All car forums seem dead (especially in Australia), where do people hang out now?

[whichonetoget]

I remember the glory days of this forum back in the late 2000's and early-mid 2010's. It was the same thing for most other car brands, there was usually a large forum for discussing general & technical information about our cars, a place to buy/sell parts, organise meetups and just have general banter.

Where is everyone now? Facebook? Reddit?

[Lucas_R]

Forums in general are dead these days. Its all moved onto Facebook, which is ultra frustrating because you get 5 people each day asking the exact same question, and its hard to search for things. And DIY's are basically a thing of the past now too.

Im on various forums both in Australia and overseas, and they are all dead.

[Flipper Dog]

I have noticed that this forum has been quite since the new layout change.
I am also on some oversea forums but three of them, one UK based and two US based, have increased activity. These forums are model specific not just brand bias so you have some enthusiasm of members sharing their knowledge. Of interest is two of them owned by the same company added an A I "member" who would generate posts and answer questions. The forum members called "witch" and ran it off with pitchforks and burning torches, so you see very little activity from it now.

Can't understand the popularity of Facebook, it is just so hard to navigate through looking for information.

[The_Hawk]

It was before the layout change... My best guess is that the AI search results in Google have stopped people from clicking on links.... but it's only a guess and not a great one.

Things were gradually tracking down over time, but we still had about 20k active users a week according to Google Analytics at the start of last year. Then in March 2025 it just halved over night and kept falling rapidly to about 5K / week. What changed? Nothing at all from out side at that point.

It wasn't until June we moved servers and domains, although the old name still exists and ALOT of effort was taken to make sure all the old links to .org.au or .com.au still resolve to the correct thread so people still find what they were looking for when coming in from links from other places.






That drop continued to today where we are lucky to have 1,500 - 2,000 active users / week.

The really wild part is that the server load, hits and even the forums own counter say there are lots of people online... but I suspect it's all bots trawling and building AI models or something.


Very sadly, I just don't know if car forums are a thing anymore.

I'm trying to keep the history alive here while I can, but where the forum once upon a time generated enough income to cover its own running costs, fund giveaways, event sponsorship and the free Summer Cruise BBQ I used to put on when I was in Sydney. These days, revenue is effectively zero (which is also why we are on vBulletin 5 and not vB6 or anything of the other alternatives), even so the transition from the old and failing server to where we are today was almost the end but we made it through to live another day!

[Lucas_R]

It is certainly sad. I think the vast majority of us users are around a similar age group (40-60yrs old). The move to Facebook is convenience, lazyness and age group related in my opinion.

Convenience - they are already looking on Facebook and other social media anyway, so may as well ask the question there.
Lazyness - people in general are so lazy these days. Why spend time doing your own research when you can just ask a question and get other people to do the work for you (my favourite is like where is the best place to get my car serviced.........). Ummm which city buddy? Oh Sydney, ok well Sydney is a huge place, any chance you want to give a rough idea on which area of Sydney you live in so that people can give recommendations that are actually somewhat conveniently located because there is no point in me recommending a place in Hornsby if you live in Camden.

Or the people who say that their car is doing something weird or making a weird noise etc but dont tell you what type of car it is and what engine/gearbox it has. It's just a sea of stupid and lazy people.

Age - id be very suprised if more than 5% of active members on here are under 35 years old. I think its fair to say the majority of active members on here are 40+ and I guess most have mortgages, kids, jobs other hobbies etc. And at this age the love of cars that we had when younger starts to die off and get replaced with something else so naturally they buy a more mundane boring car and stop tinkering with it and stop looking at the forum. On Facebook, yes there are people who are 30, 40, 50 etc in the car groups, but the vasy majority are 18-25 yr olds. These are the ones asking the same question 5 times a day, with terrible grammar, giving next to no context on questions and honestly ruining it for everyone.

Sadly I think forums are dying a slow death as its members slowly lose interest and move to other hobbies and new cars become less modifyable, financially attainable, and DIY friendly. Happy to say that if this is the case, I will be here until the very end as I live and breath cars and have loved cars ever since I was a little kid.

[The_Hawk]

I think you're pretty much right about everything. When we were younger we were often more time rich and cash poor. Couple that wth an interest in cars and of course we were tinkerers who wanted to modify (and fix) our own things.
Now we have less time and the income to support nicer things... that and not having your fuel pump fail at 6am on a Wednesday while you're trying to get to work is a great thing.

But why don't the new kids in the same situation come along and do the same? I suspect that the internet is just that more accessible now with things like Reddit where anyone can create a community about anything or even Discord, although that is way too transient for my liking.

[Sharkie]

Fully agree with you both. I still contribute financially annually (I remember when I get hit with the annual notice and receipt LOL) and will be here for as long as I can. Am on a few FB groups too, and your comments are spot on. The level of knowledge out there (or lack thereof) is actually quite scary. Have seen a guy with Polo GTI (photos don't lie) argue for days with others (and me) that he had a Golf 7 GTI for instance ....

My car enthusiasm has not died off yet, according to SWMBO it's actually getting worse, although I now tend to play a bit more with fixing/upgrading things that years past I would have outsourced.

For me, the enjoyment comes out of fixing a broken car (VW mostly) and putting it back to workable condition and on the road again. As per Hawk, I no longer have to worry about my own ride being unavailable to go to work (and even if it is, I might have a spare or 2 taking up space), so not afraid to take on a project that I don't (yet) know how to fix and can let it sit while I research how or do other things for a while before coming back to it.

[DV52]

hmm........ I don't agree!!

For my sins, I was made a moderator on the OBD11 forum and I get to see the number of new forum members that constantly register. The dynamic is nothing like the behavior assumed in the responses in this tread!

My hunch is that there is little (if any) change in the interests of successive generations for the matters explored in these forums. Maybe those that are interested in code changes have been reduced in number by the restrictions of the latest protection protocols - but I would think that this has had only a marginal impact on overall forum traffic, in general.

Fact is that in the 21st century, competition amongst these forums has increased substantially because of better technology and more sophisticated software. I visit a number of forums and I constantly meet lots of Aussies on other forums. Of course I've never asked why they don't use a local forum - I simply assume that they perceive an advantage in using another forum.

So, my guess is that it's just a matter of each member's preference which forums are more active than others. Obviously those personal preferences will be varied. However and ultimately whatever the perceived advantages may be - they will be the result of competing forums that offer different and better facilities as sensed by individual members!!

And YES, the likes and dislikes of forum members is a very fickled thing!!

Don