Early Days: Cyberspace Automotive Performance dates back to 1993, which was virtually the dawn of the world-wide web. At a time when people were still browsing the web with a program called NCSA Mosaic, Chris Myer realized the potential for selling product via the Internet. As surprising as it seems now, his efforts were strongly resisted by many who viewed the Internet as something that would be wrong to allow to become commercial.

Cyberspace Automotive Performance started as the first online auto parts business and one of the very first e-commerce businesses. At a time when shopping carts were unheard-of and no efficient means were available to put the massive databases of automotive part information on the website, CAP began by just building web pages that discussed the different parts available from a given manufacturer, then asked browsers to email their information to receive a quote.

As individuals would ask about parts for a given make and model, the staff at CAP would consolidate this information into a simple text file so that it would not have to be researched again for the next customer with the same automobile. Eventually, these lists became complete enough to be published to the website as “shopping lists”.

In 1995, Frank Bohanan of The Specialty Equipment Manufacturer’s Association (SEMA)found Cyberauto.Com on the Internet, and was intrigued enough to call and invite CAP to join SEMA. SEMA is the organization that serves the interests of the automotive specialty equipment industry. As president, Chris Myer attended the SEMA conference in Las Vegas that year, taking a laptop computer with a copy of the CAP website. He visited each manufacturer to show them the website he had developed for each of them. Their response ranged from bewilderment (none of them had ever even heard of the “world-wide web”), to amazement, to anger (the president of one company threatened to sue CAP for putting his information on the Internet.)

Expanding Growth: Cyberspace Automotive Performance continued to expand, and the company was moved into its Ellis Road facility in November of 1998. In 2000, Chris was approached by then-owner of Alamo Motorsports Troy Talamantez about buying the retail portion of that company, including it’s website, to allow Troy to focus on his wholesale buiness. This purchase was effected in January of 2001, and Alamo Motorsports moved from it’s second home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to co-locate with Cyberspace Automotive Performance in Melbourne, Florida. (Alamo Motorsports had formerly been in Texas, and was originally assocaited with what is now Alamo Autosports.) A few months later, CAP moved into it’s current home in historic downtown Melbourne, Florida. Here is a link to the previous version of the Cyberspace Automotive Performance website.

CAP began to explore the benefits of other types of e-commerce infrastructures. The Alamo Motorsports website brought to CAP a shopping cart capability that was not available in the early Cyberauto.Com. CAP investigated Yahoo stores and engaged Rob Snell of Y-Store.Com to develop the companies first niche-marketing website. In April of 2002, Racing-Seats-USA.Com was born. This attempt was so successful that a second effort was launched and Rob Snell completed Fuel-Pumps.Net in October of 2002. Also launched late in 2002 was the Hyundai Performance Store, a collaborative effort between CAP and the Hyundai Performance content site. The outcome of these new additions to CAP resulted in the corporation’s first annual revenue in excess of $1M. Please visit the page about our websites to learn more about these individual profit centers.