NetCARS (cars.nino.ru) — a Nizhny Novgorod information site for motorists, one of the projects of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s. Its splash screen presented it as "The Information Project of Nizhny Novgorod Motorists"[1]. The site collected accounts of drivers' dealings with the traffic police (GIBDD), reviews of local shops, service stations and filling stations, maps for detouring intersections, hosted a forum, and organized meetups for participants. The news feed stopped in January 2005[4], the forum fell silent by the autumn of 2005[15], and the last Web Archive snapshot of the site was made on 9 April 2010[19].

History

According to its "About the Project" section, the idea for a Nizhny Novgorod automotive site arose in 1998 but was shelved because the internet in the city was still underdeveloped; the plan was revived in early 2000 with support from the FidoNet conference NINO.CARS. The authors named 17 May 2000 as the site's birth date — the day it appeared online[2]. A news-feed entry from the same date reports the posting of the server's first beta version[3].

The project's author and coordinator is named as Mikhail Shurygin; the acknowledgments list "Nizhny Novgorod Information Networks" for providing hosting and the domain name, Gennady Zvonov for adapting the forum scripts, and the participants of the NINO.CARS conference[2].

On 6 December 2000 the site announced that it was acting as an information sponsor of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet) on 15 December and was taking part in the contest of Nizhny Novgorod sites in the "Information and Business Sites" category[3]. In May 2001 the site posted a video of a segment about the project from the program "Poyekhali" on Volga TV Company[4].

Site content

The most extensive section was "GIBDD and Us": articles on the practice of dealing with the traffic police, excerpts from the Code of Administrative Offenses, a table of fines, the price list of the regional traffic police (UGIBDD), and the addresses and phone numbers of its divisions, vehicle registration offices (MREO), and inspection stations[5][6]. The same section carried "The Story of One Court Case with the GIBDD"; the articles "We Pay? For Nothing!" and "The Response," which grew out of a publication in the magazine "Inomarka," examined Nizhny Novgorod's paid impound lots and correspondence with the regional traffic police department[5].

The "Black" and "White" lists collected readers' reviews of businesses in the Nizhny Novgorod car market, split into shops, service stations, and filling stations; entries were written in the first person[7][8]. "Alternative Routes" gave maps for detouring intersections — from Moskovsky railway station to Gordeyevka, from Iyulskikh Dney Street Molitovsky Bridge, from the GAZ plant's north checkpoint to Myzinsky Bridge[9]. There were also listings of the city's gas filling stations, "Road Legends," an article titled "Why Are There Potholes on the Roads?," an auto-guessing game, and a crossword[6]. Owners of other sites were offered an informer — an automatically generated 100×100 image showing current fuel prices in Nizhny Novgorod[10].

Community

The site's own forum opened on the server on 20 October 2000, and in November a second one launched — "The Right of the Wheel," on drivers' legal questions; it ran as part of the "Please Complain" project together with the magazine "Inomarka" and the Legal Defense Board[3][5][11]. From 21 November 2001 a web gateway operated to the echo conference fidonet.nino.cars, from which the project itself had grown; a test version of a chat launched in January 2002[4][12].

Participants also met offline: the "Our Meetups" page names the Nizhnevolzhskaya embankment as the regular venue — "under the boat" or by the kayakers' shed; five gatherings from September 2000 to June 2001 are listed, each with its own photo report[13]. A mutual-aid section, "NetCARS emergency rescue team," was in operation — a list of participants willing to help on the road for free, with each entry giving the car make and the city district[14].

Decline and closure

The last news-feed entry is dated 21 January 2005 — a price list for GIBDD services[4]. The forum outlived the news feed by a few months: a snapshot of its first page taken on 26 June 2007 shows the newest topics dated to late September 2005[15]. The FidoNet gateway emptied out earlier: on 5 July 2004 the list held a single message from 28 June[16], and by September 2006 the list was empty[17].

The pages, meanwhile, kept being served for several more years, with the encoding changed along the way: the 2008–2010 snapshots are recorded in koi8-r, while the earlier ones are in cp1251[3][18]. The splash-screen markup in the last snapshot of the home page, from 18 January 2010, matches the 2000 snapshot[1][18]. The Web Archive's last snapshot of any page of the site was taken on 9 April 2010[19][20]. The name cars.nino.ru no longer resolves today, and the parent domain nino.ru now serves a domain-for-sale page[21].

Encyclopedia research: Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page (splash screen) of cars.nino.ru, Web Archive snapshot, 12 December 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "About the Project" section, snapshot 15 February 2001 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — NetCARS, home page news feed, snapshot 2 February 2001 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — NetCARS, full home page news feed (through 21 January 2005), snapshot 4 January 2008 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "GIBDD and Us" section, snapshot 17 February 2001 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — NetCARS, site section menu, snapshot 10 August 2003 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "Black List," snapshot 15 February 2001 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "White List," snapshot 19 February 2001 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "Alternative Routes," snapshot 15 February 2001 (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "Informer" page, snapshot 30 April 2001 (archive)
  11. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "Online Conferences on the NetCARS Server," snapshot 15 February 2001 (archive)
  12. web.archive.org — NetCARS, web gateway to the fidonet.nino.cars conference, snapshot 15 December 2001 (archive)
  13. web.archive.org — NetCARS, "Our Meetups," snapshot 22 April 2002 (archive)
  14. web.archive.org — NetCARS emergency rescue team (mutual-aid section), snapshot 2 May 2001 (archive)
  15. web.archive.org — NetCars forum, first (most recent) page of the topic list, snapshot 26 June 2007 (archive)
  16. web.archive.org — NetCARS, fidonet.nino.cars gateway, snapshot 5 July 2004 (archive)
  17. web.archive.org — NetCARS, fidonet.nino.cars gateway, snapshot 16 September 2006 (archive)
  18. web.archive.org — Home page of cars.nino.ru, last snapshot of the home page, 18 January 2010 (archive)
  19. web.archive.org — NetCARS, page on the transport tax — the last snapshot of any page of the site, 9 April 2010 (archive)
  20. web.archive.org — Index of Web Archive snapshots for the cars.nino.ru domain (CDX) (archive)
  21. nino.ru — domain-for-sale page in the Ru-Center domain store (checked 11 August 2026) (archive)