tranzit.r52.ru was the site of Transit LLC, a Nizhny Novgorod company selling spare parts for GAZ automobiles. As the home page stated, the firm "has operated in the Nizhny Novgorod market since 1996," and its shop was located at "N. Novgorod, ul. Alma-Atinskaya, 15," with phone and fax numbers under area code 8312[1]. The site was hosted on the Nizhny Novgorod hosting service r52.ru[1]. Snapshots of the home page survive in the web archive from January 2002[1] to June 2009[5].

Business-card site, 2001–2003

The first version of the site was a single-page business card with the copyright notice "© 2001 Transit" and a single substantive section, "About the company"[1]. The home page named the sale of spare parts for GAZ-brand vehicles as the company's main line of business: "GAZ, ZKS, ZMZ auto parts, everything for the diesel and 406 engine." The shop's range was advertised as "over 1,500 items," alongside spare parts, accessories (antennas, seat covers, first-aid kits, brushes, batteries), and auto chemicals: oils, antifreeze, sealant, primers, adhesives, and spray paints of domestic and imported manufacture[1].

The firm presented itself as a dealer of OAO GAZ and listed its regular customers: PKP Kvarts, the company Pigma, Nizhavtotekhkomplekt LLC, as well as enterprises in European Russia, Siberia, the Urals, Ukraine, and Belarus. Delivery, according to the home page, was made by rail container to any point in Russia and by road transport to nearby regions. Separately mentioned were order fulfillment by phone, three-day reservation of selected items, and a warranty with replacement of failed parts[1]. The text closed with promises of discounts for wholesalers and regular customers and the phrase "We can work something out with you!"[1]

Over a year and a half the text did not change by a word, but the contact details did. In the 2002 snapshot the signature listed the address tranzit@nnov.cityline.ru and two numbers — (8312) 53-53-27 and 57-51-38[1]. By August 2003 the mail had moved to the host's own domain, tranzit@r52.ru, and the numbers had grown to five: (8312) 57-51-31, 57-95-60, 58-56-56, 57-49-36, 57-51-38[2]. Both versions carry the same developer credit: "Coding by Info-online," "Hosting by r52.ru"[1][2].

The 2004 relaunch

In the summer of 2004 the site was redone from scratch. The new home page's title read "the firm 'Transit' — spare parts and components for GAZ, PAZ atomobiles" (typo in the original), with PAZ added to the GAZ brand, and a menu of five sections appeared: news, company, services, product range, contacts, in which the graphic headings stylistically substituted a Latin "m" for the Cyrillic "т" ("newsm" [novosmu], "Whamt is 'Tramzim'?" [Чmо mакое «mранзum»?])[3].

The site's only news item, dated 29 June 2004, announced its own launch: "Our biggest news today is the launch of our site," with plans to "develop the site in the direction of online trading — we may create an online shop," and a request to send suggestions to the company's email address. The last-updated date was given as 1 July 2004[3]. The self-description had grown larger than before: "one of the largest suppliers of automotive spare parts in the Volga-Vyatka region," "over seven thousand items of parts, assemblies, accessories, components, and consumables in daily stock" — against one and a half thousand in the 2002 version[3].

A detail typical of the mid-2000s: the page opened with an apology to the visitor and a demand to switch browsers. The site, it stated, "is designed and optimized for browsers that fully support the CSS 2 standard," that is, "in our understanding," Internet Explorer 5.5 and above, which "according to official Runet statistics" had been chosen by 94.7% of internet users[3]. At the bottom of the page was the developer's signature: "Gigabit 2004: made with © love"[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed under the auto-parts category, and the directory's description repeated verbatim the first sentence of the "About the company" section — about selling GAZ, ZKS, ZMZ parts and "everything for the diesel and 406 engine"[1]. This is a typical case for Nizhny Novgorod Internet of those years: a corporate business card on the local host r52.ru, updated once every few years, sustained by a directory listing and a phone number in its signature rather than by traffic.

The site took no notable place in local rankings. It does not appear in the published vote-results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004[4]. Nor is it found in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter that underlie the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, and we have no data on its visitor numbers.

How it closed

The online shop promised in the 2004 news item never appeared in the surviving snapshots: the site remained a set of informational sections about the company and its product range[3]. The last home-page snapshot in the web archive is dated 16 June 2009[5]; after that, tranzit.r52.ru vanished from the network — the third-level domain on the r52.ru host no longer exists. We have no information in our material on the further fate of Transit LLC itself.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2009 (last snapshot) (archive)