Autotrade (autotrade.ru) — a website of a Nizhny Novgorod firm that traded wholesale in assemblies and spare parts for domestic cars[1]. The contact address on the page read "603124 Nizhny Novgorod, Bazovy Proezd 12," with separate phone numbers for the sales department and the supply department[1]. As the home page stated, the firm had worked in the auto parts market since 1995[1]; the earliest surviving snapshot of the site is dated August 24, 2000[1]. In the 2010s a different project was operating at the same address — a classifieds board for selling cars, which retained no trace of Nizhny Novgorod[2].

Wholesale warehouse: a calling-card page

The home page as it looked in 2000 was a short business card for the enterprise. The heading was set in capitals and matched the firm's purpose: "AVTOTREID — WHOLESALE TRADE IN ASSEMBLIES AND AUTO PARTS FOR DOMESTIC AUTOMOBILES"[1]. The makes for which the firm supplied parts were listed in a single line: GAZ-53, GAZ-3307, Volga, Gazelle, PAZ, ZIL-130, UAZ[1].

Contacts stood right at the top of the page, ahead of the firm's description, and were split by department: the sales department — (8312) 46-04-40 and 46-03-78, phone/fax (8312) 31-73-52, a separate phone/fax for wholesale orders (8312) 31-73-86; the supply department — (8312) 46-00-18 and 46-14-38[1]. For correspondence the page listed autotrade@kis.ru — on someone else's domain rather than its own[1].

Besides contacts, the page offered a price list, downloadable "in MS Excel format in a self-extracting ZIP archive," and an autoresponder worked at price@autotrade.ru — "send a message of any content to this address and you will receive our price list"[1]. There was also a mailing-list subscription, with a request to state one's name in the letter[1]. The firm invited wholesale buyers, suppliers, and manufacturers to cooperate, listing what it offered: "a wide, daily updated range of auto parts," discounts for large wholesale buyers, "made-to-order work, reservation in stock," and "the option of shipment by rail container"[1]. At the bottom of the page stood the contractor's credit: "Created and maintained by INFORIS"[1].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our census not from a rating but from the directory of the nn.ru catalog, where it was listed under "Firms (Enterprises): Auto: Trade in spare parts, components, accessories" with the description "Wholesale trade in spare parts and assemblies for domestic automobiles"[3]. Next to each line the catalog showed its own rating: in the August 16, 2002 snapshot, "Avtotreid" had a "Rating: 119" — the tenth line in the category out of 120 sites, between "Kompaniya Avangard-Avto" (122) and OOO "Avtodelo" (105), with the category leader "AvtoSpetsSbyt" at 1396[3]. In the surviving voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, autotrade.ru does not appear at all[4]. A mass audience was never expected for the wholesale parts warehouse: the page addressed wholesale buyers, suppliers, and manufacturers, not car owners[1]. How this cross-section of old addresses was compiled is described separately: Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

The second autotrade.ru: a classifieds board

By 2011 the address autotrade.ru no longer belonged to the Nizhny Novgorod wholesaler but to a site of classified ads for buying and selling cars — with user registration, search by parameters (car, price "from" and "to," city), three list display modes (compact, regular — labeled in the menu with the typo "Regular lisst" — and table), and a feed of auto news and articles about new models[2]. In the "About us" section the goal was phrased as follows: "providing quality car buying and selling services for any user who has visited the internet"[2]. Contacts were reduced to the Skype handle autotrade.ru and the address info@autotrade.ru, with the footer credit "Design by insolve.ru"[2].

The project never filled up: alongside real listings (a KIA CEE'D for 475,500 rubles, a Mercedes S600 for 1,100,000) the showcase still carried demo template cards — "For Sale $150,000" with Lorem ipsum filler text, and under a "Skoda Octavia" the description read "Sample car description" instead of an actual one[2]. By August 1, 2015, the "most popular listings" section had three entries left[5]; by April 8, 2016, two[6]. Mostly the news feed kept being updated: in the 2016 snapshot these were notes about a law on stripping driving licenses for debt that had taken effect, about sales of the Lada XRAY, and about the resignation of General Motors Global Design vice president Ed Welburn[6].

The fate of the address

Already in the August 1, 2015 snapshot, the home page carried an announcement: "The domain avtoteid (Autotrade.ru — buy sell cars) is for sale at nic.ru auction"[5]. The same line was still there in April 2016[6]. In the January 26, 2018 snapshot nothing remained of the classifieds board: the page, under the heading "sell a car auto news autotrade.ru," was one continuous feed of car news[7]. In total the web archive's index for this address holds 80 snapshots, the last of them dated October 30, 2025. When checked in August 2026, the site at this address was responding.

The story of autotrade.ru is a plot typical of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: a short domain name, set up by a local firm for a price list and department phone numbers, outlived the firm's presence online and passed to another project — judging by the content of the snapshots, the classifieds board had no relation to the Nizhny Novgorod "Avtotreid." Of the firm itself, the archive retains a 2000 snapshot with the address on Bazovy Proezd and six phone numbers with the 8312 area code.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, August 24, 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, July 27, 2011 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, category "Trade in spare parts, components, accessories," August 16, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, August 1, 2015 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, April 8, 2016 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, January 26, 2018 (archive)