(....and guess who's turning 10?! )
Karting turns 50...
(....and guess who's turning 10?! )
2006 represents a major milestone in the history of karting - 50 years since Art Ingels zoomed around in his motorized kart (now famous and referred to as "Kart #1"), grabbing the attention of other southern Californians and leading to the launch of a tremendous sport and multi-billion dollar industry. The rest is the proverbial history - as detailed elsewhere on this website (see "Kart #1" and "History" articles). Karting Industry Council (KIC) and the entire karting industry celebrate this industry milestone.
2006 will also mark 10 years that this web site has been in existence. It was mid-1996 when I first launched the site then called "Klassic Karts". It started life as a self-teaching exercise in web page design. I needed a sample topic and vintage karting was a natural for me to write about due to my long-term interst in those early karts. The site began as a simple adjunct to my personal "home page" and was in part an experiment to gauge whether there were others out there with a similar interest in vintage karting. It seemed a natural area of interest given the level of participation in the sport in the early days and the incredible amount of character those early karts had- certainly there had to be lots of folks who'd be interested today in vintage karts. The other question mark had to do with how many old karts were likely to be found in old barns and whatnot and not butchered to dewath in transformation to tard karts (or simply disposed of). In those early dats of "Klassic Karts", I believed vintage karting to be a' sleeping giant' (I think I was correct on that call). The level of interest I encountered exceeded any expectations I had early on and in November of 1997 I decided to launch a "real" web site - domain name and all- and decided to call it Vintage Karts. Although I am sure the existence and popularity of the sport of vintage karting was inevitable, I like to think that I played some part in helping its launch.
In those early days I collaborated a lot with Carl Billington who already had established the Vintage Kart Racing Association (predecessor to VKA). Carl had organized a vintage race at Sugar Hill Speedway (Weare NH) as early as 1996. He was also instrumental in getting me started in actual participation in karting. (Read "Bob's Bio").
So what's up for 2006 on this site? Well - one of my goals all along has been to open the site up to more participation by others. Time to move past being a vehicle for what Bob has to say about this or that and become more about communication among vintage karting's participants. Also time to revisit site design (which hasn't really changed much over the years) and also try to form a tighter integration with VKA. Changes are in the works and details have not yet been worked out, but rest assured the site will remain for the benefit of the sport.