All Cars, All the Time

Yoink! Popular Mercedes/smart Forum Disappears

Ever go to a website and find that it has disappeared? First you think that you typed it in wrong, so you retype the URL. Next you Google it to make sure that you haven't lost your mind. Once you've confirmed that it's really gone, you find yourself asking, "Like, where did it go?" Well, this very scenario just happened to me when I tried to visit MBCanada.com. Although the URL is very similar to the official MBUSA.com site, MBCanada.com was setup and run by Mercedes enthusiasts. You might recall MBCanada.com from the infamous "smart tipping" incident that many blogs linked to. You could find threads on all of Mercedes' models, but when the smart headed to Canada, that's when the forum really took off.

From my preliminary research, it appears that the site was taken down by the domain name owner due to escalating clashes of personalities. It amazes me that people getting together to talk about their cars could somehow devolve into such a battle that an entire community is lost. There were accusations that members from another smart site, clubsmartcar.ca were going to MBCanada.com to cause trouble. Next came demands for donations made to MBCanada.com to be refunded. Well, you get the picture.

In any case, if you want to chat about smarts, clubsmartcar.ca has a pretty active community. It is a shame that all the posts on the MBCanada site have seemingly been lost. There still is a chance that the folks involved in the squabble could work out their differences and the site restored. In any case, I'll leave you with some teaser images of the next generation fortwo...