And the Real Winner Is…

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The Index of Effluency, 24 Hours of LeMons racing’s top prize, goes to the team that achieves beyond all expectations in an unspeakably terrible car. That means, most of the time, something like an MGB-GT or Chevy S10. A 1987 Mazda RX-7, a pretty quick and reliable car in most cases, wouldn’t qualify for IOE status… under normal circumstances. In the case of the lunatic Texans of Team Sensory Assault, however, we’ve got a silk purse that’s been turned into a sow’s ear, then shot full of holes, fed through a shredder, and boiled in chlorine triflouride.

After about 10 LeMons races, Sensory Assault had managed to achieve Ununhexium Legend of LeMons status, mostly due to to antics such as their unsafe-n-insane LeMons Line-Lock and their exhaust-heat-operated rib-cooker. That didn’t mean that they did so well in the standings at any of their races, with black flags and busted RX-7 parts keeping them down in the celler of the standings, race after race. Adding a junkyard turbocharger to the car served to make the car even worse, a feat we didn’t believe possible. Their best performance, prior to the North Dallas Hooptie, was something like 39th place. This weekend, however, Sensory Assault managed to get their horrid pink hooptie into ninth place. Will they ever manage to do such a thing again? Probably not. For now, though, IOE glory is theirs. Congratulations, Sensory Assault!

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.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 6 comments
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • 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.
Next