And the Real Winner Is…
To those of us in LeMons HQ, GM cars have that extra-special something that gives them the edge on the Index of Effluency. Sure, we thought that the Bangers & Smash ’00 Dodge Intrepid had the edge starting the race, but Chrysler products tend to be a little too effluent to keep running all weekend (in fact, the Bangers & Smash car ran exactly two laps before nuking its 24-valve V6). In the end, the Murph and the MagicTones-themed Racing 4 Nickels ’89 Olds Cutlass Ciera drove straight to another General Motors triumph.
48th place out of 98 entries (many of which were A-Class Integras and E30s) is startlingly good for a car that shouldn’t have been allowed on the race track in the first place. It wasn’t an easy decision for those of us in LeMons HQ, though; a three-cylinder Geo Metro came in 21st, and a ’92 Olds 98 finished 29th (note the GM Effluence Advantage once again). In the end, the Ciera came out on top. Congratulations, Racing 4 Nickels!
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 more these cars age, the more appealing they seem to be. A nice wagon version would make the perfect daily-beater to keep miles off the new cars. Right now a 78' Malibu is fulfilling that role, and it's a great car, but I'm lucky to break 20mpg, and that's with the 90hp V6.....
You can't assume that an engine with good street reliability will be reliable in this kind of endurance racing. In a LeMons weekend, I'd say the 2.8 V6 has about a 60% chance of failing during a race. That's a lot better than, say, the Mitsubishi Astron or small-block Chevy, but not nearly as good as the Chrysler LA or Mazda B.