34 races in, and a Nissan Z Car finally took an overall LeMons win! They said it could never happen, but then they also said that Saabs and Taurus SHOs couldn't win. Let's check out the competition!
LeMons racing's highest award, the Index of Effluency, goes to the vehicle that achieves the most from the least. This time we saw a Daihatsu Charade finish 34th and a Plymouth Belvedere finish 33rd... but one car beat them both.
How many times has the 24 Hours of LeMons ripped out the hearts of Nissan Z lovers? I can think of at least a dozen races in which Zs led or at least contended for the lead... and then disaster!
Serious LeMons fans know that the Index Of Effluency— given to the team that accomplishes the most with the crappiest car— is the true top prize, and the Dust-N-Debris Dodge Shadow utterly dominated the IOE this time around.
Even after an SE-R Sentra (OK, fine, an SE-R 200SX) won a LeMons race last year, conventional wisdom held that Nissans can't really compete in the series. Forget conventional wisdom, because the Rogue Squadron SE-R just beat 107 cars!
We were totally rooting for the Motoring J Style Isuzu I-Mark at the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Thunderhill last month, especially after hearing one team member refer to Isuzu as "The Fiat of Japan." Now the J Style folks have written down their account of why their Isuzu succeeded on the race track about as well as…
After winning the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Thunderhill last month, a member of Team Red Meat and Poontang decided to celebrate in true hoon fashion: by getting the Protege up on two wheels in a parking lot! But is it really hoonage if the car has a cage? Thanks to Belvedere Adrian for the video!
While we saw the Top 50 finishers of the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Thunderhill last month, we didn't get to see the bulk of the photographs I shot, nor did we see a lot of the stuff sent in by members of the various teams. That's because my laptop's hard drive took a dive during the race and I lost the best stuff...…
We showed you Team Field Find's 1965 Mercedes-Benz 190 race car during the 24 Hours of LeMons race, but we didn't mention that the team went on to win the coveted People's Choice award. Sure, the old Merc wasn't very fast around the track, but it kept slogging along in its stolid Teutonic manner while other cars blew…
You've already seen what can happen just by walking around the parking lot at a 24 Hours of LeMons event. So, this should come as no surprise. Now, in the past I may have given the Ferrari 328 (and 308) more than its fair share of grief. But even I will admit that the 328 is just frickin' hot. This one even had a…
Looking at the top teams of the 24 Hours of LeMons race last weekend, we thought it was great that a Detroit car finished in second place. Of course, Neons make great race cars, so no huge surprise there... but what about an '85 Chevrolet Cavalier wagon finishing in the Top Ten? That's not a typo- a Cavalier finished…
Loverman: How did the 24 Hours of LeMons start?
Jay Lamm: Basically, with way too much beer and chinese food. We'd been doing this road-rally thing called the Double 500, a 500-kilometer road rally for $500 cars, for years. I came up with the general idea for the Double 500 one day after the California MIlle, while I…
Since Team Armageddon's 1965 Ford Mustang caught the interest of so many of our readers, we're going to show you more of it. And not just still photos- thanks to helpful team member Marco Maggiora (check out his race photos here), we have some action-packed in car video for you, complete with roaring V8 noise. Make…
The last time we felt the flames of Project Car Hell licking at our flesh, the 2002 Maserati Coupe was beating the 1985 Ferrari Mondial by about a 60/40 margin in the polls. What lessons may be learned from this remain uncertain, but what is certain is that I've got 24 Hours of LeMons fever and I've got it bad; I'm…
Among the many cool things that set the 24 Hours of LeMons apart from the more boring forms of motorsports is the stuff that goes to the winners. In addition to back-breaking sacks of nickels, beautiful handmade trophies are handed out to the teams who triumph in their classes. So, after you check out the official…
When you go check out the lap times for the 24 Hours of LeMons race of last weekend, an interesting figure jumps out at you: 1:13.649 seconds. That's the quickest lap time of any car at the race, and it was not set by the overall winner, nor by the #2 or #3 cars; in fact, it's nearly four seconds faster than race…
Just because the race is over doesn't mean we're done showing you the racers and vehicles of the Thunderhill 24 Hours of LeMons race. This is definitely Jalopnik-approved racing- where else would you see a couple of Volvo wagons duking it out with a Chevy Cavalier wagon for a shot at 800 pounds of nickels? Stay tuned…
Going through the mega-gigage of images we shot over the weekend at the Thunderhill 24 Hours of LeMons, I came across these pics of a bunch of LeMons racers pre-race. In fact, I believe these pics were taken as the Judges checked the cars in and penalized 'em. Above is the very, very awesome Alfa Romeo Ecurie Ecrappe.…
My head is still spinning from this weekend's hoontastic voyage. And by spinning I mean that after two straight days of TOTAL COVERAGE I drove straight back to Los Angeles and am now somehow awake before 8:00 am. Anyhow, if you weren't near a computer this weekend, here's what you missed. If you were, you now have…
The types of cars that really dominated at the Thunderhill 24 Hours of LeMons weren't quite the same as the ones we saw owning at the October race at Altamont. With the track's long straights and the new hardass, black-flag-o-riffic policy about aggressive driving (not to mention the outlawing of nerf bars),…
