Here we are at The Ridge Motorsports Park once again, for the third annual Pacific Northworst 24 Hours of LeMons, and the assortment of race cars preparing for Saturday’s race session looks to be one of the best we’ve seen this year. The weather promises to be strangely non-rainy, nobody threw a rod during practice, and British Leyland products are well-represented. Let’s check out the highlights!
King Henry the V8th Racing, having retired their Index of Effluency-winning Cadillac Sedan DeVille, showed up with their new car: a 1976 Chevy Nova, possibly inspired by the daily-driver ’76 Nova once owned by your LeMons correspondent.
Of course, the King Henry the V8thers haven’t forgotten their Cadillac origins.
This diesel Mercedes-Benz broke down early and often at last year’s Pacific Northworst, but perhaps Things Will Be Different this time.
The 1987 Plymouth Reliant-K wagon that NSF Racing put together for the 2012 season-ender and then handed off from team to team as part of their “K-It-FWD” program, has been traveling to nearly every LeMons race this season. So far, the K has raced in South Carolina, New York, Michigan, Texas, Colorado, California… and now Washington. Much of the traveling between races has been done without benefit of a tow rig, and now Pit Crew Revenge has taken over the K-racing duties. This car has yet to run well enough to have a real shot at the Index of Effluency, but we continue to keep our hopes high.
The two-stroke Saab of the Freewheeling Pikers (winner of the 2012 Pacific Northworst Index of Effluency) will be battling the Reliant-K for the Class C victory.
The Freewheeling Pikers won’t have the only two-stroker in this race; Balto, the snowmobile-engined Miata has returned to show that having the best power-to-weight ratio doesn’t always translate into the best on-track performance. Balto is absurdly fast, but drinks fuel like a container ship and breaks drive belts with depressing regularity.
As always, some teams dressed in costume.
This very dignified Merkur XR4Ti team will be testing their high-tech race-data-monitoring gear in their car… which means they’ll know exactly when their 119th head gasket pops.
The Wienerschteppers team (which boasts about ten Index of Effluency wins between its members) brought their much-bashed Austin Mini.
We’ve got four Austins entered in this race, including this ADO16-based America. In fact, this is the first LeMons race in history with more Austins than BMW 3-series E30s.
How about this for a daily driver? Yes, a member of the Freewheeling Pikers drove to the track in this right-hand-drive Austin Maestro Vanden Plas.
The LeMons Supreme Court tries to make region-specific BRIBED stencils for teams that honor the Court with gifts, so we went with the image of a well-known Seattle native this time.
LeMons safety rules prohibit nitrous-oxide systems (because of the explosion hazard), but empty tanks are fine for show.
This Beelzebublian Camaro team gave us pentagram donuts!
LeMons can never have sufficient French cars, and this Peugeot 505 (only the second in LeMons history) made us very happy.
This hood scoop hides a carburetor atop a very junkyard-ish tall intake manifold. What could possibly go wrong?
We would have two Peugeot 505s, but the team that usually runs the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys 505 Turbo decided that they’d up their game with this. Yes, you’re looking at a genuine 1952 Hudson Hornet, the car that ruled NASCAR in the early 1950s.
The original flathead six with “Twin-H” carburetor setup and four-speed Hydramatic automatic tranmsission provide motivation. This car looks great, sounds great, and might even manage to compete against much more modern cars in Class C.
Of course, the Hornet’s body is mostly Bondo over rust over more Bondo (with a thick coat of white appliance paint over the whole mess), most of the trim bits are missing, and the interior was beyond basket-case bad prior to roll-cage installation… but so what? Just look at it! We’re sure this car cost a bit more than the letter of our $500-budget law allows (though not as much as many self-proclaimed car experts would have you believe), but the LeMons Supreme Court broke out its sacred Gavels-O-Justice and issued a special Budget Loophole for this car. Wouldn’t you?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/rBujscbUIrE/
Ralph Dale Earnhardt Jr Carl Michael Edwards III William Clyde Elliott Jeffrey Michael Gordon
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