Hemmings Auto Blogs caught up with Gary at the Dayton, Ohio, Concours d'Elegance (we snickered too) where he was showing his amazing little cars. A millworker by trade, Gary picks up the leftover bits of woo normally destined for the trash and uses regular woodworking tools to carve these slick little cars. These aren't just hacked together to look pretty on the outside, they're carefully built to a crazy level of precision, according to Gary:

The hoods of the cars are removable to expose the radiators and vent openings for air flow. The front tires turn in unison, and the Porsche 917k, when complete, will be the first car with steering wheel turning capabilities. I also have a driveline mocked-up that will turn the engine cooling turbine on top of the engine with the turning of the rear wheels as you roll it! All of the shifters, handbrakes and foot pedal assemblies move. The gas caps all lock and unlock, the side view mirrors adjust, and any aero flaps would be adjustable on the car.

We're especially loving the space-frame work on the Porsche 917K. Find out more over at Hemmings Auto Blogs (Hat tip to zaddikim)

What can we say about TeeFury that hasn't already been said? That it's the single best one-day-only T-shirt site on the 'net? (True.) That it consistently gives us stuff we didn't know we needed, stuff like the awesome R2-D2 Haynes manual t-shirt? (Also true.) Or that it's a font of creativity and limited-run goodness that makes our skin go all tingly? (Again, true.)

You know you want it. You know you need it. Buy it now, and quickly, because it's only available for twenty-four hours. Nine bucks plus shipping. You're welcome.

[TeeFury]

This collection is getting out of control fast, and with at least 21 races next year my rate of T-shirt acquisition is going to accelerate to an alarming level. When I admire the designs of the better shirts, however, the burden of being the caretaker of the LeMons T-Shirt Museum seems totally worthwhile. Let's check 'em out, starting off with the fine shirt created by BMW 2002-driving Team JDL. Note: when a shirt includes designs on front and back, I've included photographs of both sides.

Update: Team Jewish Defense League BMW has shirts for sale on Zazzle!

[Bonhams via Hodinkee]

The shops in question are in Snohomish County, Washington, just on the north side of Seattle, and serve coffee while providing eye-candy with bikini-wearing lady baristas. The stalker concerned citizen doesn't like this, thinks its crude and disgusting and offensive and probably hates puppies and the American flag too. Accordingly, he's set about surveilling these establishments, which have been spreading due to popularity and competition, and reporting on his cute little website any instances of a company owned vehicle pulling up for a fresh cup of joe, then he advocating a wholesale boycott of those companies. We're pretty certain the term "asshat" isn't derogatory enough. [KOMONews]

Photo credit Nykola

Once the mandatory beer holder and ought-to-be-mandatory chain steering wheel were installed, he mentioned to me that he was thinking of using a lawn chair as a seat. Lawn chair? I happened to have something much better in my Stash-O-Useless Car Junk™: a car seat of mysterious origin that came with my 20R Sprite Hell Project.

Since I scored some near-perfect Miata seats at the junkyard a while back, this 60s-vintage seat- which the Sprite's seller suspected might be of Volvo 544 origin- was sort of a white elephant. Take it away, Jesse!

Check out that all-plumbing-fitting steering mechanism! The steering wheel has about 1/8 turn lock-to-lock, so precise inputs are recommended.

And look- Grade 8 bolts as kingpins! This machine really is all about the safety. Unfortunately, the hardware-store bearing-challenged wheels offered a bit too much rolling resistance in action, and the car tended to drag to a stop while going downhill. Wait til next year! In fact, wait a couple of weeks and you'll get to see Jesse behind the wheel of the Killer Bees MGB LeMons racer; that's right, Jesse has switched from the V8olvo to a vehicle more in keeping with the automotive philosophy of a Mini owner.

Here's a video of some of the cars in action:

The Laptop Steering Wheel Desk retails for just $24.95 and is described thusly:

Attaches to your steering wheel for easy access to a writing and drink storage surface. The Go Office Wheel Mate Steering Wheel Desk is flat for writing and perfect for lunch or a snack. This Go Office Wheel Mate Steering Wheel Desk stores neatly in your car when used with the larger Auto Exec Laptop Car Desk. For safety reasons, never use this product while driving. Easily convert your car into your personal automobile office with the Wheel Mate car desk by MobileOffice.

