Parnelli Jones, Real Housewives of Bahrain, and a Stanza Wagon: BS Inspections of the Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons
Here I am, back in Carolina Motorsports Park in South Carolina for the second annual Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons, and the seventh LeMons event to take place at CMP. The ’10 Southern Discomfort really was uncomfortable, with freezing-ass temperatures and plenty of frigid mud all around, and that scared off many of the usual Southern LeMons teams this time… but the joke was on them; the 50 or so teams that had the guts to show up will enjoy beautiful 70-degree weather all weekend.
The legendary Speedycop once again brought the car that got the most attention: an obsessive replica of Parnelli Jones’ ’67 Fairlane NASCAR racer. Sure, this car is a Galaxie, but who cares; Speedycop (and teammate DC Doug, who actually did the lion’s share of the work on this fine machine) has raised the LeMons bar again! By the way, Ford purists, this Galaxie only looks like a clean survivor; a gallon bucket of Bondo and lots of blue paint can work (cosmetic) miracles on a nightmare rustwagon. The car has a late-80s 5.0 engine of unknown running condition, and it wasn’t quite ready to hit the track as of this evening… but there’s still plenty of time!
The ’62 Plymouth Fury that we saw at the Miami race has returned, this time with fresh head gaskets on its 340 and a fuel cell in place of the varnish-and-sludgeified factory fuel tank. Will it keep up with the Parnelli Jones Galaxie? We’ll see Saturday morning!
I’ve made the usual BS Inspection timelapse video, though the camera missed quite a few of the day’s 50 teams as they parked well out of the camera’s field of view.
The race-winning Sgt Schultz Mercedes-Benz S500 team was told that they’d better come up with a new theme for this race: “How about coming as the Real Housewives of Bahrain?” asked Chief Perp Lamm, who had no idea at that point that Bahrain would end up in the news by race time. “Wear burkas!” So they did.
The Road Warriors BMW E30 team has made their costumes even better!
Now here’s the kind of car we like to see racing in LeMons: a Nissan Stanza wagon!
And the Stanza team knew that the best way to please the judges was to offer a gift of a diecast Nissan Prairie. I am very happy.
If your team’s bribe whiskey (Woodford Reserve) isn’t good enough to blind the judges to your car’s cheatonium parts, we might find it entertaining if you dump some of it over your head. Or maybe not.
The Van Buren Boys have upgraded their steel-fender-flared Oldsmobile (or maybe it’s a Buick) to include even more scoops, ducts, and fake rivets.
The green flag waves at 10:00 AM EST Saturday morning, and you can follow all the action on the Track Geeks’ live video coverage. They’ll have an in-car camera in addition to their usual trackside cameras this time, so be sure to check out the action!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Lucas Oil On the Edge, on SpeedTV, is now running their coverage of the Joliet race from last year. Speedycop got some significant face time. Haven't seen Murilee yet but might have missed him.
Damn MM! I(we) borrowed a 67 Fairlane for a ride to Prom in 90! That pic brought back some memories.. Like never borrow your friends uncles Fairlane and drive through the town the uncle is a cop in. Unless your date is into seeing the inside of a holding cell before hitting Dennys!