Good on Rob

Dear Classic American,

I read your feature on Rob Norrington’s triumph over adversity with his battle to ‘tame’ his Dodge Charger as you put it, with quite a chuckle. His experience more or less mirrored mine a decade ago with a very truculent and unco-operative 1968 Mustang that was my dream car, but frankly turned into a year-long nightmare. Luckily, like Rob, I persisted and after just about everything had been repaired, replaced or refurbished, I ended up with quite a nice, reliable fun car… but boy did it put me through the mill. I think the lesson from these stories of automotive woe/challenges, is that as the old saying goes: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”. We sometimes forget these cars are half a century old and they have already outlived their original imagined lifetime of 10 years by five times, so no wonder things break or fail… but still, we love them!

Jess Baines

Via email

Wise words indeed Jess – I think we can all relate to Rob’s experiences, they’re especially acute for people who have never owned classic cars and are unfamiliar with the allowances we often must make for something that is, as you very correctly point out, half a century old… or more!