Be terminated as of Midnight on December 31st 2007.

This action will include all members, be they gold or not. The new owners are moving the site over to america and it will be re organised and full of mustangs etc. They are not at all interested in the comparitively tiny Uk domestic market.


There is nothing i can do about it chaps, i didnt know anything about this until today and i had already stepped down as admin when i found out, although i am kind of glad i jumped before i was pushed.


Really Sorry people...









Now, the above of course is absolute bollox, but anyone reading the fuss on here today would think that was the case wouldnt they?!!

So after a discussion with Pet today, i now know exactly what has Really happened, so if you are interested, read on:


I had a long chat with Julien (Petrucci) this afternoon on the phone and have indeed only just got off it and have now pretty much learned all i need to know to fill you in on it... so read on.

Some months ago, a large American company Called Internet Brands (IB) approached Julien about the possibility of purchasing PassionFord from him. IB own leading websites in the automotice sector such as CarsDirect.com, GreenHybrid.com, NewCarTestDrive and Wikicars.com and more recently, Scoobynet.com.

Upon agreeing to discuss options further Julien agreed to sign an IDS which basically forbid him to mention what had been discussed with any 3rd parties, and, knowing how stressed i was over the wedding and other things in recent months found solace in the fact he couldnt tell me legally anyway. So, they have discussed taking his whole internet hosting side as he hosts quite a few forums too, and this discussion has not yet come to total fruition due to the fact the takeover time of L-tech is supposed to be January 2008, before which of course Pet would have come on here and made an announcement, with Me as would be expected of Him/us.

Lets face it, How else would anyone find out? Should be simple... Nope, somehow or other the WWW has found out and the result is what you see on the forums today. mass hysetria about absolutely sod all.

So, the future.
Julien is likely to sell the lot to IB and they will then own Passionford as an entity. However, they dont actuially want to change anything except to move its hosting over to London and to give it bandwidth and connections we we have only ever dreamed of and its own cluster of servers. That will be the end of speed problems. period. That too is likely to happen in January.

The plan was that i would stay around and keep things running but of course i scuppered that when i called it a day yesterday, so that has to be re-discussed, but for now, nothing has changed bar my stepping down from admin roles.

As most of you will know, back in 2003 i started this site with pet and brought over all the new blood, advertised it in the magazines, arranged the meets and sanctioned some official car shows. I have lived and breathed passionford since then and love it like a child even when it proved to become a labour of love in recent times, so even though i have stepped out of the day to day running of the forum, it doesnt mean i dont have its interests at heart, and after seeing what IB tend to do with the Forums that they aquire, i am quitely confident that this is a positive move for PF, and certainly NOT a negative one.

If i thought Julien had pulled a fast one i would tell you all straight and I dont. Its as simple as that, but for now, theres little else i can tell you Due to the secrecy form he has signed but he will talk to them tomorrow about how they ended up advertising the site as theirs before the deal was closed and ultimately leading to this mess we have now.
Onwards and upwards folks, nothing has changed, everything you pay for is still here for you to acces and there are no reasons for you to worry and many reasons for you to be excited.

What do they gain?
They are very good with advertising and will likely re-arrange some of the google ads to be more nicely integrated with the site so as to generate revenue that way and start to recoup their investment. For anyone interested in another webmasters view of their running of a similar forum after purchase, read here:


Finally,
Anyone wondering why Julien isnt posting this, its for the same reason he hasnt been around for many months now, complications with his newborn child back in August that led to the very near death of his wife, still has his child in a quite critical condition, and he is not spending any time worrying about things like this internet malarky. This was one of the reasons IB are announcing nothing until early next year, because Julien has bigger priorities at the moment. Due to this, i agreed to step back into the admin role just for tonight so i can take care of this topic on his behalf.