And the Real Winner Is…
The Index of Effluency goes to the LeMons team that accomplishes a feat far beyond their vehicle’s purported abilities, and the chances for an IOE go way, way up when you race a General Motors product. The IOE chase in the Loudon Annoying 24 Hours of LeMons devolved into a Chevette-versus-Storm battle early on and stayed that way all weekend.
By Sunday afternoon, LeMons HQ had more or less decided that whichever of the two had the most laps at the end was going to take home the Index of Effluency and the $1,501 in prize money that accompanies it. The ’93 Geo Storm of the Brooklyn Bomb Squad, with its automatic transmission and gas-sipping lo-po engine, struggled with the ’85 Chevrolet Chevette of Team Chev-itte Where The Sun Don’t Shine (yes, they were still making Chevettes in 1985; in fact, The General made them through the 1987 model year) tooth and nail from start to finish. At one point, one of the Geo drivers was heard enthusing over his “epic duel with the Chevette,” a phrase we’re pretty sure had never been uttered before. In the end, the Chevy beat the Geo by a mere 5 laps, 349 to 344.
The Chevette stayed out of the way of the quicker cars (i.e., just about everything that didn’t have a Geo nameplate) and avoided the Penalty Box, and in the end it stood in 26th place out of 54 entries. Congratulations, Chev-itte Where The Sun Don’t Shine!
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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Proof that the little guy can win!
The pizza delivery cars where I worked my senior year of high school were all 1987 Chevettes with automatic transmissions. Car #1 was gutless, but had good breaks. Car #2 was rarely functional. Car #3 lost half it's rear axle one day (fell off while going around a corner). Car #4 had "power" but rather poor brakes. The loaner Ford Escorts from the cross town store were a decadent luxury by comparison.