Topic: Winding Road

[Ultra]

http://www.windingroad.com/

This is a first class website.  It is a David E. Davis, Jr. project.  I have been in discussions with Bob Weber, the publisher of Winding Road, about possibly using AutoPuzzles.com content on the front page of their site, much in the manner that www.bigthreenews.com is doing right now.  As the discussion stands, sometime about the first or second week of November, David E. Davis, Jr. and his editor are planning on going over the site for the idea of using it for frontpage NTC content for their monthly contests to give away product, etc.  With their thumbs up, we will start to be a featured part of Winding Road.  Anyway, between then and now, any quality content that anyone can produce to help the site get as loaded for bear as possible, Karn and I would both greatly appreciate it.

You, the AutoPuzzles.com membership, are a fantastic bunch.  I am proud to be able to be of service to you.  Anything I can do for you, you just let me know.

 

[Arthur Dent]

I just came across them a week or so ago - definitley looks to be a quality site. I actually found it through an article on a Caterham Seven they are building - the costs make me shudder.

It would be excellent to have AP featured there.

article in question if anyone is interested: http://www.windingroad.com/features-page/caterham-seven/

[Ultra]

It would be excellent to have AP featured there.

Yes, it would.

I am most pleased by the idea that the feature contributors could get themselves a real nice audience and some exposure to real print editors.

 

[porridgehead]

Very interesting indeed.

[Ultra]

For any of our readers, international or otherwise, who are per chance caught at unawares,

According to Wikipedia:



David E. Davis, Jr. is an automobile journalist and magazine publisher. His career in the automotive industry spanned from race car driver, factory worker and car salesman to ad salesman with Road & Track and copywriter for Corvette advertisements before becoming a writer for Car and Driver magazine in 1962. He wrote for that publication until 1967 and later became its editor and publisher from 1976 to 1985 before leaving to found Automobile magazine. During this time, his "Driver's Seat" columns for Car and Driver, and "American Driver" columns for Automobile, became wildly popular and influential in the industry. Time magazine called Davis the "dean of automotive journalists." He is also the editorial director of Motor Trend magazine. He has been semi-retired from day-to-day operations on Automobile since 2000, and continues to serve as editorial director of Motor Trend. In 1985, during a 60-minutes special report on the Lamborghini Countach, he said "I firmly believe that anyone, who is worth anything at all, should own a 12 cylinder car before they die. Because there is nothing else like it" A statement that mirrored his earnest appreciation, at times even for the ridiculous, for great automobiles.


In 2004, Davis received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Michigan, and served as its spring commencement speaker. He received a standing ovation for the speech, which delved into the triumphs and tragedies of his personal life, including a race car accident at age 25 which left his face severely disfigured and required extensive plastic surgery. After that, he said, "I suddenly understood with great clarity that nothing in life — except death itself — was ever going to kill me. No meeting could ever go that badly. No client would ever be that angry. No business error would ever bring me as close to the brink as I had already been." He often describes the incident in speaking engagements and columns as thoroughly life-changing, and says he was "born again."

Mr. Davis is now Editor-in-Chief of Winding Road an e-zine for high-performance vehicles. It is published by Absolute Multimedia, Inc. of Austin, Texas, publishers of 'The Absolute Sound' and 'The Perfect Vision.'

[Ultra]

The contents of Bob's latest email.....

We’ve all been there. I love people who care deeply about what they’re doing.

 

Let’s talk during the week of Nov. 6th. You call me or I’ll call you.

 

Work: ___-___-____

Cell: ___-___-____

 

Best,

Bob

 

[Otto Puzzell]

Too cool

[Ultra]

Too cool

With that in mind, take extra care to make tomorrows update look good.

 

[Boxer2500]

Wow! This is too freaking cool!

[Ultra]

Wow! This is too freaking cool!

 

Check out Karn's latest handiwork on the front page.

 www.autopuzzles.com

He has totally outdone himself with this update.  IMHO, we are ready for primetime.

 

[MG]

Excellent!   A big Well Done to all involved.

