avd.r52.ru was the website of a Nizhny Novgorod group of enterprises, OOO "Avtodvigatel" (Autodvigatel, "Auto Engine"), which sold spare parts for trucks and auto-tractor equipment and carried out engine repairs. The domain belonged to the Nizhny Novgorod zone r52.ru, and the site's Nizhny Novgorod affiliation is also confirmed by the content of the home page: the details of every enterprise in the group listed settlement accounts at the Kanavinsky branch of Nizhegorodpromstroybank, "Nizhny Novgorod"[2]. The site existed from at least 2000 — that is the year the copyright notice in the footer of the earliest snapshot is dated[1]; the last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 8 November 2005[4]. By the time of our census of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, the domain was no longer responding.

What it was

The home page described not a single firm but an association of several. As the home page stated, the company "was created as a network of enterprises engaged in narrowly specialized types of activity in the production of works and services on the automotive market, together forming a closed cycle"[1]. It also stated: "We have been working in the auto market since 1986"[1].

According to the 2001 description, the group's structure included four specialized enterprises plus the trading company itself[1]:

  • the "Ditas" auto center — a representative of the Yaroslavl Diesel Equipment Plant, servicing diesel fuel systems of domestic auto-tractor equipment;
  • ZAO "Nizhegorodavtodizel-service" — a representative of OAO PSF "Avtodizelservis" (Yaroslavl), supplying spare parts and power units from the Yaroslavl Motor Plant to motor transport enterprises;
  • PF "Fakel" — a representative of OAO "Fritex" (Yaroslavl), wholesale trade in friction products: cylinder head gaskets, clutch discs, brake pads, manifold gaskets;
  • "Dvigatelservis-NN" — a representative of the Zavolzhye Motor Plant, repair and maintenance of all types of ZMZ engines, including fuel-injected ones, as well as fuel-injection systems of imported cars;
  • OOO "Avtodvigatel" — the "distribution system of the above-listed enterprises within the retail network", with retail showrooms for truck parts.

What the site looked like

The design was simple and stayed unchanged throughout the years: a horizontal menu of five items — "News | About the Company | Our Services | Our Products | Address", duplicated at the top and bottom of the page[1][4]. The page title was "OOO 'Avtodvigatel'. — About Us.", and the keywords in the markup were "MAZ, KAMAZ, ZIL"[1]. The footer of the earliest snapshot carried a developer credit: "Web design by Teamoty Brane Inc."[1].

By 2004 the home page had grown into a directory: full banking details were added to each enterprise's description — tax ID (INN), tax registration reason code (KPP), account number at the Kanavinsky branch of Nizhegorodpromstroybank, bank identification code (BIK), and correspondent account. Such blocks were published for all five legal entities of the group[2]. At the same time, links to two price lists — "Ditas" and "Avtodvigatel" — appeared on the home page, along with a separate section "Fuel equipment and spare parts for it"[2]. Neither visitor counters nor advertising banners are visible in the text of the surviving snapshots.

What changed from snapshot to snapshot

The snapshots show what the company sold in different years. In 2001, the showrooms offered parts for trucks "of the MAZ, KamAZ, ZIL, GAZ family"[1], while by 2004–2005 this list had changed to "MAZ, KamAZ, KrAZ"[2][3]. The last snapshot shows a summary list of what "Avtodvigatel" itself dealt in, including a new line of business: wholesale and retail trade in filter elements for auto-tractor equipment made by the Kostroma plant "Avtofilter" and the Ukhtomsky Metal Products Plant[4].

The same snapshot shows that the page was edited hastily: part of the enterprise descriptions is closed off by unclosed HTML comments, leaving dangling "-->" sequences in the text, and the description of the "Ditas" auto center is duplicated twice in a row[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet and closure

The site entered our census from the nn.ru directory's category listing, where it was described as "A network of enterprises engaged in narrowly specialized engine repairs" (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating). It does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, and no traffic figures are recorded in our data. The site is not listed in the results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[5] — which is unsurprising for a corporate page belonging to a parts supplier: it was made not for a contest or a general audience, but as a business-card page with banking details and price lists for procurement staff at motor transport enterprises.

The web archive has preserved 23 crawls of the home page over its entire existence. The snapshots stop in November 2005[4]; no later versions of the site have survived, and the domain avd.r52.ru is no longer registered. The fate of the group's enterprises themselves cannot be traced in our materials.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, November 2005 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)