Dont get me wrong i think the z register is a great little site. I just get the impression that the fee is keeping the site small with not many new threads. If it was big i would definitely pay...its only 35 buck a year i think.
OK lets clear up this misconception. There is no fee to use the WA Z Register forums, however some parts of the forum are for WA Z Register Club members.
The WA Z Register is a real-world, government registered, CAMS affiliated car club. You pay to become a club member, just like other real world car clubs.
Membership helps the club keep going, pays for CAMS fees and public liability insurance, and allows the club to put on
events like the Track days at Collie, Murdoch Auto test and Z day, and allows the club to participate in other events like the Classic stampede, Albany round the houses, etc etc, which our members would not be allowed to compete in, if they weren't a member of an official car club.
I think some people get the wrong impression with the WA Z Register website, and think its like sites such as viczcar.com, thezgarage.com or classiczcars.com etc, and internet car club, whose members sometime get together in the real world. In fact the WA Z Registers website is actually it's a car clubs internet presence. The club formed unofficially before there was a website. The website was put up to allow other WA people to find the club.
As a courtesy to the WA Z community, we have a forum on the clubs website. Some of the areas on the forum are for club members only. The club management decided they wanted it that way as an incentive for people to become involved in the club. The reason the forums are not used much, is because most club activities happen in the real world, members get together for meetings, and talk to each other in the real world, not via the forum. Most communication via the internet between club members is vie email, and the email lists.
Internet car clubs are great, and have their place. I'm not trying to bag them or anything (I love them, I have wasted countless hours on classiczcars.com), but the WA Z Register isn't one of them. Most of our members just aren't forum type people. We have around 30 registered members, and I only ever see 2 of them post on classiczcars.com, and not very often.
I'm not sure if people are aware of this, but if anything unfortunate was to happen on one of the viczcar organized events (or any other internet club cruise), and a member of the public was injured, then the people that run the website and the forum members that organised the event could be sued by the injured people, for organising the event. That's what public liability insurance is for.
The WA Z Register were not willing to take that risk, and became an official car club, covered by CAMS public liability insurance.
If you want to get out on the track and see what you and your z machine are capable of, then consider joining a registered car club. If you're in WA, then the WA Z Register is one option available to you.
