Police stopped France and his housemate Russell Van Richmond for racing a Porsche Cayenne against a green Lamborghini across Seabreeze bridge. When they were pulled over Richmond, who is the son of one of J.C's dad's ex-wives, protested saying "I want your commander now. I am a France. Do you know what that means? We own this city."

It apparently didn't impress police because France was allegedly so drunk he could barely climb out of the car and had a bag of a "white, cakelike substance" in his pocket.

Richmond kept screaming to the police "I am gonna have your job. This is the biggest mistake ever. You are so done in Daytona." How Ironic.

According to reports, Richmond's last words to police were "Oh, shit" when they searched his pockets and found a tablet of hydrocodone.

Our favorite quote, though, was from an unidentified woman in Richmond's Porsche who told police he was "going so fast, I put my seatbelt on." We're pretty sure you should wear a seatbelt anytime you go out for a drive with a coked out, drunk person.

France has been suspended from Grand-Am indefinitely.

[Daytona News-Journal, Photo Credit: TMZ]

Each of these photos is a link to the car's original DOTS page, where you'll find its complete gallery for your enjoyment. Maybe bringing back the illuminated Indian-head hood ornament might have saved Pontiac? We'll never know now.

For every GTO or G8 GXP, there were half a dozen Pontiac Phoenix or '88 Pontiac LeMans to make you want to throw up in your mouth. As much as we loved the idea of the Pontiac brand, it just hasn't delivered for too long. Here are the seven cars from recent history which poisoned the well at Pontiac, forcing it to the grave.

7) 2005-2009 Pontiac G6

The Pontiac G6 was leaps and bounds ahead of the Grand Am it replaced, but all that shows is just how far behind Pontiac was in the mid-size segment. It's headline feature — the trick-sliding sky-view sunroof was pretty neat, but way too expensive and it made the car something of a one-trick pony. In base, four-cylinder form, it clogs the lots of airport rental companies and never really had the stuff to go head-to-head with competitors. And don't even get us started on the interior.

6) 2000-2005 Pontiac Bonneville

The ninth generation Pontiac Bonneville debuted to universal shoulder shrugs, it did little to justify its higher price over the better packaged Grand Prix, which it borrowed too much styling from. A series of refreshes made the car sportier but it never really caught on with buyers. Funny how indifferent styling, high price and strong competition will do that.

5) 2005 Pontiac Montana

When Pontiac added the SUV-inspired "Montana" package to the newly designed Transport minivan, soccer moms went ape for the vehicle. You couldn't chuck a rock at a little league game without hitting one. That ended when GM half-assed the redesign and stuck a long goofy nose onto a slightly restyled van in order to meet crash requirements. The horrendous result was a massive failure in the marketplace, as it should have been.

4) 2009 Pontiac G3

GM's former Vice Chairman of Global Product Development Bob Lutz stood on the New York Auto Show stage and noted Pontiac had long been known for the tag-line "We build excitement" even though they'd been delivering it with front wheel drive cars covered in stuck-on plastic. He claimed now they were going to change, introducing two vehicles — the Pontiac G8 ST and the Pontiac Solstice GXP Coupe, the former is now dead, and the latter is selling like candied dog poop. Half a year after Lutz made those statements, gas was $4.30 a gallon and Pontiac dealers were flipping out for an economy car on their floors. GM bowed to the pressure and green-lit the Pontiac G3 for US distribution. The stark contrast in message signaled a floundering purpose for the brand, and definitely not one which would interest enthusiasts.

3) 1985-2005 Pontiac Grand Am

There are a great many people who've owned Grand Ams, they're a cheap source of transportation, and while there are a few which made it a couple hundred thousand miles, they're by and large terrible, terrible cars. Unless you got the GT models, styling was yawn-inducing, the interiors were committee designed with Fisher-Price grade materials, and the awful suspensions and automatic transmissions sucked the entertainment value out of even the most enjoyable roads.

