And the Winner Is…

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The North Dallas Hooptie 24 Hours of LeMons is over, tornadoes, lightning, and all, and a most improbable team has taken the win on laps.

We’d been seeing the Miagra Miata for many races and had written the team off as a bunch of hapless black-flag magnets with a car that somehow managed to get British Leyland-grade reliability from a Hiroshima product. They never gave up, however, and their skills improved in parallel with the bugs getting worked out of their car. Over the weekend, it all came together for Team Miagra, and they took the overall win by a two-lap margin. Congratulations, Team Miagra!

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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  • Oberkanone 1973 - 1979 F series instrument type display would be interesting. https://www.holley.com/products/gauges_and_gauge_accessories/gauge_sets/parts/FT73B?utm_term=&utm_campaign=Google+Shopping+-+Classic+Instruments+-+Non-Brand&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&hsa_acc=7848552874&hsa_cam=17860023743&hsa_grp=140304643838&hsa_ad=612697866608&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=pla-1885377986567&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwrIixBhBbEiwACEqDJVB75pIQvC2MPO6ZdubtnK7CULlmdlj4TjJaDljTCSi-g-lgRZm_FBoCrjEQAvD_BwE
  • TCowner Need to have 77-79 Lincoln Town Car sideways thermometer speedo!
  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh I'd rather they have the old sweep gauges, the hhuuggee left to right speedometer from the 40's and 50's where the needle went from lefty to right like in my 1969 Nova
  • Buickman I like it!
  • JMII Hyundai Santa Cruz, which doesn't do "truck" things as well as the Maverick does.How so? I see this repeated often with no reference to exactly what it does better.As a Santa Cruz owner the only things the Mav does better is price on lower trims and fuel economy with the hybrid. The Mav's bed is a bit bigger but only when the SC has the roll-top bed cover, without this they are the same size. The Mav has an off road package and a towing package the SC lacks but these are just some parts differences. And even with the tow package the Hyundai is rated to tow 1,000lbs more then the Ford. The SC now has XRT trim that beefs up the looks if your into the off-roader vibe. As both vehicles are soft-roaders neither are rock crawling just because of some extra bits Ford tacked on.I'm still loving my SC (at 9k in mileage). I don't see any advantages to the Ford when you are looking at the medium to top end trims of both vehicles. If you want to save money and gas then the Ford becomes the right choice. You will get a cheaper interior but many are fine with this, especially if don't like the all touch controls on the SC. However this has been changed in the '25 models in which buttons and knobs have returned.
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