Holy crap, it’s Friday, which means the Autopian has officially survived its first full week! I’m not going to lie: I’m exhausted, and I know David is too, and I’m pretty sure both of our diets have been the sort that would make a nutritionist slap us, hard, and with genuine rage. That said, we’re grateful you’re here reading this site, and we’re thrilled to work with incredibly talented contributors. David and I still can’t believe all of this is real.
Speaking of contributors, let’s shout them out by name, why not, because they deserve it. We got our fellow car-obsessive Thomas Hundal, cranking out the content; there’s Mark Tucker, giving us our daily serving of shitboxes, hot and fresh every morning; we have our incredible design twins, The Secret One and Adrian Clarke; our engineering-mistake confessor Huibert Mees; Rex Bennett, our man inside the Lane; the Navy’s finest pants-shitter, Bobby Mackay; small-town gearhead anthropologist David Wilson; the GOAT himself, Murilee Martin; our China-car savant, Tycho de Feijter; and our fantastic extra topshot artist, Syd.
How did we manage to pull together such a fantastic team?
We know we have a long way to go to make everything the way we — and you — want it to be. There are still changes we want to make to the design, the commenting system, the pace of our writing — pretty much everything. We probably should get our asses in gear and sell a few ads, too. (Until then, who wants to buy T-shirts in bulk?)
Most importantly, we want to know what you, our fantastic readers, think! We started this site because we want to produce stories and videos and whatever you want to read, watch, listen, and enjoy! If there’s something you don’t like, or want more of, or less of, or whatever, let us know, right here in the comments, and we’ll do our best to make things better. We’re constantly striving to improve, and we’re very open to new ideas.
Thank you all for reading. I really mean that, and I know David and Beau mean it, too. We’ve been busy, but we’ve been having a great time; it’s all been a reminder of why we wanted to do this in the first place: because we love cars, and we love the way cars bring people together.
Except maybe for a couple of jerks on Reddit. But you know, that’s the internet.
(image: Skoda Classic)
Blown away. Honestly… it’s almost too much content in a week. I could not find time to read everything, and I wanted to. Please do NOT burn yourselves out. A steady drip of 1/2 the amount of stuff you posted would keep me hooked. Cheers dudes.
Happy to see the Shitbox Showdown is my new replacement for the other daily article on that other site. I enjoy the format and the Friday overall winner.
I’m wondering if the shitbox aspect is going to get old/tough to find examples after a while. I wouldn’t mind if there were different showdown “themes” to keep it fresh – shitboxes, classic cars, off-roaders, DD, motorcycles, hot hatches, etc.
Glad you like it! The only real rule is the $2500 price cap, which might be raised a bit if it does get hard to find cars. I like the price limit, because I’m a cheap bastard who refuses to make a car payment, and $2500 is the most I could afford to spend on a car at any given time. It’s fun searching for stuff that I could theoretically buy.
But I’m going to cast as wide of a net as possible, and include as many different vehicle types as I can.
Ok hear me out Beau. Think of this as in investment. Its not even a huge investment. An Autopian International Headquarters/place to hide a certain collection of vehicles out of the elements. You know somewhere like https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/12530-12600-Hamilton-Ave-Highland-Park-MI/25201213/
Its pretty close to woodward so a certain writer can save on towing bills…
This is already great – thank you for doing this! I would like to support you, but it seems your shop currently doesn’t ship outside of the USA. Adblocker is turned off for this site, I’m sure you’ll keep it on a tolerable level.
Motorcycles, Heavy Duty Equipment, Airplanes, Submarines and Flying versions of them all.
Awesome, you wrote an entire article without using the word “shit”…, I knew you could do it.
A very big congrats on the amount of content to start off. Was not expecting this much right off the bat.
As for the necessary ads, find a deal where you include them tastefully in your site’s assets (like the Optima in the banner). Many of us are running ad blockers with the way some sites try to choke us on them.
I’m sure you’re already working on it, but a notification for a reply to your comment would get conversations going in the comments.
I didn’t read every single comment, so I’m not sure if this has been suggested already. I don’t find the scrolling picture/article at the top of the mobile version necessary. I can just scroll down to what has been posted.
Awesome first week! Anxiously awaiting Mad Mike’s mods on the Changli
I love the site. Here’s an idea that may not appeal to everyone else, but I would very much like a paywall option – your writing is excellent, and I’d enjoy being able to read it without the constant advertising. If you offered the option to pay, and took away all the ads, I think people would sign up.
I heartily second this suggestion of paywall option. I stuck with the J-hotmess site through buyouts, the Great Greying, and even the writer culling, but the ads-especially sneaky moving autoplay ones-sapped my will to live. Hadn’t been there in over a year till a few weeks back I took the plunge on the very day David & Jason announced they were done. Now I’m here and won’t go back.
A couple people mentioned Fancy Kristen ( I heartily endorse that )—how about Stef Schrader? She’s a competent wordsmith, and quirky enough to be a great fit here
DO IT: hire her!
Great first week!
Always like DT/JT on Jalopnik, and when I saw Murilee Martin’s article I knew you guys have a impressive writer base to draw from.
Personally, I think ads are going to be a fact of life as you guys expand, please just keep them friendly (no autoplay crap)
Other than that, keep bringing us the good stuff each week.
