We’re here in lovely Tooele, Utah, for the first-ever Return of the LeMonites 24 Hours of LeMons, held at Miller Motorsports Park. The air is thin, the weather is warm, and we’ve got just 67 intrepid teams willing to brave the long hauls from places like San Francisco, Denver, and Phoenix. The good news is that the proportion of spectacular cars is much higher than at your typical race, and now we’re going to share some of them with you.
The BRIBED stencil (actually a TITHED stencil) featured a design inspired by the Utah state highway symbol.
Judge Rich, who runs the Rocket Surgery Racing Checker Marathon when he’s not wearing the robes of the LeMons Supreme Court, also supplied a LeMonites TITHED stencil. A rare two-stencil race— collect them all!
For reasons that nobody can explain, we’ve got a good half-dozen GM F-bodies at the Return of the LeMonites race. Our favorite, by far, is this exquisitely detailed second-gen Trans Am reproduction.
Made from parts too horrible for even the most hooptified 100-footer “restoration,” this faux Trans Am, with its Frankensteined details such as this riveted snout, fits in perfectly with the LeMons ethos.
The hand-painted “Screamin’ Chicken” hood looks even better than the original.
Who needs a decal when you can paint like this?
The last time we saw this BMW 320i, it was wearing nondescript rattlecan black paint at the 2011 Goin’ For Broken race at Reno-Fernley. Now just look at it!
This is all pure fiberglass, just like the real box-flared deal. Sure, all the running gear is bone-stock E21 and the car will be slower than most 25-year-old Camrys on the race track, but we love it all the more for that.
We’ve got other German cars that look fast but go slow, such as this Mercedes-Benz S500.
The most successful Chrysler K-car-based racing machine in LeMons history? The Soccer Moms’ Grand Caravan, which now features a van Gogh theme, including severed-ear hood ornament.
Because we’re in Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints provided inspiration to several teams. Dirty Duck Racing and their VW GTI became missionaries for the weekend.
Stick Figure Racing, one of the few teams actually based in Utah, turned a Toyota MR2 into a surprisingly accurate replica of the Mormon Meteor, a car used by to set land-speed records in the late 1930s.
This is the team that built two twin-engined LeMons Toyotas, so we expect a lot from any Bonneville-inspired car they build.
It may not match the speed of the original Duesenberg-powered Mormon Meteor, but it looks just as good.
For reasons we’ve never understood, nobody had ever raced a Jensen-Healey during the first six years of LeMons racing. We’ve seen so many British cars in this race, but never the eminently
terrible
affordable Jensen-Healey. That changed today, with this car. Class C, of course.
No purity-destroying engine swaps here— this is a genuine Torqueless Wonder under that Jensen-Healey’s hood.
Going toe-to-toe against the Jensen-Healey is another fine British racing machine: this Rover SD1. This V8-powered brute has the torque advantage over the Jensen, but won’t be quite as nimble.
We’re pretty sure that every SD1 came with scorch marks on the hood’s underside.
Speaking of Class C British cars, here’s Spank Worthington‘s Mini Moke, modeled after a land-speed-record bicycle.
Can those Brits beat a frighteningly stock Pontiac Fiero, complete with Iron Duke power? We’ll see.
Some say the key to winning Class C is good old-fashioned Detroit reliability, and by that we mean really old-fashioned. Yes, this is a 1950 Dodge pickup truck, complete with legendarily bulletproof Chrysler flathead six engine.
This truck’s Denver-based owner thought about racing a BMW 3-series at first, but the bad influences on the LeMons forums talked him out of that boring idea and he picked up this thoroughly decrepit Dodge. The engine turned over but that was about the one bright spot. With two weeks to go before the race, the truck had no suspension, no brakes, no rear axle, no safety equipment, no nothing.
Then the generous captain of Speed Holes Racing (the team that runs a Swiss-cheesed Rambler Marlin in Colorado races) jumped in and orchestrated an astoundingly productive last-second thrash session on the Dodge. Other Denver LeMons racers joined in with parts and labor. Soon, the truck had a Jaguar XJ-6 front suspension, a Camaro rear axle, a fuel cell, roll cage, and everything else.
700 miles of towing later, the 64-year-old truck passed the tech inspection on the very first try. How will this vastly underpowered machine fare during the course of the weekend’s racing? Check in Saturday night and see!