Those of you on the other side of the Atlantic might note that the Kent was installed in plenty of beloved British Ford machinery, including the Anglia and Cortina. In fact, the Kent qualifies for our upcoming Longest-Lived Vehicle Engines Of All Freakin' Time feature, being manufactured from 1959 until the present day. Variations of the Kent (some with overhead-cam heads) were used in cars ranging from the Fiesta to the Lotus Elan to the TVR Vixen.

[Wikipedia , image source: Burton Power]

The B.O.B. is built predominately from found and reused components - the front and rear differentials come from Pintos, the brakes are old Yamaha bike units and the twisting/steering mechanism comes from a helicopter's tail rotor gearbox.

Each differential is connected to two motors, one for each wheel, while the vehicle mimics the action of a two-speed gearbox by switching voltage between 36 and 72 volts.

Retired auto mechanic Robert Lange built all this in his backyard and, once he figures out the time investment, reckons he spent less than $500 on the whole thing. [via Diseno-Art]

You see, Casadelshawn, of Bunny With A Pancake On Its Head VW Rabbit fame decided he didn't feel like racing in Buttonwillow's 110° heat (actually, it was only about 97°) and took his '76 Audi Fox wagon to Monterey instead. He won the prestigious "Der Self-SatisfiedKrauttenWagen, 1970-current" trpphy, but he took a break from laurel-resting to shoot these photos for us.

Meanwhile, the coveted Worst Of Show trophy went to one of the most horrible-yet-cool motor vehicles ever made, a 1980 KV Mini 1. The owner towed this precision-made, belt-driven machine all the way from Washington… with an MGB! So next time you're shopping for a big ol' truck to tow your bass boat, go with British Leyland instead. Here's the official Cd'L press release:

Mike Harrell from Shoreline, WA stunned the crowd and judges with his 1980KV Mini 1 and took home Worst of Show honors. The KV is a horrible little car powered by a 125cc one cylinder 2 stroke motor that drives the rear wheels through a constantly variable ration belt drive system and friction rollers on the rear tires ensuring that little of the meager power available actually results in forward motion. The features dont stop there, to put the car in reverse, one must shut off the engine and re-start it so that it runs backwards. Combine this with the tin bumpers, solid steering shaft aimed at the drivers chest, the lack of a roof and any other safety features and it was a shoe in for the Worst of Show title. As if to convince the judges that he truly does have a screw loose, Mike towed the little French death trap behind his MGB the 1000 miles from Washington to Monterey. Well done.

Believe it or not, the Pinto was once as common on American streets as, say, the Sentra is today. The rep for exploding in rear-end collisions was relatively undeserved (plenty of Detroit cars with the gas tank mounted between the rear axle and the bumper had explosion problems), but Ford didn't win itself many friends with those memos showing that Dearborn's bean counters preferred to pay wrongful-death settlements than redesign the car.
The last Pinto was sold in 1980, and by 1990 you hardly saw them in junkyards; only the wretched first-gen Hyundai Excel passed through the junkyard phase of its lifecycle more quickly. That's why it's a memorable occasion when I find a Pinto in the junkyard these days; someone kept this thing running- or at least stored- for decades after most of them had long since been rendered into cubes of China-bound scrap steel.

We're happy to add Mr. Gray's shots to Jalopnik Car Photography Canon, which includes the work of such photographers as Dave Glass, Martin Taylor, Andrew Bush, Troy Paiva, and Paul Novak. Here's what Mr. Gray has to say about his American Cars project:

As the project grew, I realized I was approaching the parked cars in the same way a photographer would shoot a portrait. Whether gleaming and restored, or beat-up and deteriorating, each car had its own character and story. The American landscape serving as backdrop is also part of the story of these cars, which were mostly produced here in the U.S. before the decline of Detroit's big automotive companies. I photographed the cars as I found them, using mostly medium format cameras, as well as some large format and digital cameras.

[Kevin Gray Photography, Order prints from Etsy]

Yesterday, 81% of you danced the sexy samba of the Crack Pipe over the rotting corpse of the Uruguayan Panhard 24CT, wise that you are. Today, we're bringing the sexy back with a fleshbot-approved 1978 Pinto that looks like something you'd find on Perez Hilton's nightstand.

What can we say about the '78 Pinto that hasn't been cursed a thousand times? Punky and slow, with mediocre fuel economy, and handling that could best be described as like making love in a hammock, the Ford sub-compact would be the only one left in the bar come closing time. The cast-iron 2.3 litre SOHC 4 would break out a sweat in the attempt to produce its meager 88 ponies, and most of those were sucked up by the available 3-speed auto, which also swallowed any driving fun there was to be had.

