There were a few reasons. The short story is that the new FFcars forum owners that Bill sold to had dramatically increased advert rates and the trouble is that the strength of the FFR community comes from the grassroots level. Most suppliers cannot afford $4800 per year and I felt there was a legitimate threat to the community if the forum excluded the bulk of core supporters in exchange for Tire Rack and Summit Racing sized sponsors... These bigger advertisers might make the site even more profitable than it was, but the loss of the smaller (and in my opinion, more important) hard-core suppliers (most central part of the FFR community), guys like Russ Thompson, Cobra Earl, Mark Reynolds at Breeze, Max, Forte, Oben, and so many others... that loss would be a disaster to the community. I can tell you that still waters run deep here with these people. Mark Reynolds was instrumental in getting the SEMA model legislation passed in Massachusetts. That's one guy and one story. The success of FFR is inseparable from the success of the community. I can tell you that a large forum management company has no understanding of the unique FFR society. And to us at FFR, how can you seriously quantify the value of these guys by measuring ad rates. No way.

If we started another forum at the very least it would pressure the old forum to accomodate and be more flexible on ad rates.

Factory Five is not in the business of forum management. We are a parts and engineering company. Still, without the core FFR community, we are severely diminished. We're never going to make our money on a Forum, rather, we are going to use it to promote, protect and grow this most amazing asset of all, THE FFR COMMUNITY. That community includes all of us, the crew at FFR, suppliers big and small, clubs, customers, enthusiasts, etc, a tremendous spectrum of people from all different backgrounds and experience.

The other reason is that I had a huge number of people asking us to do this. The forum, as it exists today, has evolved thru three versions (four if you count the new owners and name), and many of the guys in the FFR community have witnessed these changes, each time, having to see the community adjust and shift over each time. First was the old SW Specialty cars email list, then Mike Seniors Cobraforum, then Bill stepped in and copied the cobraforums email list and started FFCobra. FFCobra would become FFCars after a lawsuit with ****** and then it would be sold to the new corp owners. My loyalty was to Bill and once he sold the forum, I felt clear air to build this one.

I decided to start this forum and dedicate the place to a simple concept of building the FFR community. This is done in a number of ways, one big way is to provide advertisers (those guys who provide such important parts to the FFR community) access to FFR guys for ads that only reflect the shared cost of running the site. Based on a Co-op model, this place will also benefit from a closer link to our company and (when ready) we will leverage the great relationship with larger companies and suppliers to deliver real cool stuff and value to forum members.

Both organizations can co-exist just fine. In three weeks we have gathered almost 2,000 members. I am excited because the charter of this place is community above all and as this job is done well, we will see more and more people use this as a resource. Worried about censoring and freedom? We gathered the best moderators and guys with more FFR knowledge and expertise than anywhere and worked hard to ensure everyone knows the mission is to serve the community rather than promote FFR.

We have just started out and there is so much work to do. The front page layout has to change. We have to contact vendors as our vendor page and banner locations just launched a week ago, we have to tie the ffr tech guys in to reply quickly to inquiries. I do feel terrible as the first few weeks I've been out and unable to "pull my weight". Jen is doing better and this place is about to explode as we bring a bunch of new things on-line. There is a tremendous library of things that can be added, but we are taking our time and trying to make sure that the basics are covered, that we walk before we run, and that we have all the mechanics, links and programming done before we start dropping too much content on. I've got ten books worth of discovery, data, cool facts and historical stuff from the CS lawsuits that I want to post, along with so many other things.. It is a real shame that there is only 24 hours in the day!

I'd say keep an eye on both forums and support em both. Plenty of bandwidth.

Dave Smith