2) 1995-2005 Pontiac Sunfire

It's pretty rare for a nameplate to suck so hard for its entire existence, if something is bad, it usually gets killed, but the Sunfire got at least three refreshes. The Pontiac Sunfire was an impossibly ugly reskin of the Chevy Cavalier, and while the Cavalier was a perfectly good cheap beater, the Sunfire got the crushingly bad interior baubles that was tossed at all Pontiacs at the time. Chintzy materials, poorly engineered HVAC system, and rotten colors made it a terrible place to spend time.

1) 2001-2005 Pontiac Aztek

No matter how long Pontiac would have survived, the commercial disaster of the Pontiac Aztek would have always hung around its neck. It was incredibly functional, but the chintzy interior materials were only outmatched by the laughably bad styling and equally chintzy-looking exterior plastic cladding. Projected sales were placed at 50,000 to 70,000, but only ever topped 27,000 a year. It got a quickie refresh which saw sportier wheels and painted body cladding, but the damage was done.

Alex, after being told he couldn't drive a manual and receiving a lecture on the nature of being a team player by veteran racer and Skip Barber instructor Rene Villeneuve, is now embarking on his next challenge — a dream pursued by only those with big wads of bills or bankrolled by those with even bigger ones.

Now, with Villeneuve as his captain, he embarks on his next endurance challenge — the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series.

The series culminates in the 24 Hours of Daytona, and we're quite interested in seeing Alex's mental state after completing that race and eagerly look forward to his first competitive outing on May 17. Roy, the author of The Driver, which tells the tale of driving at illegal speeds coast to coast in pursuit of the transcontinental record, Alex is known more for his brazen flouting of traffic laws and larger-than-life personality than his demure and steely nature as a team manager. Still, he tells us he's learning the meaning of teamwork — so we'll have to wait and see how he performs managing a team he's driving with. [Team Polizei]

We saw plenty of the usual LeMons suspects at MSR in Houston last weekend, with 10 Mustangs, 6 RX-7s, 6 E30s, 4 CRXs, 4 Neons, and 4 Miatas showing up, but we also had our first-ever Infiniti Q45, a pair of Toyota pickups, an Opel GT, and an MGB-GT (which managed to get around the track startlingly quickly, in between lengthy jail sentences in the Penalty Box). In addition to Mustangs coming in first and second, we saw some other world-turned-topsy-turvy events. How about a LeMons race in which four Saabs enter… and all four are still running at the end? Sure, all the Saabs earned the new-for-Houston punishment for hitting tire walls and/or cones (old tires bolted to the car's roof), but they didn't throw rods or send major suspension components skittering off into the weeds in the first 30 minutes of the race! A four-banger Mustang finished second, a Saturn came in third, an 80s Dodge Daytona managed to contend, and the majority of BMW E30s raced for two solid days without exhibiting the usual maddeningly undiagnosable electrical woes (blown head gaskets and axle failures, certainly, but we didn't see the all-too-common cruel drama of E30 crew members weeping over multimeters and wiring diagrams).

This time I'm going to include each team's best lap time, so y'all can see for yourselves how "fast" does not equal "win" in the 24 Hours Of LeMons. Those of you contemplating horsepower-enhancing cheats would do well to note that the four-cylinder Mustangs performed just as well as their V8 siblings, and you Miata and E30 guys can go ahead and keep thumping your chests about those absurdly quick lap times… but remember, your favorite cars got stomped by a Saturn! Those of you wanting obsessively complete lap info can go here; keep in mind that a few cars may be showing too-low best lap times due to having taken what the corner workers dubbed the "Neon Bypass" (in honor of the oft-penalized Blueballs Neons) off-road shortcut around the chicanes.

Before you go check out our 95 Texas racin' machines, I've got a video that true 24 Hours Of LeMons fans ought to find quite entertaining. First, we've got one of the hairiest Integra-jumps-BMW-wheel bits ever caught on film, courtesy of the Unintended Acceleration Audi's in-car camera:


Zerin Dube, editor of Speed:Sport:Life volunteered for judging duties at the race, and he also did a good job covering the goings-on at his site. You'll enjoy the Penalty Box Punishments and the rest of the SSL race coverage.