But this one's different- its sex-toy color and forever plaid interior may just speak to some strange fetish dragon lurking below a potential buyers surface. And in it's 31 years, it's claimed to only have rolled its odo 39,179 times. That's only about four opportunities a year for somebody to shove the fuel nozzle deep into the Pinto's filler tube, filling it with gushing golden life-juices and pegging its fuel gauge erectly to E. That would explain the virginal nature of the vinyl and skimpy cloth interior, which is also comes in a tone of lurid, Hustler-infused Burberry plaid.

Who knew, back in the day, that Ford would offer a color palette for the Pinto that included the shade "Pud"? Perhaps it was an attempt to capture the pervert market that year? And also in 1978, the Pinto featured a frameless glass hatch over the gaping hole in its rear, which allowed salacious see-though moments for the unfortunate little car, but would also allow it to swallow your so-called "generous package". That hatchback body style, iconically identifiable as a Pinto, along with the lewd hue of this particular car, immediately brings to mind that fun-for-the-whole-family aerobic accouterment- the butt plug, and with the four-banger it'll vibrate too!

So is $2,999 a fair price for the opportunity to say hello to my little friend!? Or is that too much to just live out your Ace and Gary fantasies?

You decide!

Seattle Craigslist, or go here, if the ad goes flaccid. Hat tip for the tip to Solracer.

Help me out with NPOCP. Click here to send a me a tip.

When we saw a F—-, L—-—-, or M—-—- roll up into the BS Inspection area, we'd cover the corporate emblems with special "REDACTED" stickers. That way, the F—- M—-- C—-—- doesn't have its image damaged by the hoopty machinery on the track! And, yes, that's an IRS-equipped L—-—- M—- V—- you're seeing.
Things are about to get pretty crazy here and I can't promise many live updates for a while, so check out this site for some live race coverage!

What vehicles did the Pinto Engine motivate, other than the Pinto itself? A better question might be: which Ford vehicles didn't get the Pinto Engine? From its introduction in 1970 until the last Pinto-powered Ranger pickup in 2001, this engine was manufactured in displacements ranging from 1.3 to 2.5 liters and was installed in everything from the Cortina to the Aerostar. While many cursed its namesake car, even the most virulent Pinto haters were forced to admit that the engine was actually a pretty reliable powerplant. In turbocharged and intercooled 2.3 liter form, it cranked out 205 horsepower for the Mustang SVO, and those crazies at Cosworth got 224 horsepower out of a 2.0 when selling the RS500 for homologation purposes.
[Wikipedia, image source: Merkurencyclopedia]

A P71 Crown Vic in the top 10 is always good to see, and the Tinkerbell Rosso car got 9th place… and the coveted Fastest Yank Tank trophy.


We don't need to say much about this fine car, other than the fact that these guys really get it. Inside word was that the afterthought tinfoil octo-headlights cost them the People's Choice award; remember, you've got to get those details down!


These guys came really close to grabbing the Most Heroic Fix trophy (which is one of the most prized LeMons awards) after their all-night engine swap on Saturday night, but they blew that chance by heading out onto the track with an audible-at-500-yards rod knock on engine #2 and proceeding to oil down half the track when the engine blew minutes later.


Lesson to future LeMons racers: don't claim that a car you bought new is worth $500. As Justice Lieberman explains, that will get you an all-time 2,100 penalty laps (and the newly-created Mega Cheaters trophy, welded up for the occasion by Christina The Arc Angel). That said, we love SHOs at LeMons, because they sound so great out there.


It's the People's Curse Winner! You Crown Vic fans will be pleased to know that this car- equipped with a 6-speed manual transmission, monster brakes, and an engine that seems to make way more power than the one in my P71- knocked off the best lap time of the whole race (1:31.474, in a race in which the winner's best lap was 1:36.298) … after having its doors, hood, and trunk torn off during the Curse. Chief Perp Lamm felt that the Blues Brothers didn't deserve the Curse, so he had the Executioner take it easy on them. Looks like we'll have another ex-cop People's Curse survivor out there now!





Putting 800 pounds of particle board on your Mustang isn't crazy- it's the ticket to the People's Choice trophy! The Bipolar Express' best lap time was a glacial 2:10, but so what?


Here's proof that you don't need to go fast to contend in the 24 Hours Of LeMons (yeah, we keep saying that, but just watch the lunacy when the green flag waves). This Escort came in 5th place with a best lap time of 1:44.649, which made it one of the slowest cars on the track. Had any of the cars in front stumbled, it might have won. Don't break down, don't get penalties, and you can win this race! Winner: No Prayer Of Finishing Class.


We've seen this Mustang at Altamont (in pink paint) and at the first Arse Freeze (in PCH colors). Now it's a Shelby! And, hey, its blazing best lap of 1:33.958 really was Shelby-esque.


