While a Neon has won a 24 Hours Of LeMons race before, no real American car has ever triumphed... until today! Yes, the mullet-wig-wearing gentlemen of the Formula M For Mullet Mustang have won!
How could such a thing have happened? Let's just say that LeMons Justice Lieberman and myself were so incredibly busy punishing on-track miscreants that our total break time amounted to about 17 minutes for the entire weekend, yet we never saw the Mulleteers. They were pretty fast, of course, but that was secondary to their amazingly clean driving. Best of all, they donated their $1500 prize money (all in nickels) to the fund set up for Tony, the Jamaican uber-mechanic of the Norwegian Slaabs (winner of the 2008 Rally Ready Mechanic Of The Gods awards at the previous Houston LeMons race), whose daily-driver Saab was T-boned by a Hummer while leaving the track last night. Tony was pretty badly bashed up- plenty of broken bones and a ruptured spleen- and has no health insurance, so those of you who wish to help out this LeMons hero should check the 24 Hours Of LeMons website in a few days and make a PayPal donation.
Taking the much-coveted Organizer's Choice (aka People's Choice) trophy was the A-Team Dodge Daytona. Yes, one of the few surviving V6/5-speed front-drive Daytonas was used as a LeMons racer!
Index Of Effluency (the prize given to the team who accomplished the most with the crappiest car, considered by true LeMons insiders to be the real winner of the race) was pretty obvious this time around. They got off to a rough start, and they were frequent visitors to both the penalty box and the pits. Bad driving and broken parts conspired to thwart their hopes of a victory in the spirit of Moses, Abraham, and Gene Simmons, but Team Opular Dependence Israel never gave up. They took their lumps with a good sense of humor, had a great time, and kept dragging the Opel back onto the track... and, of course, they donated their $1000 prize money to the Godly Saab Mechanic Tony Hospital Bill Fund.
And for those of you keeping track of the Opel-versus-MG rivalry, the Frogmasters MGB-GT turned in 260 laps, while the Opel managed 180. I'm too busy now to see who won the Effluency Rivalry Pool (though my own guesses of 279 and 135 appear to be strong contenders for the prize), but we'll sort all that out once I'm back in California.