I am a car guy in my 30s, I have been in the scene since the early 2000s and anyone else that was around back then knows what I am talking about with forums. Forums used to be THE place to find everything car related. Whatever car you had, you could find a forum for it with hundreds of active users any time of the day. For sale threads, regional meet ups, anything you wanted was there. It was like an online mecca for whatever car you had. If you had a BMW, there were huge BMW forums with hundreds of posts and discussions happening every day. Fast forward to now, almost all automotive forums are dead, like dead dead. For sale sections dried up, regional sections with the last posts being 6 months old. It’s a ghost town.
So what happened? My guess, is Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube divided the community so hard, and gave everyone their “own” little pages, that this is all people do now. I joined a few Facebook groups and found those to be just as dead as the forums. It’s really not the same. We used to be able to post in a regional section and by nightfall have a whole meet arranged with locals from your area. Now, that’s a no go. I miss it, and I would love to know if there is a place everyone is at now, but I am also scared that maybe that era of online car culture is lost forever. r/cars seems to be the only place I can find that has constant activity with other gearheads, but that’s only because it serves as a “hub” for car guys on reddit, which is another “hub”, and all other hubs have been abandoned. I am trying to get involved on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, but it’s not the same, how do you arrange a meet in an Instagram comment section? It’s just not the same.
I use FB Groups for the most part, even though some group are ran by shady admins, you can post ask what you are looking for or a problem and someone will respond to help.
Also, following someone on instagram that has your car can actually lead you to knowing more people with the same car, and communicating in DM’s or posts in general.
I have a Honda Fit and we have quite of groups on Facebook. Though a lot of them branch off from other groups(Ex. a group made for tracking a Honda fit split off from the Honda Fit Owner’s Group.) If I have a question I usually just PM someone on instagram or FB that is doing the same thing I am doing.
As someone who is also a part of Honda Fit FB groups, I think it’s really dependent on the type of car. The Honda Fit groups are very active since it has a niche following. Can’t speak on behalf of other car models though