Goodbye Autoblog; A Good Car Website

On Friday, September 13, 2024, the car news website Autoblog.com will cease to exist. The site that started with the philosophy of covering every single scrap of automotive news is shutting down after 20 years in the biz. And though we had, at times, an adversarial relationship with the ’Blog, you won’t find one Jalopnik alum who would disagree that Autoblog and the great people who worked there deserved better.

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I started my car writing career at AOL Autos (I know) which shared an office, and an owner, with Autoblog. Eventually the two teams were melded into one in probably one of the most dramatic meetings I’ve ever been witness to, with Sharon Carty taking over as Editor-in-Chief for the newly emerging site. It was at both of these sites that I learned the ropes of this business and made my first car journalist friend, Steve Ewing (you really could not ask for a better friend, in life, or in this biz.) I got to work with amazing names in the industry like John Neff and Road & Track’s current executive editor Mike Austin and Sharon Carty, who got so much flack for being for editor in chief and a woman that it caused a low key scandal.

I am very lucky to have worked for two of the best internet publications ever. When I worked at Autoblog, we’d say during meetings “Don’t do anything too Jalopniky” so when I immediately came here to Jalopnik, I was kind of surprised to hear “Don’t do that, this isn’t Autoblog.” The rivalry came from a fundamental philosophical difference in how we approached the industry back then, but it was in good fun. The community of automotive writers is small and familiar. Sure, there’s the occasional racist creepy uncle you’d rather avoid, but for the most part it’s good people trying their best to serve their readers.

I reached out to a few of these good people who wrote for Autoblog for their favorite Autoblog memories. I’ll start with mine: When Steve Ewing and I drove half way across the country after only knowing each other a few weeks. I love a road trip, and he wanted some company, so we took a chance on each other. Autoblog at the time had two long-term test vehicles, a Hyundai Veloster in Detroit and a Mazda6 in California. Ewing figured out it was cheaper to just drive halfway across the country and meet in the middle. On that trip we bonded over watching pirated “The Simpsons” episodes in cheap motel rooms in the middle of cow country, driving the entire length of Nebraska twice in one day and receiving dirty looks from heart-of-the-nation gas station attendants. It was also the start of our speeding ticket wall, where we posted out infractions like tackle shops post local big catches.

Steve Ewing and your author slap happy while driving across the country all the way back in 2013. Photo: Steve Ewing

But there were so many others. We would cover auto shows like we were covering a war. We met our mission of covering everything, aggressively.It was a full-contact form of auto journalism I really miss. Then we’d go to whiskey bars and toast to a job well done before getting up at 6 a.m. and doing it all over again. Or the week long trips we’d take as a team to northern Michigan, just testing cars. It always felt a little like a family reunion.

Here’s what a few others have to say about their time at Autoblog over the years:

The Current Staff Says A Final Goodbye

It’s a cliché to say that it’s the road, not the destination, or something like that. But it holds true as Autoblog enters its next chapter.

In this case, we leave the site in new hands as Autoblog will continue under new ownership. But the legacy is our 20-year journey to “obsessively cover the auto industry.”

The staff has evolved over time, and there are too many amazing writers to name who have contributed to Autoblog’s success and longevity.

The site launched on June 1, 2004, and proceeded to chronicle the most tumultuous two-plus decades the industry has seen in the past 100 years.

In our 20th anniversary post, we mentioned some of the raw figures: now nearly 159,000 posts, 43,000 photo galleries and 848 podcasts. We’ve created at least 5,000 videos, including shows like The List that appeared on television.

We’ve recognized more than 10 Technology of the Year winners, track-tested exotic sports cars and off-roaded to all corners of the Earth, from Patagonia to Iceland, Willow Springs to the Nürburgring. And everywhere in between. Our columns, buying guides, reviews, videos and car buying resources built one of the most influential sites in the car world.

But our news scroll — the blog — made Autoblog a must-read for enthusiasts of all stripes. From the tuner adding a wing or new exhaust to their aging Civic or Charger, to suits on the highest floors of the Renaissance Center and Glass House getting their daily dose of car news, Autoblog has stood the test of time as a resource for everyone.