We've seen several Rangers at LeMons events, and this one acquitted itself quite well on the track: 39th place. We liked the free ice cream the team members were giving away in the pits, and the ambient temperatures of 36 degrees meant that melting wasn't a big problem.


Another P71! These guys had to hack off their Mad Max style front bumper prior to the race, because everyone is already sufficiently scared of the Crown Vics out there.


Winners of the first-ever LeMons Junkyard Scab-enger Hunt, Team Huey Newis And The Lose spent the entire weekend giving me bad high-school flashbacks with the 80s soundtrack blasting from their pit. Their 64th-place finish was pretty respectable for the first time out.


Another multi-race veteran, the GI SHO car had a good best lap time of 1:40.332. If only a SHO could hold together for an entire race… but there's always Reno! You can check out the team's photos here and here, then read the insider account:

One cold and dark November, we stumbled upon the website for the 24 Hours of LeMons. No that is the correct spelling.
On a whim we sent in our idea - take one of our beat up parts cars and turn it into a race car called the GI SHO. We would gut the car and paint it in camo to match the name. Unbelievably, our idea was accepted, and we had 6 weeks to turn a non-running pile-o-parts into a caged running race car.
The car we chose was a non-running 1989 SHO with about 270k+ miles on the clock. At one time, someone loved this car, but that was at “one time”, and a long time ago. When we bought the car, the Craigslist ad read something like this:
1989 Taurus SHO: 270k miles. Does not run. I am tired of changing parts to fix it. It has Koni struts and a nice stereo. The clear coat is shot, there are dents in the body, the sunroof leaks, and it looks like two wolverines mated in the front seats. $300.
He was not kidding. There were chunks missing of the front seat. We bought the car with thoughts of saving the Konis and a few other parts, but the car ended up “aging” in my pasture for three years.
Three years of aging on “The Wolverine Car” was a biological experiment. Here is what the car looked like just 6 weeks before the race.
With a LOT of work, a used crank sensor, used water pump, and some new rod bearings, the car was up and running. Then it was off to DGE Motorsports for a quick roll cage. This cage was built in two days. Once the cage was installed, we added a spare racing seat and a 5 point harness, and it was off to the paint shop. Kadels Auto Body let us borrow the paint booth for a couple hours since it was raining hard outside. Four guys with rattle cans, four flat colors, an hour later, and we had the GI SHO.

We survived the whole race and had a blast. We did have a few Black Flag incidents, including one penalty for “aggressive driving”. The penalty was a flower pot full of raw eggs screwed to the hood. It reminds you to drive more carefully, so the eggs don't splatter all over your windshield. A nice thought, but the eggs still splatter. The paint damage on the hood and the screws are still there from the “flower pot incident”. We thought about painting the hood again, but decided to leave it in case the car ever became a collectors item – OK we were just lazy.

The cool thing about the car is this. Even after 270K miles and a pretty nasty past, the car handled like it was on rails, and it could pass just about any car in the race, at any point in the track. This car has inspired one other local club member to resurrect an otherwise beat up 89 parts car and turn it into a gutted daily driver/track car. It is a beautiful thing to have a car that can perform this well, and you do not need to worry about dents, paint, or even washing it.

Summer 2008
The National SHO Convention
The 2008 National SHO Convention was in Seattle. SHO lovers from all over North America gathered together to see the best SHOs in the world. Obviously, the GI SHO made an appearance. The car went in full race dress (as-is). We did remove the flowerpot for aerodynamics, but the egg goo, mold and road dirt went along for the ride. Since the car is still street legal, it made the drive. There is something about a beat up camoflaged family car that gets looks. Funny thing is, everyone wanted to drive it. It even served as a track car for two drivers with car troubles at the Pacific Raceways open track day.

2008 Thunderhill LeMons
Here we are preparing for the 2008 Thunderhill LeMons race. We replaced last year's drivers that had black flag trouble. We have three returning drivers and three new drivers.
In all honesty, we really did have only $500 invested in the car for the 2007 Thunderhill race. To help the judging (and keep us from losing $300 worth of laps like last year), we respectfully ask you to establish the residual value for the car. We are thinking $300-400, so we still have some money to add some camoflage, weaponry, and banned F1 technology to the car. We have not added any other value to the car since last year. The moldy egg residue is still on the hood. I think every body panel and bumper took at least one hit last year. We popped out the major dents and used a crow bar to get the doors to open and close better. We are removing some of the excess weight and “snag hazzards” by gutting the doors.