Despite the warnings, Amazon's users have collectively come to the conclusion that the desk's use while driving is inevitable, uploading pictures of crashes to the products galleries and leaving spoof reviews, the best of which are excerpted below:

This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving.

The only reason i gave it 3 stars is because when i, like, turn my turning wheel to get on the freeway everything falls off to my feet and i have to take my finger off the wheel to gather everything up and peoples are like honking at me and stuff and im all like "shut up cant you see im picking this stuff off my floor like so much candy"

I'm writing this review on my laptop while doing 65mph on the freeway! This thing is awesome! For our aniversary I bought extra life insurance in case anything should happen to me, then my wife thanked me by buying this little gem. Now I can eat, blog, and drive all at the same...YEEEEEAAAAAUUUUUGGGGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you think this is only a life saver, you're wrong. It saves lives plus allows you to handle more activities! Not only can you drive, eat, read, play the guitar, handle work on your lappy, it's an instant baby changing station! No more using public bathrooms where it's crowded, dirty, and stinky! Get to destination quicker by handling two, three or more activities at the same time!

If you are lucky enough to have a car where this apparatus can fit safely on the steering wheel, I hope you have a satellite internet card, because there is no way you can pick up wifi in a moving vehicle. Finally, I frankly don't see how the airbag is supposed to work without projecting your computer into your face upon collision.

But perhaps most condemning is the device's apparent lack of practicality as a stationary desk:

I'm in sales, and sepnd a lot of time driving between clients. Unfortunately it isn't the right dimensions to offer any real support. The depth of it (distance between the steering wheel and the user) only supports the back half of my computer. I use s Toshiba Tablet PC which is fairly small (12.1" screen) and it still does not provide a work surface large enough to be usable. I can see this desk being fine for popping on to eat some fast food while on the run, but nothing more.

[Amazon via The Car Connection]

The bar is manufactured by the peculiarly named Belgian chocolatier Starbrook Airlines and is part of their Classic Wheels range, all of which come in automotive themes. They are sold all over Europe in gourmet delis for around $5 a pop.

Perhaps if you gobble down an entire bar of Rosemeyer in one go, you will be able to do what he did in 1936 at the Nürburgring. Where, in thick fog, he took his finicky mid-engined V16-powered Auto Union to first place in the Eifelrennen, overtaking Tazio Nuvolari on the last lap.

Behold der Nebelmeister wreak absolute havoc on his skinny Continentals:

My Rosemeyer bar has sat in my candy box ever since I acquired it. I don’t dare touch it. Who knows, maybe it makes you fling antediluvian racing cars around with reckless abandon. And while I've watched videos of Bernd Rosemeyer, studied in great detail Bernd Rosemeyer, admired Bernd Rosemeyer, I'm no Bernd Rosemeyer.

Since the advent of colossal downforce through fat tires and wind-tunneled wings, racing drivers are faced with the unique problem of keeping their heads attached to their bodies. With g-forces in modern Formula 1 cars reaching 8 times the gravity of the Earth on certain tracks, this is not a trivial issue. The human head is a large, heavy spheroid attached to the rest of the body through the much lighter and thinner neck. As you’ll remember from our very educational How To Become a Formula One Driver in One Day video, even 3 g’s is a force to be reckoned with when applied laterally.

The solution? Develop neck muscles a Marine would be proud of.

When not using them to keep his head straight in Eau Rouge, Renault’s Ferrari’s two-time world champion driver Fernando Alonso can use his neck muscles to snap a walnut clear in two with barely a flex, as demonstrated here for his fellow Spaniards:

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images (Alonso’s Renault), lapstrake/Flickr (nutcracker)

Road Kill makes a selection of plush toys which aren't exactly as cute and cuddly as the traditional teddy bears and puppy dogs. These have been "run over" in what the company calls "Squash-Plush," portraying the familiar road side carnage of furry little animals that stepped into the path of traffic. Perhaps as amusing as the concept and the execution is that each toy has a little story explaining just what happened. [Road Kill]

After a freak accident on Silverstone Racetrack involving Jensen Button's Honda, Splodge passed away on 14th July 2007, aged 2. The beloved son of Nigel and Sally Hedgehog, Splodge was born on 29th April 2005. He was educated at Herts College, where he took an NVQ in joinery. Very popular in the hedgerows of Hertfordshire, Splodge loved indulging his hobbies of rollerblading and kite-flying. His next of kin, Pop the Weasel, will be holding a private ceremony for close friends at Moors Farm, Bracklebury, on 23rd July 2007. Bread and milk will be laid on.

