Garrapatas Peligrosas LeMons Day 1: 300E Leads, Everyone Else Done Blowed Up
OK, not every car other than the BenzGay Mercedes-Benz W124 fell victim to thrown rods, busted suspensions, and the usual woes that knock LeMons cars out of races, but only 21 entries were still moving under their own power at the low point of late afternoon today. When the checkered flag waved at the end of the session, the BenzGay 300E sat atop a semi-comfortable four-lap cushion.
The second-place Pulp Friction BMW E30, with its crazy crypto-El Camino-ized rear body and huge plywood splitter, stands ready to move into the lead tomorrow, should the BenzGay team falter. Seven laps behind the BMW lurks the Black Flag Society Toyota Celica, followed by the LRE Datsun 240Z and the Hello Dead Kitty Racing BMW E36.
The Strangelovian B League Film Society 1966 Mercedes-Benz W110 started the race as a very strong Index of Effluency contender, but spent the day fighting various fuel- and electrical-system ailments and finished in 36th place (out of 43 entries). The old Benz could still grab the IOE, but it will need to stay on the track for just about all of Sunday’s race session to do so.
The overall winner of the North Dallas Hooptie LeMons in April, the Miagra Miata, was looking strong… until it got its rear suspension annihilated by the two-time LeMons-winning Red Rocket Ratnest Revival Taurus SHO in an unfortunate crash under a caution flag. That’s a chunk of the SHO’s bodywork stuck to the Mazda’s wheel.
The SHO took some pretty severe damage as well, but the Ratnests were able to replace the crunched axle and strut in fairly short order (most LeMons SHO racers have learned from bitter experience that they need to bring at least three complete cars worth of SHO parts to each race).
The SHO team spent most of the day helping the Miagra guys fix their Miata, which needed a complete rear subframe pulled from a not-very-close junkyard. It was all very heartwarming, especially when the Miata made its triumphant return to the track… but then the Mazda’s engine blew up a few laps in. Not exactly the storybook ending we might have hoped for, but fairly typical of real-world endurance racing.
A couple of Mustangs scattered engine innards all over the track today. Here’s a 302 that decided it’s done had enough of this racing business. A similar fate befell a four-banger Mustang a few minutes later.
Judge Sajeev was offered a stint behind the wheel of the Brown Car Appreciation Society Ford Fairmont… and promptly spun out a few laps later. His penalty: shrink-wrapping to the wagon’s luggage rack.
We took Sajeev on a humiliating tour around the paddock, with an accompaniment of Bollywood hits on the boombox-equipped Judgemobile (a golf cart). Do the crime, pay the price!
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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Glad to see true sportsman ship in this series.