gosar.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod trading company OOO "Altar," which sold cars made by the Gorky Automobile Plant, along with engines and spare parts from the Zavolzhsky Motor Plant. The company's office and warehouse were located in Nizhny Novgorod, at Bazovy Proezd, 14-A, and its contact phone numbers began with the code (831-2)[1]; in a later snapshot the postal code 603015 was added to the address[2]. The site operated in the Nizhny Novgorod regional domain zone r52.ru, and the subheading on its home page read: "official dealer of OAO ZMZ, sub-dealer of OAO GAZ"[1]. Substantive snapshots of the home page survive from 2003 and 2004; by March 2005 the address was answering with nothing but the hosting provider's default stub page[3].

What the site looked like

The home page was arranged in the simplest possible way: a header with the name "Altar" and a note on its dealer status, a vertical menu on the left, and on the right the only substantive text, a section titled "About the company." In the August 2003 snapshot the menu had seven items: "About the company," "News," "GAZ automobiles," "Engines," "ZMZ spare parts," "Price list," "Contacts"[1]. By May 2004 a "Body panels" item had been added, and the page title had changed from the company's name to the merchandising phrase "Auto parts" — apparently for the benefit of search engines[2].

At the bottom of the page were the postal address, three landline phone numbers — 91-32-12, 79-85-15, 79-23-83 — and the email address gosar@rol.ru, matching the domain name[1]. The copyright notice remained unchanged across both surviving snapshots: "© Copyright 'Altar' 2003," meaning the page was edited over the course of a year but the notice was never updated[2]. No visit counters are visible in the preserved page text.

What the company offered

According to the home page, OOO "Altar" "has been operating in the automotive spare parts market for a number of years" and "for more than 5 years has been the official dealer of the Zavolzhsky Motor Plant, supplying the Russian market with the full range of auto parts produced there"[1]. The assortment was described as GAZ, PAZ, and UAZ engines, including the ZMZ-406 engine family and parts for them[1].

Over the year between the two snapshots the firm broadened its stated profile. In the 2004 version the wording became broader — "has been operating in the automotive market for a number of years" — and a paragraph appeared about selling complete vehicles: "our company offers the full model range of OAO GAZ automobiles, for work, leisure, and travel," listing the models "Volga," "Gazelle," "Sobol," "Barguzin," and intercity buses[2]. In other words, the parts site had turned into a site for a factory sub-dealer that also sold cars.

The rest of the text described logistics and terms of business: "a universal warehouse complex with convenient vehicle access," warehouse and office located next to each other, delivery by road and rail "to any point in Russia," shipment by container and railcar, a flexible discount system for regular customers[1]. The page closed with an acknowledgment of the competitive environment: "the conditions of fierce competition in the auto parts and accessories market compel us to seek new partners"[2]. Neither prices nor a price list appear in the surviving snapshots of the home page — the corresponding menu section was not captured by the archive.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site belongs to the layer of corporate business-card pages typical of the early 2000s, which Nizhny Novgorod trading firms commonly had: one substantive page, a section menu, an address, and phone numbers. In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, "Altar" left no notable trace: it does not appear in our samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating, and neither the domain gosar.r52.ru nor the name "Altar" appears in the surviving results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[4]. It made it into the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating not through the counter's tables but through the nn.ru directory's category listings, where it was listed among automotive firms. A domain in the r52.ru zone is characteristic of this layer: the firm did not purchase its own second-level name, settling instead for an address in the Nizhny Novgorod regional zone.

How it closed

The site disappeared before the domain did. As early as March 9, 2005, the web archive recorded not an "Altar" page at that address but a hosting service message: "The domain name www.gosar.r52.ru points to this IP address, but no virtual host is configured," signed "The Administration of R52.RU"[3]. Thus the site's substantive life fits within the span between August 2003 and May 2004, after which the zone registration continued to exist without content. The last snapshot of the address in the web archive is dated January 7, 2010[5]; today there is no site at gosar.r52.ru. What became of the company itself cannot be said from the available material: the site is the only trace of it that survives in the archive.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — List of gosar.r52.ru snapshots in the web archive (archive)