Nit Picks aside on THIS EXACT WEBSITE address....now in its 3rd or 4th iteration......... here is a bit of history:
When the dirty-dozen founded the VCA at Dodge's request, we needed a better way to communicate with each other. I was very new to email in 1994. In early 1994, several VCA presidents, including myself, Gary Lashinsky, Steve Ferguson, Ivan **, Dean Word, JHennysee, and a few others [I HOPE THEY POP IN!] started a DODGE VIPER mesage board on the Car and Driver Website. We then launched on on the Road and Track website. Then, Gary L started a VCA message board there as well.
It was informative, factual, mature discussions of the PASSION we all had for this car. It almost ALWAYS had the highest post-count of all the boards, on both magazines. This went on for 3 YEARS ! When Oreca starting winning EVERYTHING in 97-98, we wre PUMPED. But HHPPTBs (hand-hoppin-pimple-poppin-teeny-boppers) soon made us crazy with their juvenile ways.
Enter Jay Herbert and a partner from TX (whose name I forget at this moment, but I remembered it just a few minutes ago!) Jay approached me about his building the VCA an OFFICIAL site, in hopes of having some immunity to the HHPPTBs. He asked be to 'commit 60-90 minutes per day to answering questions.' In exchange, I would get some advertising consideration. [ Almost everyone called me the VIPER GURU back then, and I had a section called "The Guru Speaks" and I did NOT give myself the title!]
We placed Jay on the agenda with board approval, I made a motion, in Detroit, at the VCA Prez meeting, January 1998, to accept Jay's offer. The motion was amended to a "self sustaining" VCA website, because NO VCA dues or Dodge support would be allocated. It passed.
Jay and ___ did their thing. We had a few testers, and launched in a few weeks. I became perhaps the first paid advertisor, and off we went. Jay and I helped persuade Mad Tony, Dave Adkins, Jason Ward, Michelle Frey, to be our first moderators..... and Tony remains!
That first official board even had a "Stump the Gurus" section where myself, Dan Cragin, Bob Woodhouse, Dean Word, and a few other "Know-It-Allmosts" hung out (until jealous-political-whiners disbanded it!) We were attemting to get official team Viper spokespersons on, but to no avail. One of them told me privately it had to do with D-C lawyers........
We actually had a couple "Off The Record" passionate Team Viper guys regularly feed us Gurus important and correct tech answers, because they hoped and felt we would keep them anonymous. We did, and we therefore SEEMED to know a lot more that we really did! We were actually LEARNING the answers as you did. When the GURU site went away, so did the inside scoop we were receiving. Too bad.
Once the website became profitable, Jay 'turned over the keys' to the VCA at VOI-6 in St Louis.... Jay was retained as admin. We all enjoy the fruits of his labors and our passion........
Great story. Thanks Jon
LOL!!
