May I add my hearty thanks to all contributors over these many years of the Forum's existence.

Most of my short tenure as Xileno's "apprentice" has indeed been most educational, entertaining and pleasurable......with a few exceptions when we have been under attack from groups of spammers and spoilers. I thank Xileno for his guidance and shared philosophies.

But...Hey Ho .. times and legislation change. Let us hope that the wisdom and knowledge exhibited on the Forum remains of great help to future visitors, who will not, of course, be able to pose new questions, but will be able to access the solutions and answers archived.

Can't add anything worthwhile to the comments above, other than to agree with all of them. I have also been around for perhaps 20 years, probably poking my nose in more than necessary, but as has been said, the site may have lasted longer than we expected a few years ago.

So we have only a few days left .... :-(

Well. It has been fun for the past 15 years or so.

I have enjoyed the comments and some of the criticism over the years.

Perhaps we'll meet again on the "Other " forum.

Best wishes to All.

What a pity. I'm relatively new here, but have enjoyed my time a great deal. I was unwell when I joined and looking for something to do through the long hours of 'house arrest'. Since then, I've learned a lot and enjoyed getting to know many of the characters here.

The reasoning is understandable and I think we all thought the end was coming in any case. Still an unwelcome shock that it has.

Thanks to all who have kept the forum running and largely spam free for so many years.

Shame...a sad loss...but many thanks to all involved in helping keep this site alive as long as they could. I'm not an avid contributor but I'll miss my daily read here.

Edited by nellyjak on 25/09/2025 at 14:17

The damage done by some social media needs to be addressed. Imposing rules intended to eliminate content that is grossly offensive (drugs, abuse, bigotry, violence etc etc) is to be applauded but probably not wholly achievable anyway.

Largely ignored in forming legislation is the social impact on smaller groups brought together through common interest - not just motoring but all that is reasonable and decent from art to zoology (includes cookery, sewing, woodwork, stamp collecting etc etc etc).

Despite occasionally making somewhat provacative posts, my thanks go out to the rest of the HJ community for their general tolerance, and the moderators in particular for what may be a thankless task at times.

Thanks to all who made it viable and made it work over the years and thanks to the mods and posters of present and past times.

Anyone who thinks the country formerly known as Great Britain is still the free country us boomers enjoyed (and loved) should be having another think or two, senior politicians making laughable claims about free speech when in practice the net tightens gradually an anyone who dare stray from the approved narrative of the day, who would have thought a motoring forum like this should have to worry about falling foul of the new apparatchiks.

This is not about protection of children and the so called vulnerable, the state has no standing when it comes to such matters, its about the quelling of alternative views being aired in places not under state control.

I'll quite understand if you feel the need to delete this post, we all know it isn't the fault of the owners of this forum, who quite reasonably need to protect themselves, as we all may have to before long.

Good fortune everyone in whatever you do..

Thanks to all the mods over the years for the hard work they have put in keeping us in line and most of the spam out. Thanks to most, if not all, posters for the educational posts I have enjoyed reading over the last quarter century or so. Take care all, and drive safely.

Sorry to learn about the closure of the forum. It has been an invaluable source of information and news. It is a shame that legislation designed to stop the worst of the internet shuts down sites like this that are of no threat. That is the trouble with catch all legislation, it takes out the good along with the bad. Hopefully there will be other sites that will continue. Many thanks to all the mods and others for their work.

RichardM

Have to agree with most of what's been said up thread.

It's sad, but as has been speculated on the "other" site, perhaps it's a convenient way out for the new owners. There are already some contributors that post on both sites - some of them even keep the same name (I do)!

I hope to see some of you there as it would be a shame to lose the experience and expertise we have here. Thanks to the mods for keeping it civilised.

May I too add my thanks to all who provided such valuable insights over many years. May I give the doc a special mention, our E46 330Ci is still such fun.

I am not skilled enough to make many contributions but have been an avid reader since the early days. Good old Peter. He was a real character.

A question, will other forums face such an extinction event? If not, where exactly can we migrate to?

Given that forums in general are not as popular as 10-15 years ago and also faced with 300 pages of tedious Legislation to plod through, I expect a lot of forum owners will decide it's just much simpler and safer to pull the plug.

Even small 'hobby' type forums get caught up in all this if they host user-generated content. It may be that their risk assessments show a low risk and therefore the compliance is lower but it still all needs to be done.

Oh dear. That is a ball-acher of massive proportions. I used to be a regular contributor under the handle of 'Scouseford' and had many enjoyable debates about a variety of motoring subjects. I can't remember why I stopped debating (probably an 'age thing' but i continued to read what others had to say. I always thought that this was a site that attracted the more sensible contributor. Don't know what direction to take for sensible debate now. Are there any other motoring sites that attract the more balanced contribotor? Probably not.

Just seen this (8hrs behind in California) - indeed sad news. I'll not take up space echoing others, but posting now mainly to thank the current mods and all other contributors. I have much enjoyed the debates over the past umpteen years. Avant must be turning, nay, red-lining in his grave.

.

If, after D-day on Tuesday, all our contributions become frozen in an archive, I wonder how long that will last, if the advertising income which has kept it alive ceases because the audience is assumed to be drying up ?

When the excellent blogger the late Anna Racc*** (the smallish badgler animal found in the USA) passed on, one of her regular herd managed to save most but not all of her considerable output, this was possible by having her PC kindly donated for that purpose by her husband.

ARs investigations and output were somewhat different to the various ramblings of us here, her well researched posts on a certain notorious late celeb were revelatory/awakening.

I doubt our motoring discussions would interest many as the years go by..

Edited by gordonbennet on 28/09/2025 at 11:56

Let's not forget there's always the Grumpy Old f***s Village Pub forum which still appears if you type something along the lines of .... The-GOF-Village-Pub. I can't be the only one to remember it starting up as a bit of an offshoot.

It looks like there's one or perhaps two entries for 2025 and a number in 2024. I couldn't remember when it struck off at a tangent from the mother ship but it looks like 2016. I was never sufficiently interested or "in the know" to recognize who the 're-named' contributors were in the original forum but it doesn't look as though all that many have hung around.

I have no idea how long stuff like that remains visible on the internet after it closes down - and indeed it might not have actually ceased to exist. Which just goes to show how little I know.

Lads, thanks for all your help over the years, it’s been really appreciated. Great advice, common decency & respect. Particularly found SLO invaluable.

The recent proud owner of a Japanese NA petrol Mazda CX30 & personally recommended two other CX5s. Wonder where I got that idea from !!