Imports pack the Port of Los Angeles. Click. It's amazing.

Microchips?
 Nope. Cars fresh
  off the ships at the
   port of Los Angeles.
carcode
The Legend: Nissan's 300ZX. Wanna buy one?

I started programming in dBASE 2 and Clipper in 1980, and wound up hacking and debugging something called Windows 286 for an up-and-coming little firm: Microsoft. Did it all online and by EMail, on that brand new online service: CompuServe.

The 1980s were filled with amazing adventures for a hacker — in home electronics, cellular telephone networks, real estate, and franchised car repair. I built all sorts of cool networks, each one running on my own original software. I loved startups.
Like, how 80s could you get?

In 1993, I brought it all home. The Internet was taking off like a ZCar outta Watkins, so I launched Autoscape, an online mall that gave Web surfers a new way to find that special creampuff. Autoscape was far from being an ordinary car site: it racked up 42 franchises and 150 dealers, in four states.
Angelino Heights: Victorian Los Angeles. Click for the whole story.
Urban Realities: The L.A. Riots and Visual Basic Car Parts: An inventory nightmare without a system

We're talking about a major online used car database, first in the biz, with over 200 makes and models, each one accessible on the World Wide Web. Autoscape generated 4,000 purchase requests each month. Dealers upped sales by 10 to 20 cars a month.
My Autoscape project has been morphed into Auto Web. Take a look.

I sold Autoscape to Auto Web — which was busy aggregating online car sites with financing from Motorola. My prototype had proven itself successful enough to be salable.

Autoscape is one in a series of systems that I've developed to help auto dealerships achieve new levels of efficiency through highly-customized network applications. Click my shades to learn about the others.