A letter to our readers…

1997. That’s the year I started VWvortex. I owned a Mk3 Jetta GLX at the time and still miss that VR6 powered car to this day. There was no big plan with this site, I just wanted to try and build a website for people that like VWs and provide the latest news and photos. We added our discussion forum software in 1998 and from there this whole thing just took off. 17+ years later we have over 1 million people visiting this site every month and our forums are one of the largest automotive forums on the Internet.

After all these years, it was time to give some serious thought to the future. I have a family now, and kids… and they just keep getting older every day. The numerous events in their lives that I’ve missed when traveling somewhere or trying to keep this business going have begun to catch up with me.

Over the past few years, George and I started having some discussions about the sites and the long-term future. We have watched numerous other automotive websites get bought up by different companies over the years. We’ve also watched carefully what happens to those websites. There are only a handful of companies that we would feel comfortable leaving the reins to our sites to. Vertical Scope, the owners of Auto Guide and numerous other websites, is one of the few that will purchase a website, cultivate it, give it stability and let the original ecosystem and community continue to flourish and live with minimal change.

About 8 months ago we started discussions with Vertical Scope over this site and its future. After a LOT of soul searching, debate, rollercoasters of emotion and more, we made the difficult decision to sell VWvortex – over a month ago actually.

What has changed in that time? Not much. New servers, new hosting, better infrastructure and support and a few other things on the back end, but otherwise to you our readers nothing. And that’s the point. George and I are still around and you’ll find the same moderators and forum admins as well. We’re going to continue to keep offering the latest VW news and features you are used to and also continue to make performance improvements and upgrades to the forums.

Long term for George and I means reducing our pace a bit and spending a little more time with family and friends. Will Barber has been doing a knockout job keeping the blog and news flowing over the last year and he will continue to keep doing that. George and I will still be around poking into the forums, contributing stories, driving the latest model and more. A line in a famous movie once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” We just plan to stop and look around a little bit more.

The years here have literally flown by. The Golf IV had just launched in Europe when I launched this site and I still can’t believe three more generations have gone by since then. The readers we’ve met, the friendships we’ve made, the crazy stories we’ve both heard and been a part of – it has been an amazing ride. We are truly fortunate to be able to call this place home for the last 15+ years. What a long strange trip it has been.

Cheers!

-jamie

We’ve set up a discussion forum topic HERE if you want to say something nice or reminisce about old times. We love hearing your stories about how this site has affected your lives.

The post A letter to our readers… appeared first on VWVortex.

from VWVortex http://ift.tt/1MoPJCw
via IFTTT

Waterfest Moves to Atco Dragway

Waterfest 24 will be held at Atco Dragway, in Atco, New Jersey. The summer event will take place at its new venue on July 21 and 22. Long held in Englishtown, New Jersey, the festival has been such a large part of the VW scene that the latest iteration of the Golf even comes with optional “Englishtown” wheels . The new venue, however, is an NHRA drag track a scant 52 miles southwest of Englishtown. The ¼ mile drag track opened in 1960, which makes it the oldest drag strip in New Jersey. The announcement came today on a social media post that announced the new location. Waterfest is North America’s largest VW/Audi show. As many 20,000 people show up for the annual show, making the second largest show in the world—with Worthersee being number one. 2018 will be Waterfest’s 24 th year in existence. The post Waterfest Moves to Atco Dragway appeared first on VWVortex . from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2GQjkuc via IFTTT

Macau Gets Messy with 16-Car Pileup

The Macau Grand Prix is always good for an accident or two or 16— you may remember Audi’s race ending crash last year —and this year’s event didn’t disappoint. It didn’t take long for things to get messy on the tight road circuit. On the opening lap of the qualifying race a 16-car pileup caused the race to be suspended. Things kicked off when Daniel Juncadella hit a wall on the exit of Police bend, one of the tightest parts of the already tight circuit. The following car of Raffaele Marciello was able to avoid the carnage, but Laurens Vanthoor, who was in the upside-down Audi that ended the race last year, could not avoid Juncadella and together they blocked up the road pretty much completely. “I couldn’t see him [Juncadella] at first. Then I saw the car standing still,” Vanthoor told Motorsport. “I tried to brake but it was just understeering and I couldn’t do anything. There’s room for one car there and you’re blind.” Fourteen more cars would eventually crash into the corner c

The First of its Kind: Integrated Engineering Releases Highly-Anticipated IE450T MK6 Golf R Turbo Kit

After two long years of development, the team at Integrated Engineering has finally announced the release of their IE450T kit for the MK6 Golf R. With their turbo kit bolted on right out of the box, the sport AWD hatch is transformed into a 450bhp monster, with hardly any noticeable increase in spool time. In fact, 435 ft-lbs of torque are achieved at all four wheels, at a mere 3300rpm! By now you are probably asking yourself how this is even possible on a 2.0L engine that made nearly half that power from the factory. By employing true twin-scroll technology into the cast turbo manifold and pairing it with a state-of-the-art BorgWarner EFR turbocharger, IE was able to keep spool time at a minimum and bring the fastest-spooling big turbo setup to the market. “We wanted to offer a kit that would dramatically increase the power output without making the car lose its amazing street-friendly drivability,” mentioned one of the IE engineers. We are told the IE450T leaves the car driving jus

Vorderman Volkswagen

Search This Blog