Looking forward to watching The Autopian grow.
great job mr. torchinsky!
ading a section about tuning culture in differrent countries is my suggestion.
and let me know if you wanted any info about autos in Iran.
forgot to say,I used to be an auto journalist here in Iran,and I’m also a hobbyist tunner
I absolutely want info about autos in Iran!
Dark mode?
Fantastic, fantastic first week.
Only one request: let me give you money. Ads are – well, ads suck. Let me just give you money for writing cool stuff.
(And Yes, I know you’re just going to waste it on seedy taillight-district drinking holes and rusted out jeeps to foist on out-of-towners.)
That first week was great. As some have suggested, pace yourself, I don’t want to see you guys doing a remake of the chest buster scene because of your diet.
Maybe crank out fewer articles but spend more time hanging out in the comments? It’s always a treat to be able to chat you up.
Hey! I’m here, so, hello! I don’t want to remake the chest buster scene but I may write about how much I love sci-fi mealtime scenes, especially ones on spaceships. There’s something about that dinner scene in Alien (prior to the, you know, incident) that I just find so weirdly comforting. David’ll push back, but we’ll see.
The passion and authenticity are what sets this site apart…keep it up! Great first week, I’ve been checking in daily and have recommending the site to fellow car enthusiast.
One recommendation would be to enable comment editing and the ability to post pictures:/videos.
Dude! You think you can improve on this?? lol
Seriously, its been amazing so far. I expected a quirky small-ish website.What you’re doing is waaaaaaaaaayy past that.You’re already blowing me away with the number and *quality* of the writers.
FWIW my favorites so far are the insider technical stories -such as the GT40 suspension flaw.
Of course these stories by their very nature are limited.Eventually you’ll need to seek out other writers as each exhausts their supply of stories.Hopefully you can keep finding such people.
Perhaps someone who works/worked for tesla would be interesting.I’m sure they’d have technical stories both amazing and terrible. Also on the subject of Tesla, can
Also the related ‘ask and engineer’ series will be solid for awhile.Until we run out of questions i guess 🙁
Allowing readers to comment is great.I’m sure you knew this already but just wanted to affirm it.That’s what made jalopnik so good,even with it’s current flaws.If this site can attract a critical mass of commenters it can be best car enthusiast website on the planet.
A word on ads. I see you have almost none so far.I fully expect you’ll have a lot in future and that’s totally fine.
GIFs ,moving ads that use a modest amount of data and perhaps even flashing ads are tolerable.In fact some of the slower moving ads are quite elegant.
Autoplay videos are most definitely NOT ok.
Autoplay videos that *change positions* on the page so you cant press the pause button (like some on Jalopnik) are pure f***ing evil!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In fact autoplay is so bad i find myself resenting a site’s staff and writers.From previous comments i think you already knew how much people hate autoplay.I’m mostly saying this to emphasize where that line should be drawn.
Non-video moving ads are acceptable. i.e ones that dont use much data or make sound
Please keep the main page clean-ish. Is there really any technical reason for repeating each article heading further down the page?If not then dont do it.
And please never screw it up as much as Jalopnik’s front page! Dont feel you have to make it crappy ‘just so it’s different from before’
CAN WE PLEASE HAVE MORE CHINESE CONTENT? Not just quirky stuff but news ,facts, notable cars and the like.China is the biggest thing happening in the car industry right now,and will be for some time.It’s bizarre that most sites ignore it.
Tycho is going to be a regular, so, yes, plenty of China car content to come.
Don’t wanna give you guys too much credit… but I’ve read more articles on here in a week than I have on Jalopnik in a month. So happy for you guys. You’ve done an amazing job so far. I’ll bet you’re exhausted.
I love this site and thank you for providing this place and its content.
With that said, what makes this place great is the ability to interact with its content creators and fellow users, allowing the exchange of information and ideas. So, here’s a recommendation to make the experience more user-friendly: Notify users when someone replies to their comments and which comment was replied to. Currently, one could make a comment and get a response a week or more later, and never even know about it.
11/10
You guys are absolutely killing it with The Autopian!
Your selection of writers and the content being put out already within the first week are absolutely top quality.
You have all the right ideas, the execution is well above what one would expect from a website just starting out. I can only see things picking up from here. Congratulations on week one. Keep it coming.
The first week has been fantastic. Find a place you can maintain and sell some ads, I want this to stick around.
Love the site so far! Adding Mercedes, Fancy Kristen, and Tom McParland would make it even better. Kudos on a great launch.
I’ve seen racing coverage mentioned a few times – if it’s something that drives a lot of traffic and helps make this successful, great. But I’d push back on it being “needed” here, unless DT & Torch are into it. There’s plenty of places to find that stuff, and honestly I grew up loving Road & Track but i always skipped the racing stuff…so maybe it’s just me.
Agreed that mainstream motorsport doesn’t need to be included. But how about quirky stuff, like home-built hill climbing cars, and space-framed v8-engined grass track carts?
Overall, this place is great. Really really great.
My #1 desired change to the site itself, is that y’all need to add a notification system to comments. You’ve stated that engagement with the community is one of the chief reasons for making this move, and it’s kind of hard for us to engage with each other, if we have no idea when one of us has replied to another.
As for the staff, again, y’all are great. But you should add Mercedes Street to the roster. That nut needs to be here too!
Comment reply tracking and comment editing would be nice. Other than that, great job, guys, even if I’m a little bitter you never responded to my job application e-mail 😉