Re: [Amc-list] 70 Donohues

[Dan Curtis <d.curtis@xxxxxxx>]

I see Tom is still throwing verbal rocks at those who have the audacity to make a mistake.  Being an expert on something is a capability many aspire to while being an expert who helps others learn from their mistakes in a respectful manner is someone to be admired. 

In perspective, our Nash’s Ramblers and AMCs are old cars, most of which were at considerably lower cost with lesser appeal than many other brands despite usually being a great value to the consumer.  As such they were often cobbled together and altered in someone’s back yard, something I have seen more often that not on the dozens of AMC that I have owned. There are probably multiple examples out there that would support a mistaken response so although it may not be an accurate description of AMCs factory data, it may indeed be an accurate description of some of the AMCs that currently owned and driven today.  

Everyone makes mistakes, its one of the ways we learn. Heck, a while back I responded about roller rockers and temporarily had a case of “old timers” disease while responding incorrectly about the need for guide plates to keep the pushrod on the roller shaft…well duh, the roller shaft is on the valve stem side of the roller rocker not the pushrod side. The guide plates are needed for newer heads with the larger pushrod opening bore. Did I end up getting trashed on that one?  No, someone simply sent a polite response saying they had never seen a roller shaft on the pushrod end of roller rockers.  That was all that was said!  The difference was in how that individual responded to my mistake, politely and respectfully.  In Frank’s case, I hardly doubt that there was any harm brought to the legions of Donahue's owners by his typo or misstatement, particularly after it was corrected by Tom.  

Publicly trashing someone because they made an error about something within the AMC hobby rather than simply stating a correction has been the bane of the hobby for years. I personally know of many people who simply got fed up with the constant bashing and bickering within the AMC hobby and moved on to other brands.  As I have often stated and published, AMCs are quirky cars that are often owned by equally quirky people. We do ourselves and the hobby no favors by publicly trashing each other or by dissing other owners’ cars.  Perhaps now that our beloved AMCs are becoming more accepted by the mainstream auto enthusiast we too can start to behave in a more mainstream manner where, like many of the other collector car owner groups, we freely and readily help one another without trying to publicly demeanor them when they provide a partially correct or incorrect response.

This is a old car hobby and not brain surgery so it is unlikely that a mistaken response or misquoted data point will have any real impact on the quality of someone’s life… Geez!
 

Regards, 
Dan Curtis


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