Original zcar.com guys still around?

[Mike kZ]

Go back a little further. Remember Preston Pratt from Arizona or the infamous Stealth Z of Steve Webb?

I can go back as far as www.twinturbo.net when they had a first gen forum. Back in the dial up days around 93 or 94. There was another one, but I can't remember the name, but it finally got bought out by the autoforums.com site and it went to hell as an unmoderated site. Autoforums got better, but the Z site is long gone. We thought Derek was crazy for starting up zdriver.com, but it turned out better and is the only one of the old ones still going even though he is out of it and out of his Infiniti site as well. I guess I can remember even further back having to be on a mailing list from IZCC at www.zhome.com before the boards. Seems like any site that shows pomise now gets bought up by some bigger bulleting board company. Thankfully we have always had great Zcar clubs here in Texas before the internet made us one big happy family.

 

I remember all that! I remember twinturbo.net, then there was casualforums.com before autoforums.com. Then we went to zcar.com, and the V8z flames were getting stronger. That's when Owen started V8z.com.

[Leon]

Speaking of Z's....saw a nice green 240Z the other day that looks to have been recently restored/modded. This is in Campbell/Los Gatos area of NorCal. Bright green exterior with "RBBBTT" for the license plate. Anyone here?

 

I believe that was Rob's (?) car from Z-car Garage in San Jose. I think the plate reads RB26TT since that's what lies underhood. It's a sweet ride, got to see it when picking a part up from the shop.

[Dave240Z]

I believe that was Rob's (?) car from Z-car Garage in San Jose. I think the plate reads RB26TT since that's what lies underhood. It's a sweet ride, got to see it when picking a part up from the shop.

 

I'm familiar with Rob's car. Definitely not that one. This one had much larger wheels and was carbureted also a much darker green. License plate should read more like "Ribbit" as in Kermit the Frog (due to green color), not RB26TT as in RB engine.

[Michael]

Brings back the memories! And if I'm not mistaken, we are coming up on the 10th anniversary of HybridZ!

 

Others doubtless can recite a more accurate history, but I vaguely remember the ascendency of forums in around 1998. Before that, it seems, the principal format was e-mail exchanges... every day there would be e-mails sent to every subsriber. When the volume of e-mail became intractable, a day's collection would be bundled into one large e-mail. I first stumbled into the e-mail exchanges in grad school, in around 1995. But they likely go back to the late 1980's, if not earlier.

 

Before 1999-2000 it was pretty difficult to find Datsun V8 swap information. The JTR book was already around, and there was the "Zhome" web site mentioned by someone earlier. Occasionally a V8 conversion would pop up in car shows, such as the Motorsports shows in Orange County (California). And that was around, or shortly after, the aforementioned flame wars. Those were some really irate exchanges...

 

I continued posting to Zcar.com until around 2001; it remained a useful resource for stock S30 information. On one occasion I had a frustrating (but elementary) electrical/EFI failure on a 1978 Z which served as daily-driver at the time. After posting my question on Zcar.com, the solution was posted the same afternoon.