Get a rolling BMW E36 shell for $200, add the V8 from a Chevrolet Suburban and cobble together parts you can’t afford or that don’t exist on your own. There’s a pie plate in the front to keep the cold air intake in place, anatomical doodles in the trunk, and did we mention the camper top? Behold vehicular perfection.
Pontiac Fiero-based replica cars talk a lot of visual smack with their racy bodywork, but rarely back it up. Fortunately for us all, the current owners of this Fiero-based Ferrari F40 replica did the right thing and took it racing. Hey, replica owners everywhere: put up or shut up.
For years, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that there really ought to be an annual automotive convention in the same vein as San Diego Comic Con. Like comic enthusiasts, car folks come from all walks of life, have widely varied tastes and like to wear their automotive love on their sleeve. I can stop telling…
“What in the hell?” That was 24 Hours of Lemons race organizer and ex-Corvette Magazine writer Nick Pon’s reaction after the series’ first C3-generation Corvette popped its freshly repainted, Warsteiner-liveried hood. Inside was the BMW M50B25 inline-six engine out of an E34 BMW 5 Series. Surprise!
Many of us who race in cheap-car amateur endurance series have wild fantasies of running like the pro teams we watch at places like Daytona or Le Mans. One set of six-time 24 Hours of Lemons winners racing today is living out that dream by racing in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race, and I am infinitely…
The acres of flooded cars for sale after a major hurricane can be temptingly cheap, but as the POS Racing team is finding out, there are extremely good reasons why. POS Racing bought a 1992 Honda Prelude that they’d like to race in the 24 Hours of Lemons, and it came with a whole lot of water for free!
No words in the English language suck more in racing than “event cancelled.” It’s even worse if you’ve gone all the way out to an amateur endurance race where you may have spent months getting a car and a team together for just one weekend. Fortunately, not even snow could stop the racing this weekend.
There are few things I loathe more than shopping for clothes. Maybe dental work and gynecological exams, but that’s it. Buying new clothes lies somewhere in the deepest circle of hell, and cleaning them? Not much better. It’s the extra cost of wrenching no one seems to mention, but I hate it all the same.
Fortunately, it looks as though the engine in my Lemons-racing Volkswagen 411 wasn’t damaged as badly as we may have thought. Two cylinders had normal, good compression! But the two cylinders on the passenger side did not, and one cylinder with no compression at all was thoroughly mangled.
Old Volkswagens are known as excellent camping vehicles. Westfalias! Type 2s! Fear not, for Volkswagen finally made another big VW worth camping in, at least for one or two: the new Atlas. I slept in it over the 24 Hours of Lemons weekend at Buttonwillow. And it actually ruled.
I am now the proud owner of a free, rare air-cooled Volkswagen race car, and I may or may not be completely over my head. I’m in the process of towing home the Volkswagen 411 we raced at Buttonwillow last weekend, and I’m pretty sure it’s marking its trail in oil dribbles.
Running 104 laps in an almost bone stock 1971 Volkswagen 411 earned us the 24 Hours of Lemons’ highest award: the Index of Effluency. I kept my race shoes on because I knew what I had to do. Yes, I finally got to do a shoey. It didn’t taste as bad as it looked. No, it tasted like success.
Back in Ye Olde Days of Jalopnicke, editor Murilee Martin—bless our Saucy Minx—had a feature called Down On The Street. One day, he featured a Volkswagen 411, or Type 4 in aircooled-ese. We’re racing that exact car this weekend, and I’ve called dibs on towing it home. Now it’s sinking in: oh no, what have I done?
We can’t say we’re big fans of homeowners’ associations around here, as they tend to be garbage busybodies who insert their nose into your project car. One even recently decided to hassle one of the most infamous builds in 24 Hours of Lemons history—the running, street-legal Upside-Down Camaro.
The wildly creative and prolific builder of bonkers racecars for the 24 Hours of Lemons races, Speedycop, had a bit of a tragedy early this morning when his helicopter-turned-racecar-and-boat, the Speedycopter, caught fire and burned while en route to a radio interview in Philadelphia.
Race cars are great. Quirky race cars, whether that be by accident or on purpose, are even better. Just look at this sideways Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus camper running around a 24 Hours of LeMons track, made by the same guy who once turned an old police helicopter into a race car.
The 24 Hours of LeMons shitbox racing series is, arguably, one of the three pillars of modern society, along with the Kiwanis Club and our nation’s easy and ready access to taquitos. One of the icons of LeMons is a mysterious figure named Speedycop who always manages to build some genuinely insane cars. The Speedycop…
It sounds odd that Jenson Button will not drive McLaren’s Formula One car before he fills in for Fernando Alonso at the Monaco Grand Prix, but it makes sense if you’ve ever been on the level of failure McLaren’s dealing with. McLaren’s car is so bad, they’re even starting to act like a 24 Hours of Lemons crapcan…
Interested in watching some racing on this fine Sunday? There’s a free stream of the 24 Hours of LeMons at Sonoma Raceway going on right now. The stream has in-car cameras from about 10 different race cars and live race commentary. You can watch it here.
