A Duster, a Roller, and Cubicle Ennui: BS Inspections at the Pacific Northworst 24 Hours of LeMons
I’m not at Oregon Raceway Park to judge the Pacific Northworst LeMons race this weekend, because I just had to stay in Colorado to watch a bunch of freaks race to 14,115 feet. However, LeMons Assistant Perp Nick Pon has sent in some photos of yesterday’s prerace BS Inspections.
That “Rolls-Royce” is really a BMW E30; such a conversion is a good way to make LeMons officials less bored with racers’ insistence that the Ultimate Driving Machine was “the only $500 car we could find.” Complementing the look of the Roller, some teams are carrying on the West Coast LeMons tradition of excellent costumes.
Pete Peterson of the veteran Killer Bees MGB team not only drove his race car all the way from San Jose to the race, he did the trip while towing a one-wheeled covered wagon.
You never want to race in LeMons without a spare engine, so Pete went with the most logical engine storage location for his trip. What makes this feat even more impressive is that the Killer Bee recovered from one of the hairiest rollover wrecks in LeMons history.
The Bee has some serious Index of Effluency competition, in the form of this Plymouth Duster with an Al Bundy theme. It does have a 360, but old Detroit cars have a tough time staying glued together under this sort of abuse.
When you bring several large office machines to a LeMons BS Inspection in the trunk of your race car, it can mean only one thing:
Yes, reenacting the famous “printer rage” scene from Office Space
I’ll post updates as I get them, so check in later for Pacific Northworst updates.
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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"The Bee has some serious Index of Effluency competition," As I pointed out in the other thread, the MGB is probably has the best endurance racing credentials of any car ever to race in the LeMons series. Indeed it has a better racing heritage than many extremely exotic thoroughbreds. MGB has raced at including many class wins and high outright placing at the following races: Le Mans 24 hour Monte Carlo Rally Targa Florio Monza 1000 Nurburgring 500 Nurburgring 1000 Spa 1000 Sebring 12 hour Daytona 2000 Daytona 24 hour Sundown 6 hour Bridgehampton 500 Bridgehampton 6h RAC Tourist Trophy London - Sydney Marathon etc.... Now this example may not have had the same prep and may have seen better days, but but the same token it is hardly fair not to mention just plain wrong to attempt to mock it for being what it is. Any way you look at it the MGB has serious race cred.
Now everybody knows that Al Bundy drove a Dodge. It was a Dart Demon of the same vintage. At least they should have switched the badging. And minus 1 million for not running a slant 6.