BTW, Porridgebrain, your avatar comes very close to infringing on my patent rights to the Tri-Turbo Y-9. Watch it!   

[porridgehead]

Oh yeah? Well count yer valves carefully because you'll see that I've got none! That there avatar is the prototype of the original Y-Nought, so it ain't even close to a Y-nine or even a White Hen. 

[MG]

Well, I SEE. That really IS quite something, although the resulting internals rather resemble an inebriated starfish at a Pally LeBel concert!   

[Ultra]

The contents of Bob's latest email.....

We’ve all been there. I love people who care deeply about what they’re doing.

 

Let’s talk during the week of Nov. 6th. You call me or I’ll call you.

 

Work: ___-___-____

Cell: ___-___-____

 

Best,

Bob

 

One more weekend........

 

[Ultra]

I am now writing a letter detailing how our site works and how they could use us to help them give away a Toyota to a contest winner every year.    If that comes about, we will be sharing the frontpage of their ebay motors site with them as well as Winding Road's frontpage.     We might be asked to use ebay motors as the source of the puzzles that qualify someone to win a Toyota.  I told him we could do that and track it for him. 

Everything is looking real good.  I do believe a cover bug is going to be in the offing. Bob sees us as an obvious traffic generator and says that with their constant search for new content, our site is perfect.  They might even have me at the meeting in Ann Arbor this Thursday with David E. to discuss it.

I can hardly stay in my own skin I am so excited.  Again, I want to thank all of the AutoPuzzles gang for believing in Karn and I and for helping to make this site what it has become.  You guys are the best.

Sincerely,

Charlie Oncina

[Ultra]

What do you guys think of it?   I hope it does the job.

====================================================

To the fine ladies and gentlemen of Winding Road,

The AutoPuzzles.com website is designed with one idea in mind. Regularly updated, fresh new challenging content for the automotive reader. It is an interactive experience designed to create and maintain traffic to it and it's affiliated sites. The premise of the site is very simple and, we feel, appeals to the basest instincts of all "car nuts." "Can you identify this car?" followed by the picture of an obscure vehicle. How obscure the vehicle determines the relative difficulty of the puzzles. We use two difficulty levels right now in order to keep the concept simple for all the autopuzzlers at the site. The general objective for the end-user is to solve five puzzles and be ranked amongst the pros here at AutoPuzzles. All of the guesses on all of the puzzles are tracked via our forum, which is where one must register in order to participate in the AutoPuzzles action. Once there, the end-user is exposed to a cornucopia of automobiles from the earliest parts of the last century right up to today. Our solved puzzles are all saved there as well, for any user to be able to check out, with their attendent photos. This is all done side by side with feature articles culled from the pens of the end-users of the site as well as automotive discussions of all sorts.

What we are proposing involves the use of cover bugs from our site appearing on your site. Those cover bugs would contain the latest puzzle photo from our site asking the end-user to tell us what automobile they are seeing. Anyone wishing to venture a guess becomes the newest AutoPuzzler and is then exposed to a large variety of content designed to hold their interest and draw them back to the site on a regular basis. Our goal, in order to further drive traffic to our affiliated sites, is to use our affiliated news sites as the primary source of information for our automotive forum discussions. This type of cross-linking then creates a symbiosis of interests where each site is helping to drive the others traffic. This relationship also fosters a base of users that develop feelings of loyalty due to the participation in activities there. For example, the following quote, taken from one of our recently joined members, expresses his thoughts upon joining the pro ranks at the AutoPuzzles site:

"Thanks for welcoming me into the pro ranks. I'm finding out just how many cars there are out there that I never knew existed. It isn't the winning that's so much fun, it's playing the game...tracking down websites about particular cars, following hunches, etc.

Dan"

I feel that Dan's comments epitomize what our site is all about. I hope you will check it out and see for yourselves. If you do, please let us know you stopped by. Any further questions you may have I would be pleased to answer whenever convenient for you. If I can be of any further service to any of you, in any way, please do not hesitate in letting me know. I look forward to hearing from and working with you soon.

Sincerely,

Charles Oncina II

[Otto Puzzell]

Very nice. Well done!

