PistonHeads is an online news site dedicated to the automotive industry

Automotive industry

The automotive industry designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and sells motor vehicles, and is one of the world's most important economic sectors by revenue....

. The site contains numerous related articles, a sportscar buying/selling facility and an internet forum

Internet forum

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...

.

History

Pistonheads was founded in 1999 by David Edmonston, and sold in January 2007 to the Haymarket Media Group.

On 13 February 2004 the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 television programme Look North

BBC Look North (Yorkshire and North Midlands)

BBC Look North is the BBC's regional television news service for West & South Yorkshire, parts of North Yorkshire and the North Midlands. The programmes as produced and broadcast from the BBC Broadcasting Centre at St...

 broadcast a news item about alleged death threats made to speed safety campaigners on the PistonHeads website. A complaint was made to Ofcom

Ofcom

Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...

 that the item portrayed the website unfairly but the adjudication did not uphold this view.

Pistonheads is also the sponsor of an annual motor show hosted at the NEC

National Exhibition Centre

The National Exhibition Centre is an exhibition centre in Birmingham, England. It is near junction 6 of the M42 motorway, and is adjacent to Birmingham International Airport and Birmingham International railway station. It has 20 interconnected halls, set in grounds of 628 acres making it the...

 in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

.