Resurrecting Bertha

Book excerpt: To most people, cars are just appliances to be disposed of when they rust, become unreliable, or are outgrown. But to car people, it's different. Cars are like photographs that occupy physical space. They hold aromas that trigger memories, and remind us of who we once were. In addition, to some people, the relationship with the car itself is a real thing. Many enthusiasts pine for the cars of their youth, regret that they ever let them go, and yearn and search for them the way people do with old lovers, hoping to find them and rekindle that old spark. In Resurrecting Bertha, Rob Siegel assures you that this is normal (well, as normal as anything is with car people), and embarks on this journey himself. Writing in his trademark Hack Mechanic voice that's enthralled readers for 35 years, Rob describes his original eight-year relationship with his highly-modified 1975 BMW 2002 "Bertha," selling the car to a dear friend, its 26 years of storage, and buying it back in a weak whisky-soaked moment only to experience the "oh dear God what did I just do" regret when he raises the long-closed garage door and comes face-to-face with the badly deteriorated car. The book details the steps Rob went through to get the car running, then driving, then sufficiently sorted to make a 2000-mile drive, and how the reconnection with the car was so much deeper than he expected. Resurrecting Bertha is about more than just the nuts and bolts; it's about deciding what's important, the joy of doing good, and how, if you do it right, not only can you go home again, but you can do so in the same car.