[Stephen M]

Well done, Ultra!

[Ultra]

Thanks, Charlie, I really appreciate the effort you're willing to put
into the project. It might take a bit of time to execute, and it's a
consensus issue that needs all of us to bring it in, but I believe in
the value, and I will push. Chickens shouldn't be counted yet, but I'll
have a better feel for it on Thursday.

Best,
bob

And we wait....... 

[Tifosi]

What do you guys think of it?   I hope it does the job.

====================================================

To the fine ladies and gentlemen of Winding Road,

The AutoPuzzles.com website is designed with one idea in mind. Regularly updated, fresh new challenging content for the automotive reader. It is an interactive experience designed to create and maintain traffic to it and it's affiliated sites. The premise of the site is very simple and, we feel, appeals to the basest instincts of all "car nuts." "Can you identify this car?" followed by the picture of an obscure vehicle. How obscure the vehicle determines the relative difficulty of the puzzles. We use two difficulty levels right now in order to keep the concept simple for all the autopuzzlers at the site. The general objective for the end-user is to solve five puzzles and be ranked amongst the pros here at AutoPuzzles. All of the guesses on all of the puzzles are tracked via our forum, which is where one must register in order to participate in the AutoPuzzles action. Once there, the end-user is exposed to a cornucopia of automobiles from the earliest parts of the last century right up to today. Our solved puzzles are all saved there as well, for any user to be able to check out, with their attendent photos. This is all done side by side with feature articles culled from the pens of the end-users of the site as well as automotive discussions of all sorts.

What we are proposing involves the use of cover bugs from our site appearing on your site. Those cover bugs would contain the latest puzzle photo from our site asking the end-user to tell us what automobile they are seeing. Anyone wishing to venture a guess becomes the newest AutoPuzzler and is then exposed to a large variety of content designed to hold their interest and draw them back to the site on a regular basis. Our goal, in order to further drive traffic to our affiliated sites, is to use our affiliated news sites as the primary source of information for our automotive forum discussions. This type of cross-linking then creates a symbiosis of interests where each site is helping to drive the others traffic. This relationship also fosters a base of users that develop feelings of loyalty due to the participation in activities there. For example, the following quote, taken from one of our recently joined members, expresses his thoughts upon joining the pro ranks at the AutoPuzzles site:

"Thanks for welcoming me into the pro ranks. I'm finding out just how many cars there are out there that I never knew existed. It isn't the winning that's so much fun, it's playing the game...tracking down websites about particular cars, following hunches, etc.

Dan"

I feel that Dan's comments epitomize what our site is all about. I hope you will check it out and see for yourselves. If you do, please let us know you stopped by. Any further questions you may have I would be pleased to answer whenever convenient for you. If I can be of any further service to any of you, in any way, please do not hesitate in letting me know. I look forward to hearing from and working with you soon.

Sincerely,

Charles Oncina II

This is really an honor; to think that my idol and all-time favorite author, David E. Davis, Jr. might actually read something I've written.  Wow!  I've been a fan of his since he wrote a Retrospect article on a 1941Packard station wagon for Motor Trend in the late '70's.  We used to call him The Houdini Of Hyperbole.

I signed up at Winding Roads a few weeks ago, and love the magazine.  I hope everything works out for the project.


Dan

[Ultra]

Well, Dan and everybody else.  The publisher is meeting with David E. tomorrow in Ann Arbor.  I think this site is a perfect match for Winding Road.  Let them know what you are thinking about that and their magazine here.

editor@windingroad.com

[Ultra]

Except when I called Winding Road and Bob personally answered just before Thanksgiving, I was not getting replies from my  1 call or 2 emails.  Bob was nice and says wheels are turning and such when I got him on the phone and that he will call me and let me know what came of things after their meeting in Austin in the first week of December.   This is a corporate operation and I imagine these things take time.   I am disappointed that Bob isn't more proactive in the communication department.  Overall, I have been waiting to hear what he has to say about whether they would like to use us in the construction of their site.  I hope to hear something soon but at this point I would be shocked to hear anything before the first of the year.

That is, unfortunately, all I know.