Twitch, after a head on collision with a green Ford Mondeo on the A369 westbound, died on 17th March 2007 aged 5. Twitch was born on 25th November 2002. He was educated at Raccoon Finishing School, Berks 2002-2004, where he excelled at playing dead. Twitch dedicated his life to foraging for acorns and sniffing his genitalia. Twitch is survived by his beloved parents Randie and Zilda Raccoon, from Sidcup Kent. His best friend Grind The Rabbit will be holding a funeral service at King Charles the Martyr, Basingstoke.

WRAM! Any impact to the bumper would send doors, hood, trunklid, and wheels flying (usually where you'd never find them). You could get several different types, including Buggem (a VW Beetle), Tough Tom (pickup truck), Boss Henry, and Blast-Em; the Classy Crashers luxury cars (featuring the Luxury Limo and Sedan Royale) made the scene a bit later, during the Watergate hearings if I recall correctly. I was hopelessly hooked on these things as a kid, and now Crash Week is giving me flashbacks!

This map was created by Stephen Von Worley, who used location data on the 13,000 plus MickeyD's locations along with some coding-fu to generate the above map. What we see is as expected, a network of the franchises largely following the freeway and highway system and increasing in density in proportion to the population density. According to Von Worley, the furthest you can get from a McDonald's is in the aforementioned prairie wasteland of South Dakota, 107 miles as the crow flies from the nearest set of golden arches. And people wonder why we're a fat nation. For the complete breakdown and a full resolution version of the map, head over to Weather Sealed.

Pyeongwah Motors offers the Hwiparam (Fiat Siena), Ppeokkugi (Fiat Doblo), Premio (Dandong Shuguang), Junma (Ssangyong Chairman), and Hwiparam II (Brilliance Junjie). Thanks to Reliant Scimitar-driving Judge Torchinsky, we've got the Pyeongway Motors sales brochure:

Like it or not, everybody gets old, and rather than live with the status quo of nerdy old Hoveround or God forbid un-powered fold-up wheelchairs, here's an entry from Japan that's both visually interesting (well, as much as possible, we're talking about tarted-up wheelchairs) and has improved ergonomics.

The Rodem M-1 can be easily approached with a forward facing high-mounted seat, which is apparently easier to get into than a traditional chair, and once moving gets up to a scalding 2 MPH and lasts four hours on a charge. The wheeled jet ski looks set it apart from it's competition more than anything and should prove a solid basis upon which aging grease monkeys will ply their trade. Prices start at $5,300 to $7,500, but that won't take into account hopped up batteries, bigger motors, higher-powered controllers and the oh-so-important big-farad capacitors for those nitrous-like bursts of speed. [GreenLaunches]

The key to Walker's shirt business is that the merchandise must be cheap. That means that he's doing all his screening in his garage, using factory-second shirts in generally unappetizing colors. Because he's letting the 24 Hours Of LeMons Supreme Court stay at his race shack across the street from Carolina Motorsports Park, I'm handling the eBay part of the deal… which means I'm going all Mean LeMons Judge on you wannabe shirt buyers. First of all, you don't get to choose the color! Because I'm sorta softhearted by Mean LeMons Judge standards, I'll let you specify the color you don't want to get, so if you're one of those guys who thinks your testes will evaporate if you get caught wearing pink (for example), feel free to indulge your insecurities by requesting that I not ship you a pink shirt. If pink (or baby blue, or laundry-dyeing red) is all that's left by the time you buy your shirt, that's what you'll get! Shipping cost is exactly what the USPS charges for domestic or international Priority Mail Flat-Rate envelope, and I might just sneak some 24 Hours Of LeMons stickers in a few of those envelopes.
Small DTTS Shirt
Medium DTTS Shirt
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Extra Large DTTS Shirt

This chair, of course, must be paired with the Porshce 917 couch, which will allow you to move from a semi-upright to a reclining position without relinquishing your fight against Ferrari.

Source: Design Spotter