Fall / Winter Update

old pic without newly painted garage

I guess car season is sort of over.  Well at least for the Shelby.  I kinda put the GT500 away for the winter.  I still need to get it up on jack stands and put the trickle charger on.  Secretly I hoped we’d get another warm day but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. So it's pretty much in hibernation.  I switched the RS over to snow tires because in Ontario you never know when the snow is gonna start flying.

The Daily Drive video creation has slowed accordingly.  I might get in a autumn leaves drive in the RS and I’m definitely going to record any heavy snow days to see how well the RS performs in the snow.  There really hasn’t been much automotive news that has any interest for me so not much to talk about lately. 

My job has also been in “crunch mode” so a lot of late nights which doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else.  Only really fun thing has been that now that it’s been getting dark earlier I’ve been able to use my radar detector on my way home.  They are illegal in Ontario so you’ve got to be a little sneaky.  It's fun because in general the police don't expect people to have them so it's a HUGE advantage.

So things are slowing down here at American Motoring but will not stop.  The frost has started so look forward to the RS snow videos. 

I Left Wheelwell

Just wanted to explain why I left Wheelwell.  First off I'm not going to lie, I wanted it as a way to feed interest in my American Motoring blog, YouTube, etc and but when I post a new YouTube video or article and really didn't receive any traffic from there.  But I'm willing to accept that maybe there is no interest in my content from Wheelwell members.

The big reason I'm leaving is that I was once a member of the automotive site www.streetfire.net.  They were trying to be a kind of YouTube for the automotive community and it worked pretty good for a time but it started to suffer from the same advertising plague that is creeping into Wheelwell.  At first there was a "shop" page, then ads start to show up on the borders of the site.  Next they started to allow advertising video which soon turned to non automotive ads.  Then the site eventually was overrun and it was difficult to find anything automotive on the site.

Wheelwell is going the same direction.  When it first started it was all about the members and their cars, then ads and shop page, then ads showing up in your "garage page" around your car which I'm sorry is total BS.  You make a cool car, post pics on their site, which draws views that makes them money.  But I was fine with all this until today.

Today I got a direct message from a Wheelwell "Creative Director" reminding me that there is a shop.  Then she asked what's on my "to buy" list of parts I have planned for my car.  That was enough.  Ads I can choose to click on or not.  Stores I can choose to buy from or not but don't send me direct messages.  That's like telemarketer calls. I can create my own garage page here on the blog and it will be ad free.

I understand Wheelwell needs to keep the lights on but when it's in your face all the time you just don't want to go there.

So I wish Wheelwell luck and I hope they don't end up going down the same path as Streetfire.  I'll do my own thing here.

Here is a kind of silly video showing the interior lighting of the 2017 Focus RS at night.  Super short, but SUPER sexy.