Old guys like me, who suffered through a childhood of Pinto passengerhood followed by teenage years of beater Pintos clogging up the roads (now I'm having a PTSD flashback of being a helpless passenger in a Pinto driven by a very dramatic high-school girlfriend who yanked the parking brake at 80 MPH on the Nimitz Freeway- in the rain- so that the resulting loop-de-loop spinout- miraculously missing other vehicles and the guardrails and ending safely on the shoulder- would teach me a lesson about… well, I forget, so it wasn't as effective a move as she'd hoped) might rejoice that damn near every one of the things has been crushed by now, but maybe the Pinto was just ahead of its time! This example is just about the nicest Pinto you could possibly imagine: a 66K-mile Squire wagon that's been completely restored. You might laugh at the $19,500 Buy It Now, but it's already been bid up well into five figures. Thanks to Mobilene for the tip! [ebay Motors]

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No brainer type stuff like switching to radial tires from bias ply, building headlight covers to improve the airflow around the front, a big chin spoiler to reduce drag under the car and other types of tricks netted an impressive effect of 25% mileage gained. The whole thing was done very scientifically and all the details with charts and such are over at Ecomodder. Wonder how some of those would work on the old premium swilling A4?

The Shay Reproductions Model A replica really is a Ford, because it's built on a Pinto chassis. Disc brakes, four-speed, the works. Note the red tag on the windshield; the aforementioned enraged neighbors play a constant cat-and-mouse game with this car and the Gazelle, reporting them to the APD, who red-tag the cars. Once tagged, the cars must be moved within 72 hours or get towed away... and the owner always moves them (across the street) about 71 hours later. The problem is that potential buyers don't understand the value of this car (which, like the Gazelle, is for sale). The price is $10,000. Firm.


Check out this feature that ol' Henry Ford never dreamed of for the original Model A: Kraco 6" speakers mounted on the rear body... where they spend the winter filled with rain. This must be so the passengers in the rumble seat can listen to high-quality tunage while sucking Pinto exhaust. $10K is cheap for this jewel!


However, the new buyer might want to allocate a few bucks for a new interior, since this one has been getting rained in every winter for years now.




And now let's return to the not-very-hallowed tradition of a weekly poll to determine the readers' favorite DOTS car of the past week:

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You gotta figure anyone who has this sign on their car and takes it to the airport during Panic Condition Vermillion... well, they don't worry about The Man, because they are The Man.


And what better disguise for your mind-control antennae than what appear to be diamond-plate patches over common rust areas? Clever, those Cruel Overlords!


The grenade shift knob is a fashion just waiting to hit the mainstream. Cars with column shifters could use sticks of dynamite for the lever.


Yes, a crafty camouflage job... but not crafty enough to fool Los Jalops!

Most of us of a certain age- let's say, at least 35- have driven or ridden in a few V8 Vegas in our time, and damn are they crazy! You stomp the gas and terrifying, amazing things happen... mostly involving hitting trees, overheating, and/or popping the windows out due to chassis twist. Sometimes, though, you go really, really fast and your brain fills with beautiful V8 noise and you feel like a genius for building this amazing car. Sometimes. Anyway, you can take a crack at feeling like a genius (or at least get some cool scars to impress your friends) by snapping up this 1974 Chevrolet Vega GT for only 400 bucks. Well, sure, it doesn't have a title and the seller tells us bupkis about the condition, but it's already set up for a V8! Maybe that leaves a lot more questions unanswered (such as the definition of "set up," which could mean anything from "original engine not there" to "V8 engine mounts and exhaust system already in place"), but at least it's no sweat to find a suitable cheap small-block to drop into the engine compartment. And check out that hood scoop! Oh yeah- you'll want a rollcage, if only to keep the thing from tying itself in a knot when you gas it.

Back in the day, the V8 Vegas got all the press, but plenty of blue oval types did the same treatment to the Pinto and Bobcat (no doubt under the influence of Primo Beer, Foghat, and Acapulco Gold). In fact, just as Chevrolet made the close-cousin Monza with a V8, thus providing abundant junkyard swap hardware, Ford made V8 Mustang IIs. And the V8 Pinto is batshit fast; I've been in a 351W-powered Bobcat and it really wanted to kill me and everyone else it could reach. There's no possible way to get enough rubber in back to get any kind of traction, and if you install a locker differential- which, of course, you oughta- you'll be getting sideways when you do edge-case actions such as "turning" or "accelerating." So if you're willing to spend a mere hundred bucks more than you would for the Vega, you could get this 1976 Ford Pinto that's already got a V8 installed! It's a Ford small-block of some sort, probably a 302 but who knows? All we know is that it needs a gigantic blower sticking up beyond roof level! The seller doesn't believe in clogging up a car ad with unnecessary verbiage, so here's what we get: "its a project car i started its need finishing. it will start and can be driven." Hey, it can be driven! Sold!

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An autopsy showed that two of the victims survived the accident and burned to death. The attorney for the family of the victims claims that the gas tank/fuel system was configured negligently, which was to blame for the fire. The attorney compared this to the Ford Pinto and said that many Altimas have been involved in similar accidents. We'll follow this as it develops. [MyFox LA]