Huggy Bear, SHOs Galore, and a TR6: BS Inspections at the North Dallas Hooptie 24 Hours of LeMons

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

I’m on my third LeMons race in as many weekends— New Jersey to Michigan to Texas— and the regional differences that make one region of the country stand out from another have become quite clear: East Coast racers like BMW E30s and VW Golfs and Midwestern racers are partial to Neons and Camaros. The Texans? They like Ford Taurus SHOs.

Because the North Dallas Hooptie, held at Eagles Canyon Raceway in Decatur, Texas, takes place on Easter weekend, many of the teams ducked out at the last moment due to holiday/family pressure. The serious teams— maybe 40 of them— aren’t worried about the stuff the squares will be doing this weekend. They’re racing!

Not to say that the holiday is being completely ignored.

SHOs are great (except for the whole thrown-rod and nuked-transmission thing), but this much-butchered Triumph made us the happiest.

Thanks to Ununexium Legend of LeMons Medal winner John of Hoonatic Racing, there will be live streaming video coverage of the North Dallas Hooptie, starting Monday morning. Check it out!




















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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  • Robert.Walter Robert.Walter on Apr 23, 2011

    Thought hereabouts in ttac-land, "BS" was the trademarked IP of one Hr. Schmitt !?

  • Mechimike Mechimike on Apr 25, 2011

    I was going through a stack of Automobile magazines from the early 90's the other day. Man. Ford Lightnings, late v8 Fox Mustangs, SHO Tauruses, Sentra SE-R, Firebirds, VW Corrado...truely that was the second golden age of motoring!

  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • 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.
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