Long time readers will remember the Carnival of Wheels, my weekly tour around the automotive blogs. Many writers, including yours truly, spend more time reading than they do writing so it sort of makes sense to share what we read. The problem is, to do it well takes time. Time that was getting more and more difficult to justify while I was juggling a job, kids and a commute. Now that I have more time on my hands, I’m going to have a go at reviving the CoW. It might not be weekly, but we’ll see how it goes.
I suppose it is fitting to start at the roots of the CoW by visiting Mark Tapscott, who used to host the Carnival of Cars. That seems like a really long time ago. These days, Mark is with the The Washington Examiner and he’s exploring public opinion on the topic of web enabled cars. The lawmakers here in Ontario have banned cell phones, so I can’t see mobile surfing having a long life span here.
Somewhere along the life of The Garage, Californian racer Gary Faules went from commenting on articles to contributing his own stories. We followed Gary as he built Lucky the GT350R and we followed them to La Carrera Panamericana. This past weekend saw the official world premier of the movie “Rebirth of a Legend” following the team across Mexico. Do yourself a favour, visit Gary’s blog, follow the link and order your own copy. I’ve seen the movie and trust me, you’ll watch it over and over. I’d be willing to bet that Gary watches it at least once a week!
With the CoW and the CoC gone, Brian Vermette at Race Driven took things into his own hands and started Speedlinking. I think he’s got a pretty firm handle on how to get the job done. Now he just needs to get his template lined up again!
Over at Full Throttle, Marc is still banging away at the keyboard keeping everyone abreast of the racing world. We haven’t talked much over the past couple of years and Marc seems to have gotten a little bit crustier than he was the last time I checked in on him. He started the new year off wondering what the hell Mikey was thinking. Now, a few weeks later, maybe Mikey knew exactly what he was doing! Danica? Hellooooo…
At least the IRL officials will be looking snappy in their new alligator golf shirts!
You might say that Alborz Fallah is an online success story. You see, Alborz is a young guy in Australia who started a car blog called Car Advice. Shortly after he launched CA, Fallah began submitting to the original CoW. I like to thing that The Garage played our own little part in helping Alborz turn CA into the online source for everything automotive in Australia. You could say his project became the Aussie equivalent of Autoblog.
Speaking of Autoblog, even the North American mass market machine contributed articles to the CoW. Of course that was before AOL took over, but it was still pretty cool. Today, Jonny Lieberman has a post with some pretty cool officially unofficial Mini photos.
Before there was the internet. Before we had automotive blogs, we had Hemmings. Fortunately, the guys at Hemmings are a bright bunch and have adopted the interwebs alongside that iconic publication. Associate Editor Dan Strohl even poked his head into the CoW on occasion. Today, Dan has come across a pretty cool woody on e-bay. This 1948 Packard once belonged to Toronto born rocker Neil Young!
Another not so little, little guy like me, Chris Burdick at Automoblog has been at this for almost as long as I have. Yesterday’s post was a bit of new school stuff, as he is checking out a rather heavily tweaked GT-R.
For our last visit of the day, I think we should visit another one of the big-uns that has contributed in the past. I find it rather refreshing that Edmunds and their readers agree with my sentiments about the Honda CR-Z.
Thats about it for tonight. Looking back at this list, I realize that many of the automotive bloggers I e-met early on have moved onwards to other projects. The good ones though are still around, churning out great content at their original sites. I feel honoured that my little CoW experiment may have helped some of them get where they are or are going. We’re in our 5th year here in The Garage and there aren’t many online auto publications who can say the same. Here’s to 5 more!
See ya next week for another edition of the Carnival of Wheels!
Related posts:
“Marc seems to have gotten a little bit crustier”
Hey, I resemble that remark.
First, nice to see that the carnival of Wheels in back in action, but like I’ve said in the past, you do it when you have the time. Second, Thanks for the mention above, but I actually started speedlinking because of a Problogger.net tip, it works on getting traffic. The other reason was I wanted people to know what I was reading. I’m doing the same speedlinking in the future on my new blog ThinkingBrian.com.
Speedlinking is something every blogger who owns their own blog should do. It brings in more traffic, recommends good articles to readers and gives those bloggers and writers who wrote them credit, especially those writers who are currently unemployed in this tough economy. Its a win win for everybody.
Good luck with the COC and I can’t wait for the 2010 NASCAR season to start, I don’t have much to write about with now just talking about NASCAR and Automobiles.
Gary,
Great to see the carnival is back up and running. Will it have a “freak” show this time around?
Looking forward to participating and helping if we can.
Ummm – I have not contacted that individual and he has finally stopped sending me messages!
We’ll be working you in next week!