Hello and welcome to yet another automotive and motorcycle news site! There are so many out there, so why should you read this one first?

I’ll let you in on an industry secret. Everyone “steals” from everyone else. Well, it’s not really stealing, since crediting the original sources makes it okay. But still, many of the articles you read on your favorite website are little more than a rewrite of an article on the original website so that the other websites can get the views. Love it or hate it, this is an accepted practice in the auto and motorcycle journalism worlds.

What makes Piston Slap different? We dispense with the pretense. We don’t even try to hide the fact that we get many of our stories elsewhere. We’ll just give you a brief summary, then send you to the original source to read for yourself. Why reinvent the wheel?

Oh, for that mad ad revenue. After all, the more eyeballs click on a page, the more ads appear, and the more money the website makes. Well guess what? We don’t do that. We don’t rely on advertisers to pay the bills, so we don’t need the views that come from producing what looks like original content but really isn’t.

So how do we make money? At the moment, we don’t. This is just a fun side project to try out and see how it goes. Full disclosure, it’s also a way to put what original work we do have, such as our 2021 Climb to the Clouds coverage or the Smokey Da Van website, in front of more eyeballs. Eventually, if there’s enough interest, we’ll start selling Piston Slap merchandise.

Also, without advertisers, we can write whatever we want without the fear of losing those valuable advertising dollars (or getting fired, which has happened to me before). We don’t have to temper our opinions about things, or express none at all (that’s also happened to me), to keep the bills paid. With low operating expenses comes more freedom to say whatever we want to say. We don’t want to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. We just want creative freedom to say what we want.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the site, and find it useful and entertaining. I’d be thrilled if you check out some of my other work, which is linked all over the site. Thank you!

Justin