Thanks to Zerin Dube, TheEastBayKid, Myke Toman, and a whole bunch of race team members for many of the photographs below.
When you're done here, be sure to check out the participants of previous LeMons events, including Arse Freeze '08, Texas '08, Toledo '08, New England '08, South '08, San Francisco '08, Arse Freeze '07, and San Francisco '07. I'll put up some more LeMons stuff when I get back to my normal weekend schedule, too. And now, the racers of the 2009 Gator-O-Rama:

Vazin went on to say "It's not all or nothing, we're certainly reviewing it against a larger motorsports strategy, but for 2008 we're taking a pause." He wouldn't give a reason for doing so, other than saying they're working on strategy, but he did deny that it was at all a financial decision.

On the awkward timing given the introduction of the Nissan GT-R, Vazin responded with questions "The GT-R goes on sale in June, so we're a good six months away [and] the company is considering what to do with the GT-R. Can we go racing with it? What series could we be in that would be consistent across all markets?"

Though he insisted that Nissan was out of racing for FY2008, which for Nissan means March 31, 2009, the door was left open for the future "At the moment we finished CORR (Championship Off Road Racing) season for 2007 and felt pretty good about where we ended, and now it's a chance to reflect on what's the return and where we can make a difference."

You heard it here first. Nissan is out. Does this mean a great return in FY 2009 highlighted by a NISMO racing GT-R? Or will Nissan's reflection lead to them continuing their motorsports freeze? Only time will tell.

Check out that nose! I knew I'd hit Early Malaise Era paydirt when I spotted this fine machine parked across the street from the minister's '77 Camaro. This car is in excellent, probably original, condition; this being Alameda, I wouldn't be shocked to find it's still in the hands of the original owner.


Pontiac's once-mighty 400 had lost quite a bit of oomph since the late 60s, with only 170 horses in the '73 version.


The rear side glass on the Colonnade has these classy louvers, which let the world know you were rolling in true Grand Am style.


Sure, it's easy to laugh at Malaise Era cars; in fact, it seems an entire industry has since sprung up to laugh at every aspect of the period. But before you laugh too hard, remember that cars like the Grand Am showed a very American optimism in the face of deepening gloom. Or, for a different way of looking at it, watch the following 1973 performance of the Edgar Winter Group and see if that doesn't put Malaise in a different light:


Yes, their outfits are absurdly dated, right down to Edgar's 1st-gen digital watch, and the rock-god posturing of the band might be equally dated. But who the hell cares? Much like the Grand Am, these guys have integrity beneath the silly exterior. You need another example? Fine, just observe what kids watching Sesame Street in 1973 got to see on the tube:


Again, we get the ridiculous Early Malaise Era clothing, but every single member of this band is orders of magnitude funkier than his present-day counterpart. Why, just the horn section alone- watch those guys long enough and you'll fail a drug test! And Stevie- in '73 he was Grand Am-like, but by the "I Just Called To Say I Love You" era he had become a Sunbird. So don't be so quick to dismiss Malaise!

This ad may just win the Most Eighties Car Ad Award for the week, if only for the porn-Moog music and the woman's breathy voice repeating the words "Grand Am" over and over while a miserably underpowered, indifferent-build-quality front-driver limps across the screen. Hey, but at least the Grand Am was better than the Phoenix, the car it replaced. The glass was half full! – Murilee Martin

Related:
Wicked Winnipeg Fieros, eh? [internal]

Earlier this year, Rolex Sports Car Series driver Joey Hand turned his BMW into a bouncing Betty at Mid-Ohio. Thanks to YouTube, we can all count the endos. One, two, three, four, five, six ... [Thanks to Curtis and David for the tips.]

Mid-Ohio: Hand recounts race accident [Motorsport.com]

Related:
Katherine Legge's Champ Car Crash: She's OK [internal]