Best of the Blog 2008

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Hey, it’s the end of the year, so why not toss off a few top ten lists? 2008 was a pretty crazy year for the CarDomain Blog. We ran all over the place and wrote a ton of blogs. After a few too many helpings of holiday food, I didn’t have the energy to go back and read through the entire year—which probably adds up to around 4,000 posts. So here goes, off the top of my head, and in no particular order.

1. Test Cars. For some reason, a bunch of the big OEMs decided to let us play with their cars. Some of the highlights include the Mustang Bullitt, the Challenger R/T and the Jaguar XF. Jen also compared the Hyundai Sonata to her “new” AMC Concord. Guess which one came out on top.

2. CarDomainTV. We decided to mess around with video a bit this year. Some of my favorites were Earl Smith and his RX-7, driving the Tesla and our visit to Northwest Auto Salon. My buddy Scott Smith also got some great footage from the Detroit 24 Hours of Lemons.

3. Motorsports Coverage. Jen went out on One Lap and got the first pics of the wrecked Challenger. She also covered a bunch of NASCAR stuff and did this great write-up on the the post-race teardown at Dover. John and Jen both covered American Le Mans and John went to Pikes Peak where he was harrassed by bees. And I made it out of the office to cover the Grassroots Motorsports Ultimate Track Car Challenge.

4. Dinner with Bob Lutz. This was probably the highlight of the year for me. I mean, come on—Bob Lutz! Of course, John, Jen and I all wrote about it.

5. Bullrun. John went on Bullrun and got the ride of his life with Rachel. And Mr. Angry wrote a great recap of the rally, including his account of the Daytona’s epic wheel failure.

6. CarDomain Garage. We can’t just work on the site. We have to play with our cars, too. Jen got a bunch done on her Diesel Escort. Ryan decided not to put wing doors on his smart car. Weston chipped his GTI. I didn’t do much to my Satellite, other than wash it, change the oil and take it to the Mopars Unlimited Spring Roundup. We even managed to hold our third annual employee car show. But the real news was that John got his Jag running!

7. SEMA. We really went all out at SEMA this year, with five bloggers, one photographer and one videographer. Mike talked to Goldberg, I talked to Topo, John talked to the dudes in the Giovanna booth, and Katherine scored some killer swag. Oh, and Jen and I learned how to tig weld!

8. CarDomain Finds. We like to try to dig up some ride pages that might not make it to SOTW or the Top Rides page. Like this amazing wrecked GTO or the moneyed out Crown Vic. But the one that really blew up the comments was the Challenger on 24s.

9. Random Weird Stuff. Of course it’s the really weird stuff that brings in the mad traffic. The two posts that almost broke our servers this year were this squashed Volvo in Sweden and this bizarre Auto Trader ad.

10. New Voices. We added a whole slew of new bloggers this year (too many to list—I really need to update our contributors list). From our awesome Detroit insider Kathy Helmetag to JDM know-it-all Ben Schaffer. Today we even added former Hot Rod Editor-in-Chief David Freiburger!

So that’s about it for 2008. Or did I miss something? Thanks to all our loyal readers—we’re definitely looking forward to an even crazier 2009. And stay tuned for more top ten lists tomorrow and Wednesday.