Letting Bertha Go

I’ve told the story of Bertha multiple times—how I bought it in Austin in 1984 because I wanted to bring a big-bumpered 2002 to Boston to survive its demolition derby of traffic and parking, how Maire Anne and I drove off from our wedding in it, how I transmogrified it to turn it into a track rat, how Maire Anne and I had one big pre-first-child road trip in it up to Nova Scotia, how I loaned it to my friend Alex so he and his bride could go on a six-week National Parks tour, how he then bought it, how it got stolen and recovered but with engine damage and put into storage for 26 years, and how I bought it back in 2018, revived it, and drove it to The Vintage in 2019. Maire Anne and I talked about recreating the Nova Scotia trip in the car, but it never happened. After The Vintage, the car mainly sat in storage, first in Fitchburg, then in Monson. Late last fall, I brought the car home to give it a little much-delayed love and tinkered with it a bit, but it was such a snowy winter that I barely drove it.

Last week I wrote about how much I loved seeing both my recently-sold Bavaria and my Euro 635CSi at The Vintage and their new owners so clearly enjoying them, and how this was so much better than the cars sitting unused in the Monson warehouse. It gave me the epiphany that I should entertain doing the same with Bertha. After all, it was now spring, and the natural order of things was for me to shoot out to Monson and swap cars, and which car would I use for that? The Z3? With spring popping? I don’t think so. The Lotus Elan +2 that I’m so enamored with? No. The red E9? Hell no. No, what would happen would be I’d drive Bertha out there, and it would sit for another six months.

So I made a surprising snap decision. Rather than spend days preparing a car for sale like I usually do, I pulled from photos and videos I already had, wrote up a short candid description, and a week ago Monday, posted them on my Facebook page, along with the pages for The Vintage, MidAmerica 02Fest, and several BMW 2002 pages. I spit-balled a price, as the value of a car like this (basically solid except for one substantial rust hole behind the pedal bucket, massive patina, hot engine, 5-speed, Koni suspension, full tii braking system, working a/c) can’t be triangulated by looking at sales on Bring a Trailer like a more-conventional 2002.

To my surprise, someone bit on it, and quickly. That evening, a fellow named Craig who I’d met at MidAmerica 02Fest in 2022 contacted me, said that his 2002 was apart, and floated the idea of flying up from Austin, buying the car, and driving it to this year’s MidAmerica, thinking that this could be a fun adventure. (His exact text was “Hello Rob. Couple of questions while I contemplate bad financial decisions.”) I looked at the calendar. MidAmerica was in exactly one week—Monday the 27th through Wednesday the 29th. It’s a two-day drive from Boston, so he’d need to fly up on Friday to drive through the weekend. And I was clear in the ad that the car needed tires (it was running on 18-year-old Altimaxes; I hadn’t changed them because I wanted to leave the tire selection up to the next owner), so tires would need to be put on order. I also filled him in other details about the condition of the car. In addition to the 5-speed’s 4th-gear synchro being balky (which I’d disclosed in the ad), I told him about the crack in the mounting ear for the left-hand engine mount. I quizzed Craig thoroughly on the expectations and reality of driving a vintage car 1500 miles, and noted that I had to make roadside repairs on both of my trips to MidAmerica, coincidentally both of them tightening or replacing missing bolts in the compressor or its bracket that had vibrated loose. He reminded me that we actually had met when I was doing exactly that aid MidAmerica 2022.

Craig and I batted around what the car would need to make the trip. It really wasn’t much. I commented that I hadn’t changed the water pump when I’d resurrected the car in 2018, and I had a spare Graf water pump that, in fact, I’d won at the raffle at MidAmerica in 2022 (Paul Wegweiser had donated it), so even though there was nothing obviously wrong with the water pump in the car, its destiny seemed to be for it to be installed. I also said that I’d want to put another 50 to 100 miles on the car to judge how it felt. Craig also asked me how much flexibility I had in the price. I said that, since I’d just put the car up for sale, not much. We agreed that the time frame made this a narrow needle to thread, and that tires would need to be put on order no later than Wednesday morning.

On Tuesday, I fired up Bertha and put 90 miles on her driving her out the Mass Pike and back. When I got home, I put her up on ramps, inspected the undercarriage, and found a non-trivial amount of coolant weeping that appeared to be coming from the water pump itself. So suddenly, the issue of changing the water pump was no longer an academic “I really should do that” issue. I got it swapped it that evening and buttoned things up on Wednesday. The fan had a chipped blade, but fortunately I had another one in better condition.

