#housekeeping

Hear ye, hear ye — we here at TTAC are going into winter break mode. What that means for you is that starting this afternoon and running through New Year’s Day, we’ll be operating at around half-speed.

Here at The Truth About Cars, we’d be doing our readers a disservice if they weren’t given an opportunity to chime in about, well, pretty much everything. This is another opportunity to have your voice heard.

In addition to our webpage content — news, reviews, features, rants, and more rants — we’re adding a regular segment on our YouTube page. What’s that? You don’t visit our YouTube page? Well that needs to change, and you can start by taking a look at this.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the U.S., aka Turkey Day, aka the high holy day of food (and booze-related gluttony), so we’re shuttering a little early today so our American crew can get a jumpstart on the holiday and our Canadian folks can get a little well-earned time off. We’ll be posting here and there over the long weekend, but expect a lighter content mix than usual.

Some of you noticed that we had a little bit of a technical snafu yesterday, and a few of you commented on Steph’s post with references to your own IT issues.

I try to read as many comments as I can, but it’s not humanly possible for me to catch them all. The same is true for the rest of our editors. Our moderators do a great job and clue us in to issues, but we’re all busy and things get missed.

As you’ve no doubt already seen, Tim Cain is leaving us to pursue another opportunity. We wish him well, but as punishment, he owes us Timbits from Tim Hortons. Lots of Timbits. Like, caseloads.

Confectionery jokes that I have already run into the ground aside, what does this mean for the site? If you love Tim’s sales analysis, it will still be a part of TTAC – just less often. He will still post for us a few times a month on a part-time basis.

For more than 13 years I’ve been writing about cars, first in print media, then with my former website GoodCarBadCar, then with Canada’s far-reaching Bell Media, then with Cars.com, and eventually here at my long-term home, The Truth About Cars.

I will not stop writing about cars. But my current full-time role as sales analyst and road test editor at TTAC comes to an end today.

It’s not you. It’s me.

Hello out there in TTAC land,

My name is Tim Healey and I am the new managing editor for The Truth About Cars.

That’s a strange thing to type, but it’s true. Pretty cool.

You probably don’t know much about me. I’ve not written for TTAC nor am I a well-known commenter. I have freelanced for other automotive sites, so perhaps you’ve seen my byline there. I’ve also been in this business for around a decade, so my name may be familiar to you.

Let’s keep this short, shall we?

This Friday will be my last day as The Truth About Cars’ managing editor. On Monday, I begin a new career elsewhere, outside of journalism but still in the automotive industry.

But this isn’t really a goodbye. I’ll be vacating the seat to sit in another as an editor-at-large here at TTAC, and will stay for as long as my replacement will have me.

Speaking of my replacement …

Your moderation team here at TTAC thought it might be time for a reminder on our commenting policy. The rules apply to everyone — commenters and writers alike. Recently, we’ve been a bit lax on enforcing the rules, but that time has now come to an end. Included below is the TTAC commenting policy by which we all must abide. Posting comments on TTAC constitutes an acceptance of these comment guidelines.

Steph’s been locked in his sweltering Ottawa apartment, heat wave after heat wave, for weeks now. To give him some respite, we’ve sent him to British Columbia to enjoy some Korean luxury.

Much ink has been spilled regarding predictive policing tactics as of late. Numerous law enforcement agencies all over the U.S. are relying on historical crime data, metropolitan topographical features, and other pieces of information to data model crimes yet to be committed.

We lack those pieces of high-tech gadgetry here at TTAC, yet I (and many others) predicted exactly what was about to happen in the comments of an incredibly well written and thoughtful story about a girl and her car.

That saddened me — and then I reached for my therapeutic ban hammer.

When I announced the return of Doug DeMuro and the addition of Blake Z. Rong, I mentioned that there was more news to come. And now that everything is in place, I’m happy to announce the return of another TTAC veteran.

Winners of the contest to win one of three copies of Weird Cars by Michael Banovsky have been announced.

Are you involved in the car industry and want to help make TTAC a better publication? Then we’re calling on you for your assistance.