everything possible to resolve customer-supplier issues even if it has to sometimes be publicly displayed initially in an unflattering way.



So why the rant? Our hobby is starting to contract ever so slowly. We all need to pull together because in large numbers, there is strength. There is still an awful lot of Pontiac Forums out there. Some of them are tailored to our Late Model Pontiac brethren. Some of them are pretty good. And quite honestly, yours truly was a sleep at the wheel for a few years and I didn't do everything I should have to welcome the new Pontiac performance models into the fold. Yes, they are corporate cars. No they don't quite have that same 'something' as their predecessors. But they ARE the last of the bloodline of Pontiac and we own them because they still connect us in some way to the originals that sparked the Muscle car revolution. I now proudly own a beautiful low mileage 2001 TA, a 2005 GTO and we just finished putting together a Pro-charged G8 GT and I absolutely love driving each one of them! Don't worry, I haven't totally sold-out on my roots. In our showroom sits an awesome 1977 Bandit TA that emerges onto the streets each Spring. And lurking in the warehouse is my original 1967 GTO Sedan that just needs a little tender loving care to return to the streets. Anyway, I digress.... we're not asking you to abandon those other forums. However, we are asking that you encourage, cajole, coerce, convince etc that there needs to be a SINGLE place where all Pontiac enthusiasts can hang out and call HOME. And we're saying that there isn't a better place to do that than right here at the PY Online Forums.

Thus the main reason you see an all new comprehensive Late model section of the forums. Just like in 1991, we've just setup a very nice venue but it's up to all of you to take advantage of it.

Just to make sure you all see the importance to the hobby we feel this is, soon we'll be announcing a contest. We're finalizing plans for it to be a 'significant' contest with 'significant' prizes. It will blow away any of our previous contests and long time members will remember that a few of them were fairly substantial! The contest will center around participation and there will be an important Membership Drive component to the contest. So if you want to do something good for the hobby while dramatically improving your chances of winning the contest, start planning on how you would bring in some new blood and how you can personally contribute information that will make PY an even better Pontiac community than it already is. It's a win/win for everyone.





Click HERE to follow the rest of the topic on the PY Forums and see what this contest is all about!

Click HERE for full contest details!


 
 

         

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The PY Online Forums is the largest online gathering of Pontiac enthusiasts anywhere in the world. Founded in 1991, it was also the first online forum for people to gather and talk about their Pontiacs. Since then, it has become the mecca of Pontiac technical data and knowledge that no other place can surpass.

 




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