What happened to all the regular guys that blogged about the auto industry?

When I started MyFordDreams in April of 2005, the landscape ( or blogsphere ) was lush with the "regular guys" that blogged about the auto industry. I remember one of the first I ever found was The Auto Prophet ( linked in title) the masked man of the auto blogging world.
But there was The Car Pundit, Rides Blog and many others. Some are still around, like the Prophet, Joe Sherlock of View Through The Windshield, Bob of CarsCars Cars and of course Gary of The Garage.

Jalopnik and AutoBlog have always been Pro sites, although many of those guys came up from the ranks of semi-pro blogging. I know it's been a rocky road for my blog. The first year I blogged so much it was fanatical. Then when I was having problems with my original blog I started up here at MyFordDreams2.

There was a real sense of community too. I remember when Dave Thomas, then was with MPH Online and now with Kicking Tires, started the blog for AutoBloggers and was really trying to herd us together. I think I have the honor of posting the last item over there back in 2007.

It's not easy doing this, guys like me don't get paid to do it. We do it out of passion, passion for the cars. I especially do it because of my passion for all things Ford. I'll be the first to admit I'm not on the level of the pros. Too many typos, poor grammar and sometimes too hot headed.
Many of my posts are inspried by what other sites write, but I don't just rehash someone else's work, I try and put personal color commentary and of course link to and refer to the original.

I always say, I love this and that I'm proud to have rubbed shoulders (well cyber shoulders) with some very talented and very nice folks. I want to thank TheAutoProphet for all of his help lately. He's been giving me advice and pointers. Over the years I've received that from many of my fellow bloggers.

I'll never forget the Carnival of Cars and how excited I would get if I was mentioned. That was always a point of pride. And when on those rare ocassions one of my posts would be mentioned by the pros like Jalopnik or Mark Tapscott.

Now that I'm blogging more actively, I'm hoping to rekindle those cyber relationships and grow new ones.