Randy Pobst: LeMons MGB-GT "Handles Well, Bad Brakes, Low On Power"

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Randy Pobst came to the Where The Elite Meet To Cheat 24 Hours of LeMons to drive Speedycop’s MR2-chassis’d Lancia Scorpion, but we couldn’t resist seeing what would happen if we put him behind the wheel of the Goldbrickers MGB-GT. In the rain. The result was startling.

Pobst immediately knocked 13 seconds off the team’s previous best lap, which was set in the dry (this is on a track layout on which most LeMons cars are running laps in the 1:25 region), and started eating up the E30s and RX-7s. What lesson should LeMons teams take away from this? Improving the driver helps a lot more than improving the car. Unfortunately for the MG team, the brake lights crapped out soon after Randy’s stint, and the car spent the next hour with the team battling Joe Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

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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  • Mechimike Mechimike on Sep 26, 2011

    This was our 7th LeMons race- and second race with the 1975 LTD Landau. When we started racing LeMOns back in 2008, we had almost no racing experience- a couple of autocrosses, and some spirited on-road driving. I turned fast lap time in the LTD this race- a car that weighs 4200 lbs, has a miserable, low compression smog 400M, highway gears, and $30 620 treadwear Michelins. I think my best time was about a 1:25.9 lap. The top cars were turning about 1:13 fast laps, so even with all of our experience, you still need a reasonably competitive car to win on laps. There are _other_ prizes, though...

  • Whitney Whitney on Sep 27, 2011

    Not only can the man drive, he can play a bitchin game of Simon Says too: http://youtu.be/1Xmfv5kpGkQ

  • Probert They already have hybrids, but these won't ever be them as they are built on the modular E-GMP skateboard.
  • Justin You guys still looking for that sportbak? I just saw one on the Facebook marketplace in Arizona
  • 28-Cars-Later I cannot remember what happens now, but there are whiteblocks in this period which develop a "tick" like sound which indicates they are toast (maybe head gasket?). Ten or so years ago I looked at an '03 or '04 S60 (I forget why) and I brought my Volvo indy along to tell me if it was worth my time - it ticked and that's when I learned this. This XC90 is probably worth about $300 as it sits, not kidding, and it will cost you conservatively $2500 for an engine swap (all the ones I see on car-part.com have north of 130K miles starting at $1,100 and that's not including freight to a shop, shop labor, other internals to do such as timing belt while engine out etc).
  • 28-Cars-Later Ford reported it lost $132,000 for each of its 10,000 electric vehicles sold in the first quarter of 2024, according to CNN. The sales were down 20 percent from the first quarter of 2023 and would “drag down earnings for the company overall.”The losses include “hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.” [if they ever are recouped] Ford is the only major carmaker breaking out EV numbers by themselves. But other marques likely suffer similar losses. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fords-120000-loss-vehicle-shows-california-ev-goals-are-impossible Given these facts, how did Tesla ever produce anything in volume let alone profit?
  • AZFelix Let's forego all of this dilly-dallying with autonomous cars and cut right to the chase and the only real solution.
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