I’ll tell you the true story of RealGM. Most of those in charge now have made a conscious decision to bury the truth about the origins of the site.
None of these people were around when this was a dialup BBS site to discuss the latest news at General Motors. That’s the origin of the realGM brand and name. Real General Motors.
It was the only place you could find the real inside scoop on the inner workings of the General Motors Corporation.
As the sites oldest tenured poster, and a former engineer at General Motors, I was there from the very beginning in the early 80s where we’d discuss our newest designs, new competition from Japanese automakers, general company chatter around the various plants, and sometimes who the new cute girl in HR was over at the Lansing plant.
If you look at where the player comparison section now sits, that used to be strictly for discussion of the Pontiac Fiero during its heyday in the mid 80s.
Given most of the posters on the original RealGM were based in the Detroit area, there would occasionally be discussion about the Bad Boy Pistons teams of the late 80s that captivated the basketball world.
We’d sit down at our desks at lunch, unwrap a bologna sandwich, and discuss that beloved Pistons team on BBS that was true to the blue collar spirit of Motown.
What had been strictly a site about life at a Big 3 automaker, our guilty pleasure of watching Bad Boy Pistons basketball started to creep onto our BBS forum.
We’d giddily discuss a common foul back then from the night before. Just some good-natured chippy play that would now be a flagrant 2 ejection that would be accompanied by a five game suspension, and possibly court-ordered anger management.
It was simpler times. Better times.
It was a hit around the water cooler right from the beginning. We all loved Pistons basketball.
As the Fiero was phased out, that forum soon became Lambier’s Lounge. A little corner to discuss good sportsmanship and our favorite player.
The forum once dedicated to the Chevy Chevette became the Wormhole for all discussion about the young Dennis Rodman.
It was still mostly a site for discussing our newest exciting car designs, we were pretty excited for the Camaro IROC-Z28 those years in the late 80s, but the transition into NBA content had begun.
As the late 80s gave way to the 90s, and the kids went from hair bands to flannels, the United States automakers continued their downward descent, and discussion continued to drift from the troubled General Motors product line and waning sales to more NBA content as Michael Jordan faced the Pistons gauntlet in four consecutive hard fought playoff matchups. The office was buzzing back then. We all needed the distraction.
We started to see an influx of Bulls bandwagon fans from across the country, and the site eventually migrated onto the new AOL system sweeping the country.
Throughout the 90s, every year there seemed to be a little less auto talk, and a little more NBA discussion.
Sure, there would be a thread about about the new and exciting Chevy Tracker, or production problems at the Pontiac Sunfire plant interspersed with basketball content, but as Michael set upon his pursuit of his first three-peat, it was now becoming a heavily NBA site.
Many of us there from the origin of the site were a little sad as our small BBS community about our company had turned into a sprawling site focused mostly on basketball, but most of us contributed to discussions on both topics. We had opened a door back in the late 80s never knowing what it would become.
And so it went.
During the mid-90s, as Jordan tried his hand at baseball, and Hakeem seized his first rings, it wasn’t uncommon for there to be threads on the front page about MJ and the Birmingham Barons, Hakeem and Drexel, the General Motors Saturn, and none of us who were posting on the original site will ever forget the OJ chase during the 1994 NBA Finals. The site crashed that day as everyone in the country ran to fire up their AOL dialup connection to the site. Our little board had become a monster.
As the 90s drew to a close, we continued to see more NBA content as Jordan chased his second three-peat. Lambier’s Lounge had given way to Penny’s Pub, and Shaq’s Shack(I argued against this name at the time as corny). Those were some of the busiest forums on the site. A young Howard Mass, just a contributor back then, was very active on Penny’s Pub. Little did we know he’d be part of the future hostile takeover.
The Wormhole still existed, but had went from a collection of Pistons fans celebrating a hardworking young star, to a tabloid style forum chronicling Rodman’s increasingly eccentric behavior and lifestyle.
As the millennium approached, many of us who were the original group on real General Motors had grown uncomfortable with losing control of our site, but with the company stock cratering, we thought we had a solid plan to save the company and wrest control of our site back all in one fell swoop. We had been pushed into a corner by the basketball kids.
Once our new vehicle hit the market, no one would care about some high school kid from Philly teaming up with Shaq or a young Duncan beating up on Ewing and Spree in a bunch of 85-80 games.
So in those waning months of the twentieth century, those of us there from the start, the true OGs of real General Motors spent long hours designing the world’s greatest vehicle. The best looking vehicle the world would ever see. We’d save the company and our site.
In hindsight, it’s possible all of us in engineering, both in design and in computer engineering, might have been a little past our prime.
We didn’t foresee a few things.
Sure, there was a lot of talk about y2k disrupting computers across the country, but our computer engineering department assured us they had it covered.
In retrospect, its possible we would have been better to have few younger guys in tech who we didn’t hire from IBM in 1970. They assured us that our systems wouldn’t reset to 1900. They weren’t lying. They reset to 1800.
It was a severe blow.
Howard Mass and his hotshot group of lawyers and tech people pounced and wrested control of our entire site. It would be a couple months before our tech guys could reset our systems to where we could even exchange emails within the company. Lot of jokes from the guys over at Ford asking us about life in 1800.
Still, a lot of us thought we still had a shot to get back realGM, now being marketed as real general manager, back from the hostile takeover via litigation.
As soon as our new vehicle hit the market, our stock price would skyrocket, and we’d be well-financed when we launched our counter-strike. They’d rue the day they stole our site!
As we hit the new car show that Fall, all of us were certain we had saved the company. Getting back our site was just the cherry on top.
Sometimes the best laid plans hit a snag.
As I said, in retrospect, it’s possible we had lost a step. It wasn’t received quite as well as we expected.
The reviews were less than kind.
“It was voted the ugliest car in the world and the only debate was if the Fiat Multipla was uglier than the Pontiac Aztek.
But on the U.S. soil, it was the ugliest car ever, hands down!”
Needless to say, our stock portfolios never recovered. Any dreams of getting our site back were abandoned, as were any thoughts about retirement or eating three meals a day.
The company fought on for almost another decade, before succumbing to bankruptcy and a government bailout in 2009.
We had a hell of a run, and I have to say the guys have did a decent job with the site. It’s bittersweet still, but I can’t say they ruined it.
It would have been nice had they acknowledged the origins of the site, and not whitewashed the history of Real General Motors into this realGM.
Be nice if they had acknowledged our contribution, but when I get a break from greeting customers here at Walmart, I still read the site to see who has been exposed today and think about those early years.
So Young Stapler, you asked about the history of RealGM I’m sure this will be written off as some alternative history fable by the sites current ownership. Some creative writing exercise. That’s how it always goes. To the victors go the spoils. It’s like our site never existed.
But now you know the real story.