For the next several days, I spoke with Craig morning and evening. Some of his questions became very specific, such as asking about the state of the car’s spare tire and whether the wipers were good. I was a bit taken aback, as these didn’t seem to be the kind of questions someone wanting to have “an adventure” would ask, but the more we talked, the more I realized that he was simply being appropriately methodical in planning for the fact that he’d be getting into the car and driving it 750 miles a day for two days. I contrasted it with my Ran When Parked adventure with Louie where the car was much needier but I had no constraints on the timeframe. I said that I’d put together a box of spares including the usual ignition parts and a spare electric fuel pump.

Several times, I was convinced that the deal would fall apart. In fact, I specifically advised him not to do what he was doing, which was to tie flying up, looking at the car, deciding to buy it, and driving it to MidAmerica together. I really wanted him to feel like he was under no pressure to buy the car, and said that that if it didn’t feel right, he should feel free to walk away (the $299 one-way flights to Austin made that possible). To make sure there wasn’t any misunderstanding about my flexibility in the price, I lowered it slightly and said that that was the best I could do, but also offered that, if he walked away, I’d split the cost of the tires with him (left to my own, I would’ve bought some $200-for-four Amazon third-tier rubber that cost less than half what he wanted to put on the car).

Maire Anne comments that, when I’m selling a car, she doesn’t see me for three days, because I’m always working on it, and that was true with Bertha. In addition to the water pump, there was an oil change, troubleshooting why the Cibie Oscar driving lights weren’t working, fixing the windshield washer pump, and rerouting the fuel lines in the trunk to make the floor panels fit better around the electric fuel pump, as well as to install a vent tube on the filler elbow that exited beneath the trunk floor.

The biggest last-minute drama was about the tires. Craig had lined up purchase and installation at a Mavis Tire shop in Cambridge for Friday morning, but when I went there, the guy confirmed that he had the tires, but said that they didn’t work on cars more than 25 years old. My jaw hung open. In what world is mounting tires “working on a car?” Fortunately, he said that a small service station 100 yards down the street could install them. So I loaded all four into Bertha’s trunk, drove the length of a football field, and got them installed. The three Lebanese guys who ran the little service station fawned all over the car.

Craig flew in that evening during rush hour, so I had him Uber to the house, and parked Bertha directly in front so there was no question which house it was. I put the car back up on ramps. He gave it a very thorough examination, carefully poring over both the rust hole in the floor (which edged uncomfortably close to one of the transmission bracing points) and the cracked engine mount. It still being rush hour, we took the car on a leisurely drive west out twisty roads, then joined up with I-90 inbound when the traffic mostly appeared to be outbound so he could experience some highway driving.

When we got back, Craig still appeared to be in thought about the car. We did a palate-cleansing tour of the E9 and the Elan +2 in my garage, then came back to the main act. “Do you just want to take it for a drive yourself without me yammering in your ear?” I offered. He nodded in agreement, saying that he’d go out to Harbor Freight and Lowes for tools. I assumed that meant that he’d make the final decision en-route.

And that’s basically what happened. I’m not one to do that big fat awful Wheeler Dealers handshake to force closure of the deal, but when Craig returned with a trunk-full of tools including a floor jack and stands, it was clear that it was on. We passed papers and chatted for a good bit before I watched Bertha drive off into the night as I recited the traditional musical-automotive incantation “Long may you run.”

Selling Bertha was not an easy decision, and I’ll admit was that part of it was driven by a desire to mitigate recent expenses from the troika of our trip to Spain last month, a beastly-high 2025 federal tax bill, and the quarterly property taxes on the house. From a right-brain standpoint, both I and Maire Anne were sorry to see the car go, as we both fondly recall driving off from our wedding in it in all its shaving-cream can-dragging glory, as well as the Nova Scotia trip. Maire Anne recalled that she daily-drove the for a short period in 1988 with a car seat for Ethan in the back and wrote an article about it for Roundel. But despite the nostalgic idea of us driving it back up to Cape Bretton, in truth, Maire Anne doesn’t really like fumy loud experience of long trips in vintage cars with me (okay, maybe it’s the “with me” part :^), and if I or we were to do it, we’d take a different car.

So, dear Bertha, have fun frolicking with your 2002 sistren and brethren at MidAmerica, and enjoy going back home to Austin where it all began.

And yes, long may you run.

—Rob Siegel

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Rob’s newly-expanded book The Best Of The Hack Mechanic™: 40 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies (including the new Best Of) from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com/books.