Fire Arrow, Twin-Stick Colt, and Devo: BS Inspections at the Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 24 Hours of LeMons
The full name of this weekend’s race at Sears Point aka Infineon Raceway is “THE SKANKAWAY ANTI-TOE-FUNGAL 500, SPONSORED BY CRUSKIN-SKANKAWAY INC., THE OFFICIAL FUNGICIDAL TOE CREME OF LEMONS,” because Cruskin-Skankaway, Inc., won the bidding war for race sponsorship. Appropriately enough, this race featured more Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler-Mitsubishi products than any race in LeMons history.
Life is good when you have an early-80s Dodge Colt in your race.
Better still is when that Colt boasts a Twin-Stick transmission.
However, serious Chryslerbishi racers skip the front-drivers and go right for the Astron-powered machinery.
For example, one of the greatest Malaise Era MitsuChryslers of all time: the Plymouth Fire Arrow!
The LeMons Supreme Court rolls deep, with this Mercedes-Benz SLS gullwing and the equally cool Sawzall-roadster Plymouth Belvedere serving as co- judgemobile s. I rode from Los Angeles to Northern California with Judge Jonny in the SLS yesterday, and it’s quite a car. The loan of the Mr. Belvedere roadster really rounded out our judicial motor pool for the weekend.
Of course, Sawzalled four-doors have a few safety issues for passengers. Look out for the edges of the sliced pillars!
Speaking of Chrysler products, this 360-powered Duster adds some no-Mitsubishi-nowhere Moparness to the proceedings.
As usual, incomprehensible LeMons rituals abounded.
We’re not quite sure what the connection between scantily-clad naughty nurses and a “shooting brake” Porsche 928 might be, but the other racers enjoyed the spectacle.
On the subject of The Most Depreciated Porsche In History, this race features two 928s. Here’s the Chief Perp expressing his approval of the world’s first 928-versus-Corvair road-race matchup. My money is on the Corvair.
After all the big “Podium For Sale” hooraw after the last Infineon LeMons race, the car in question showed up with an appropriate theme. Here’s Judge Jonny selling 85th place to Dave Swig.
Around the same time, a certain GTI team bribed yours truly with one of the greatest judicial gifts in LeMons history: a diorama modeled after my introductory illustration for the 1965 Impala Hell Project series.
I made this illustration on a very early version of Photoshop in 1993, and I’d have freaked out if I’d known that someday I’d get an incredibly detailed diorama version.
This thing is going front and center on my office desk when I get back to Denver!
LeMons Legend Spank showed up with a pitchforks-and-torches mob escorting his Mini Moke. His Austin America and Turbo Mini weren’t quite ready yet, but we’re sure to see them on the track tomorrow.
No discussion of LeMons Legends is complete without mention of Speedycop, and he’s flown all the way out from Maryland to drive the car that I once raced. He arrived at 4:00 AM and immediately got to work on an excellent re-theme job for the V8 Volvo: Michael Jackson’s Haunted House, complete with huge dead tree poking through a hole in the roof.
Thriller!
Climbing his way into the ranks of the Spank- and Speedycop-grade crazed devoted LeMons Legends is Brandon from Houston. He’s building a W126 Benz LeMons car to go with his 6.9-powered ’67 200 sedan, but the car he chose to drag 2,500 miles from Texas was the engine-eating “Jettarossa.” Will it throw a rod or swallow some valves this time?
With 170 entries in this race, it would take me all night to do justice to even a large fraction of the amazing sights I saw Friday, so come back tomorrow for more Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal action.
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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Was the Fire Arrow a "true" 2.6L Fire Arrow, or a 1980 wannabee Fire Arrow with only the 2.0 and the spiffy decal package? The 2.6 with "slightly" wider track, 2.6 and all-wheel disc brakes was actually a very entertaining car to drive back then. My best friend had one, while I had the older 1978 (round headlight) variant GT with said 2.6 in burnt orange. Oh, how we loved our Arrows...:)
Was the Fire Arrow a "true" 2.6L Fire Arrow, or a 1980 wannabee Fire Arrow with only the 2.0 and the spiffy decal package? The 2.6 with "slightly" wider track, 2.6 and all-wheel disc brakes was actually a very entertaining car to drive back then. My best friend had one, while I had the older 1978 (round headlight) variant GT with said 2.0 in burnt orange. Oh, how we loved our Arrows...:)