Thursday 11th January 2007

PistonHeads + Haymarket

A message to all our readers from PetrolTed

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Ted (library shot)

Today is a very big day in the history of PH. An announcement is to be made this morning at Autosport International in Birmingham revealing that PistonHeads has been acquired by Haymarket, publishers of Autocar and WhatCar?

It’s a deal I’ve been working on for many months now. The phenomenal growth of the site in the last two years has presented many challenges. Further growth threatened to stretch my resources too far and I spent considerable time in 2006 assessing the best route forwards to ensure PH’s future would continue to be exciting and innovative.

Whilst assessing how best I could deal with those growing pains, I received a number of approaches seeking to acquire the business. After months of talks with a number of parties, I selected Haymarket as the organisation that I believe understands best what makes PH special – mainly because most of them have been reading it for years!

I’m very excited by what Haymarket can bring to PistonHeads. They respect and understand our community and know what’s required to keep it special. There are no radical plans for change – it’s a site and community that has proven itself and doesn’t need big changes. PH is a strong brand that I’m proud to see presented as an equal to WhatCar? and Autocar.

Rest assured that I’m not legging it to the Seychelles on my Sunseeker just yet. I will still be heavily involved with the site for some years. With the extra support and resources at my disposal I’m looking forward to completing many of those projects that I’ve promised in recent times. The same will be true with many aspects of PH – we now have the resources to polish and streamline many parts of the site and to provide many of the tools, content and events that you have asked for over the years.

Please rest assured that PH will retain its integrity and magic and I hope you will share my excitement that it’s now within my grasp to fully realise the potential of PistonHeads for us all.

Thanks to everyone for their support in the last eight years and I look forward to sharing more PH fun in the next few years too. Time for my breakfast pie...

[Mustang Baz]

Many congrats Ted - well deserved after years of hard work, although don't leave us (unless in a GT3 RS )!

Edited by Mustang Baz on Thursday 11th January 17:05