Cutlass Ciera, Rock 'em Sock 'em Civic, and an L7: BS Inspections at the Loudon Annoying 24 Hours of LeMons
Here I am, starting another three-races-in-three-weeks road trip, this time at the NASCAR-O-riffic Loudon Motor Speedway in New Hampshire. After an excellent, chowder-saturated seafood dinner, the LeMons HQ staff is still contemplating this weekend’s exceptionally good crop of great race cars. And by “great,” we mean “awesomely terrible.”
The real star of the day for us was a car we’d been hoping to see get LeMon-ized for a long time: a BMW L7. The hyper-luxurious, conspicuous-consumption car of choice for corporate raiders and mid-level cocaine kingpins in the mid-to-late 1980s, the L7 is the BMW we wish E30 teams would drive.
One of the Greatest LeMons Cars Ever, and it hasn’t even been on the track yet!
The Organizer’s Choice-winning “New York, New York” Civic from the ’10 season-ender in Miami has been transformed into the “Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots” Civic for this race. These Brooklynites are making a strong case for a second Org Choice.
Look, it’s a genuine Carroll Shelby race car! Yes, a numbers-matching Dodge Daytona Shelby Z. Hey, didn’t I just see one of these things in the junkyard? You Shelby Chrysler fans will be happy to see this car, but probably not so happy to learn that I’ve put it in the same class as…
…this Saab 96, which no longer has the 2-stroke engine it used to win the Index of Effluency last year. That engine done got blowed up in the Miami race.
A 1.0 liter three-banger from a Geo Metro has replaced the Saab powerplant. As we often say in LeMons, what could possibly go wrong?
Some LeMons first-timers read all about what the organizers want to see on the race track, and then proceed to get yet another boring E30 or Integra or Mustang. Not these newcomers! Their recipe for LeMons success: 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. Excellent choice.
Another GM product sure to bring a smile to our faces is the Chevy Chevette. The diesel Chevette we saw at the Michigan race a few weeks back really broke our hearts with its miserable (and very smoky) 5-lap performance, so we have high hopes for this gasoline-fueled model.
Here’s the traditional BS Inspection timelapse video; just one lane of the inspections is visible here, but you’ll get a good cross section of the cars that will hit the track tomorrow morning at 10:30 EST. Check in tomorrow night for a roundup of the Loudon Annoying first session. Music: Riley Pucket, “The Boston Burglar,” 1925
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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So was the Honda CRX team challenged to build a Lemons racer in 24 hours, or did their car fail tech so badly that they entire cage had to come out and a new one get put in Friday?
I only live a few miles from the track - I'll have to try to get over the track tomorrow for the carnage, er, I mean the racing!