And The Real Winner Is…

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

You get the Index of Effluency, 24 Hours of LeMons’ top prize, by accomplishing the most with the worst car. You can win it by getting a horrifyingly terrible car just into the top half of the standings, or you can get it by getting your very terrible truck a hair from the top ten. The Pickup Trash S10 team opted for the latter route, clawing their way to 12th place under un-pickup-friendly weather conditions against an extremely tough field.

Team Pickup Trash would have made the top ten, but their final driver thought he could milk a few bonus laps out of an empty fuel tank and had to be towed off the track. We’ve been watching this team for a few races now, and they’ve improved from hapless black-flag magnets to serious contenders as they’ve upgraded both their brakes and their driving skills over time. They’ve built an impressive-looking body kit out of street-sign aluminum, upgraded their suspension with cheap junkyard stuff, and left their stock V6 alone. A very easy IOE decision this time. Congratulations, Team Pickup Trash!

Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Athos Nobile Athos Nobile on Apr 18, 2011

    What happened with the Geo Metro?

    • N545ca N545ca on Apr 18, 2011

      We finished up 22nd overall and took 2nd in the group C division, ten laps out. Lost alternator belt and snapped a bolt on the mounting bracket (day 1). This caused us to drop the lead. Hat's off to team Le Shadow for running a great race and winning the division.

  • Crabspirits Crabspirits on Apr 18, 2011

    I was sure the diesel Chevette was a lock, until the guys packed it up early.

    • See 3 previous
    • Athos Nobile Athos Nobile on Apr 18, 2011

      @Neil X2 on what p161911 said. That engine must be Isuzu. Just for the heck of it, shot a pic and put a photobucket link to see.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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