Perhaps the best way to sign off is to simply thank you, the reader, for 20 great years. May the road rise.

John Neff – Former Editor In Chief

I was the Editor in Chief of Autoblog for most of its first 10 years, from around 2004 to 2014. During that time, Autoblog and Jalopnik battled fiercely for traffic supremacy. If memory serves, we came out on top more often than not, yet here I am commemorating our site on Jalopnik’s servers, so maybe we didn’t win the war.

I owe everything I have to Autoblog. I started there as a freelance blog writer making, I think, $15 a post. I was then thrust into the role of EIC, then given full-time status with a salary, then put in charge of other salaried people, and the next thing I know this little website with the word “blog” in its name started growing, like exponentially.

It was because of my reputation from Autoblog that I got my next two jobs, and both required everything I learned managing that little blog to be successful.

The main thing I learned is that a website like Autoblog or Jalopnik or Motor1 (my latest former site) doesn’t really operate according to someone’s editorial vision. Rather, what ends up on the website is a mixed drink of personalities from a group of people who work too hard for too little because they really like talking about cars.

How good a website is depends almost entirely on the group of people you assemble to make it, and how they feel when they’re writing. If they feel protected, appreciated, and secure, the digital conversation they create can be both large and awesome. If they’re worried, resentful, and feel exposed, the website’s in for a bumpy ride.

I haven’t been connected to Autoblog for the last 10 years. It’s gone through multiple owners during that time and seen plenty of people pass through its doors since I left. That deeply felt sense of ownership I had while managing the site has also passed, long since debunked by decisions that were made I would have railed against.

The worst thing is that no one seems to know exactly what will happen to Autoblog once the last human turns off the lights and locks the door. The general consensus seems to be that AI bots will enter the newsroom and generate search-optimized articles to game Google. Is that a fate worse than death for a brand that my friends and I spent so much time building?

Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that so many digital brands these days are being bought and sold, and the new owners aren’t giving anything back to the people who built and maintained them, except maybe a pink slip. So my advice to every reader out there is, when a website you like is bought, move on to another, preferably one with a history of treating its editors, writers, photographers, art designers, project managers, SEO specialists, affiliate experts, and developers with respect.

Mike Austin – Former Editor In Chief

Aw jeez, sad to see Autoblog turn into yet another VC zombie site. The thing I remember most is how much I loved working with everyone there. On the editorial staff I think we had a really positive vibe. Which was the only way to cope with the pressure of all the stories and videos we were cranking out.

Looking back, I have a hard time believing we were all running that hard all the time. It was foolish, unsustainable on several fronts, and wouldn’t be close to possible without so many great people all pulling for each other. Back then you could actually make a difference with publishing first or having a good story (and absolutely shameless plug for Erin saving our asses every other month with that sweet AOL homepage traffic). But also we were just being told run as fast as we could. We had this crazy mandate one year to grow traffic by 30%, and I remember asking one time where that number came from and being told we just had to get there.

That was my first time managing a large team. I hope I did a decent job of making everyone feel valued and supported, but I’d also say that now, several lifetimes later, the wisdom and calm I have today would have been useful. I’d definitely push back against some of the garbage coming down from on high. And also make sure that a full site redesign – which was both not my fault and still haunts me to this day – actually got some live user testing before launching.

It was fun, I loved my brief time there, and I’m proud of what everyone built. And, on a final note, it is a total travesty that Car Boom wasn’t a viral video sensation.

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Steve Ewing – Former Managing Editor

I spent seven years at Autoblog, right during the time when the site transitioned from “scrappy internet blog that loved to give cars stupid speech bubbles” to “kinda-sorta-actually professional outlet that you guys had better take seriously or they’ll eat your lunch.” We laughed. We cried. We chain-smoked outside of auto shows. But most importantly, we worked our asses off to provide the most comprehensive coverage of all things automotive and get it published before everyone else.

I learned how to be a better writer and editor because of Autoblog. I met lifelong friends (hi, Erin!) because of Autoblog. I crafted inside jokes at Autoblog that I still sneak into stories, all these years later.

I wouldn’t be who I am — personally or professionally — without Autoblog. RIP to a real one.