Former President and current Seceretary of SAH Kit Foster spoke the following words:
In 1991, recognizing that automotive history was no longer solely the province of magazines and books, SAH established the E.P. Ingersoll Award to recognize excellence in presentation in other than print media. In a sense, Ingersoll’s name is a misnomer for this award, as he was the founder and editor of The Horseless Age, America’s first automobile magazine, a print medium. But Ingersoll was a trail blazer, the first to see the market for a magazine for motorists. (He might be called a “timid prophet,” for while he foresaw, in 1895, that the automobile would, within fifty years, supplant the horse for distances of more than ten miles, he cautioned against expecting automobile companies that would employ as many as 500 persons in a single plant.)
Before tonight, the Ingersoll has been presented eleven times. It has been won by film and video presentations, by television series, by an audio series, by a web site, and by several live events that highlight the heritage of the automobile – automotive history happenings, if you will, including the event that is probably the main resons most of us are in town tonight – Fall Hershey. Tonight, however, we recognize a new trail blazer, the viable cybermagazine dedicated to automotive history. The 2003 E.P. Ingersoll Award goes to PreWarCar.com, and its editor and founder Joris Bergsma. [come on down!]
Originating in the Netherlands, PreWarCar started, says its front page, “as a concept in 1998 when links on pre WW II cars & makes were scarce. A portal for the scattered information on automobile history and car makes from Amilcar to Zedel. All those famous and forgotten antique, veteran, Edwardian, vintage, classic and thoroughbred automobiles, sports cars, and racing cars. Bringing together the classified, the auction, dealer, restorer, car club, enthusiast, gallery, rare pictures, event, motor show and rally is our mission.”
I became aware of PreWarCar when Joris requested a link from our own cyberhome, autohistory.org. My first reaction was to check out what autohistory visitors would see if they followed a link to PreWarCar. I was transfixed! Here, at last, was a real cybermagazine. It’s not a teasing add-on to an existing print mag, nor a thinly disguised auto dealer’s site. To be sure, there are plenty of cars for sale therein, but what greets the visitor is a short and provocative automotive history feature, a new one every day. Sometimes the features are puzzles, sometimes competitions (every Saturday contestants spar with their knowledge in quest of the PreWarCar.com tee shirt). Joris has an enviable archive of old automotive pictures, which he uses to good effect. If there’s no obvious story with the picure, he creates his own, and invites his readers to comment, to correct, to enrich our collective knowledge.
Most websites, our own included, get stale all too quickly. Not PreWarCar.com, with new features, new cars, new puzzles every day. A common complaint about websites is that they are too emphemeral. The page you bookmark today may be gone tomorrow. Not PreWarCar.com. Every feature article from the last two years is still there, including all the reader feedback, available ten at a time.
You will rightly conclude that this sort of schedule keeps Joris very busy indeed. But he’s a glutton for busyness – just last Friday he launched PreWarParts.com, a site to facilitate the exchange of parts for prewar cars between those who have them and those who need them.
It gives me great pleasure to present the 2003 E.P. Ingersoll Award to Joris Bergsma and PreWarCar.com.
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