Fieros, SHOs, and TTAC Hacks: BS Inspections at the Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours of LeMons
Here we are at MSR Houston for the fourth annual Yeehaw It’s Texas 24 Hours of LeMons race. To ensure that TTAC’s coverage of the race remains completely objective, we’ve got three of your most loyal and dependable TTAC scribes delivering hard-hitting, hammer-jack-stomping journalism for y’all.
Sajeev and I are race officials, and Jack “That’s a PLYMOUTH Neon, Sucka” Baruth will be getting some seat time behind the wheels of the Tetanus Racing Neon and Porsche 944. By the way, that pistol in my hand is an “Hijos de Villa” commemorative tequila bottle.
The fact that I’ve been judging for the 24 Hours of LeMons for more than three years, with LeMons Chief Perp Jay Lamm handing me rapid fire louie like Rambo got bullets, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Lamm is The Greatest Race Promoter Who Ever Walked The Earth (indeed, he is one of the Giants of Motorsport), nor does it alter my certainty that the 24 Hours of LeMons will one day be regarded as the pinnacle of American civilization.
Speaking of integrity, the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court has plenty! I’ve been making special commemorative BRIBED stencils to spray on the cars of teams that grease the gears of justice, and this weekend’s racers got a Houston-centric version that I’m sure they’ll prize for years to come (or until they repaint their cars, which happens every few months).
We had some good themes and costumes on the cars, including this puzzling Whoopie Cushion/Daisy Duke/Big Foam Cowboy Hats arrangement on a Texasified BMW 2002 (they claim it’s a 1602, but the engine is out of a 320i, which de-1600-izes the thing). What does it mean?
Also puzzling were the Scary Clowns. I hope they wear these outfits all weekend!
We set a new record for Fieros at a single race, with three showing up this time. One has an original 2.8 V6, one has a Lumina 3.4 V6, and this Fierrari has a late-model 3.8 V6. Sure, Fieros always blow up in LeMons, but we still love them.
That’s because the Fiero is the American mid-engined sports car!
It’s late and I have to get up painfully early to inspect the 20 or so cars whose teams didn’t have their act together well enough to make it through today’s inspections, so I’ll leave you with this timelapse video showing most of the cars that did make it through our gauntlet today. Check in tomorrow for live coverage from Judge Sajeev!
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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Murilee appears to be living the charmed life of an Illinois governor! Way to go!!
......any competition where rapaciously greedy scrutineers routinely run out of those "bribed" stencils is sure to hit the FIA's radar eventually. Flaunting their ill-gotten lucre in the photos seems particularly unwise.