The 2010 Legends of LeMons: Ununquadium Medal Winners!
You have no idea of the agony I went through, narrowing down the Legends of LeMons Unununium Medal winners down to just four recipients. The Ununquadium medal goes to those outstanding 24 Hours of LeMons teams that have attained near-Unununium Legend of LeMons status… and they’ll get their Uuq-287 medals just as soon as we find a way to deal with the 2.6-second half-life.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Eyesore Racing
Unlike most of the other teams that show up to a race gunning for the overall win, Eyesore goes all-out in the theme department, with top-notch car decoration and team costumes. Here’s their Alice In Wonderland theme from the Auction Weekend Gravel-Trap LeMons in Arizona.
For the Goin’ For Broken race, they went with a Star Trek theme.
They were willing to sacrifice some performance by adding the weight of the Enterprise to their car, because they knew it would look great on the track… but they’re also such geeks that they did virtual-wind-tunnel simulations to optimize the aerodynamics of the disc. That pretty much sums up Eyesore right there.
For the Arse Sweat-a-Palooza, they went with an Arabian Nights theme; they also added an extremely unreliable Prelude to their stable, with predictable head-gasket-blowin’ results. Still, the Prelude helped them gain the Western Region points they needed to win the tough West by 14 points over their nearest rival.
For the Buttonwillow race, I tried to talk them into converting their car into Norma Desmond’s Isotta-Fraschini, but they opted for a newer movie.
Fuck yeah!
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Misfit Toys Racing
We knew the car was in the right hands when we heard it was getting a rear-mounted Subaru boxer engine and would be entered in the “Trifecta of Crap” (24 Hours of LeMons, the BABE Rally, and the Grassroots Motorsports $2010 Challenge). You can follow the evolution of this amazing project on the LeMons forums and on the Misfit Toys site.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Pendejo Racing
And what an upgrade! A 1980 Maserati Quattroporte, sort of a semi-rough 100-footer but still bursting with Italian style and passion. Not only did Pendejo allow me and Judge Jonny to take it out on the track, they very considerately reinstalled the butter-yellow leather-and-wood interior after building the roll cage. This ensured that we experienced true Maserati luxury. As Pendejo Seth puts it: “Bragging about winning LeMons is like bragging that you’ve cleaned your toilet twice in one day.”
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Azz Backwards Racing
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Red Rocket Ratnest Revival
With two overall wins, one second-place and one third-place finish under their belts, the Ratnests went into the Laissez Les Crapheaps Roulez race in November needing a top-three finish to have a shot at beating Eyesore for the trip to France. As it turned out, the SHO finally blew up, but their great M.A.S.H. theme shows that they’ve stepped up their game to Eyesore levels; we expect RRRR to be top contenders again in 2011.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Team Sleigher
It would take me thousands of words to really do justice to the neutron-star-dense grade of awesomeness here. Just look at it! Perhaps the National Day Of Slayer folks might rent this fine machine for their celebrations.
Best of all, the Sleigher Sleigh is street legal and registered and got quite a few street miles prior to the race. Imagine seeing this thing in your rear-view mirror! Ho ho hail Beelzebub!
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Rocket Surgery Racing
This project, which combined a 1956 Renault 4CV, BMW 1800 suspension, mid-mounted VW Rabbit engine, Audi transaxle, and center driving position, was on the batshit insane ambitious side, and so it goes without saying that the last couple of weeks before the race were a ball-busting, panicky thrash a bit on the stressful side for the Rocket Surgeons. Here we see Team Captain Rich wondering how he’s going to get it all done in time.
When the Rocket Surgery 4CV showed up at the B.F.E. Grand Prix LeMons in Colorado, it still needed about two weeks of work done before it would be trackworthy. That didn’t stop the Surgeons from putting together some excellent Napoleon costumes for the BS Inspection, and then they managed to beat the Renault into shape in several hours. Onto the track and straight to an Index of Effluency win!
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Bastardos Too/Blue Oval Cult Racing
After a couple of Texas races, the Bastardos haven’t yet been able to get the Dauphine to live up to its potential on the race track, but we expect to see it haulin’ Lone Star ass in 2011. And just for laughs, the same crazy Texans went ahead and dropped a Taurus SHO engine in a Fox Mustang; sure, it blows up like clockwork, but once the bugs are worked out…
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Chris Overzet
That’s right, a full-stretch Lincoln Town Car limousine with bachelorette-party theme! Chris let all the LeMons HQ folks take the limo out onto the track, including Judge Jonny, and the Rolling Chicane Racing Lincoln managed to stay on the track for most of the weekend.
There’s also the Arnold’s HummerHonda, complete with real Hummer hood and cigar.
And the Lemon Demolition CRX, which has survived at least 10 LeMons races and is still— sort of— in one piece.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Speed Holes Racing
Much like their friends on the Rocket Surgery 4CV team, the Speed Holes crew ran the clock right down to the last few minutes before the race, but the car was ready to go when the green flag waved. I had the opportunity to drive this fine race car for a few laps at the B.F.E. Grand Prix and I knew Speed Holes had earned Ununquadium status at that moment.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Race Hard Race Ugly
The Race Hard Race Uglies always run a clean, nearly-black-flag-free race, and we expect them to battle with the Ratnests all season long for the 2011 Gulf Region championship.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Beverly Hellbillies/Death Cab V8olvo
Before there was the T GT, the same bunch of racing miscreants ran the infamous Black Metal V8olvo/Mustard Yellow V8olvo Doing 45 In the Fast Lane/Death Cab For Cutie V8olvo, which contended in every West Coast race during the 2010 season. What’s next for these guys? It’s a secret… but it should be right up there with the next Azz Backwards Racing creation in the awesomeness department.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Special Deliverance
Ununquadium Medal Winner: E30ata
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Charnal House
The build quality was a bit, er, rushed, but the Charnal House Metro held together way better than anyone expected. We’d like to see this beast go head-to-head with the Bastardos Dauphine in ’11.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Phoney Express
This car looked great at the Sears Pointless race, too.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Toxic Asset Racing Program Clown Car
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Italian Stallions
It had a few overheating problems, but it sounded great and stayed on the track for most of the weekend.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: FireKatz
Oh, sure, the FireKatz lived up to their team name, but sometimes earning Legend of LeMons status comes at a price.
Ununquadium Medal Winner: Rust In The Wind
The Rust In The Wind folks made a nice documentary about their car, just in time for this post!
OK, that’s it for the 2010 Legends of LeMons Ununquadium Medal winners. Next up: Ununhexium medals!
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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Need a solution to the excessive half life of overqualified yawnsters like mx5s and E30s? Why simply bring back the Crusher. A 40 ton Komatsu is the answer to many of life's problems. I miss that aspect of lemons, truly the race has lost its democratic edge. She's a witch, BURN.
That Maserati Quatroporte looks like it's worth too much for a Lemons race.