A Peugeot 405 Mi16, Plus Some Other Cars: BS Inspections of the Boston Tow Party 24 Hours of LeMons
Actually, the full name of this race at Stafford Motor Speedway is the Boston Tow Party & Overhead Cam-Bake, and tonight was just Part One of the BS Inspection (the track has some sort of event going on, so we’ll have to do the bulk of the inspections early Saturday morning). As far as I’m concerned, however, we can all go home happy right now, because a genuine Peugeot 405 Mi16 has finally entered a LeMons race.
Team French Toast (that thing on the roof is supposed to be a slab of French toast with butter) found their future race car submerged in a local flooded river; the resulting rapid depreciation provided motivation for the owner to sell cheap. Maybe it will blow up after two laps, or maybe it will dominate all weekend (my money is on the former, but you never know). We can check one of the cars off the LeMons Wish List now… but when will we get a Buick Reatta?
This may be the fifth Charlie Sheen-themed “Torpedo of Truth” LeMons car we’ve seen by now.
However, this one stands out from the crowd with this excellent airbrush Charlie caricature on the hood.
We’ll have about 40 more cars to inspect tomorrow, and then the green flag waves at 11:00 AM, but what an anticlimax after an Mi16! Still, we might just get something even better, such as a Renault Fuego Turbo or a Mitsubishi Debonair.
The weekend promises to be a particularly grueling one for both drivers and machines, with temperatures climbing sweatily close to 110 degrees (I took this shot on the way to the track this afternoon) and Saigon-grade humidity. We expect the track to be paved with engine innards within the first few hours.
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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The name of this race is awesome.
The Peugeot 405 M16 is a rare beast indeed this side of the Atlantic! I used to so want one of these in the early 90s when these were France's answer to the 3 series. A tip for car-spotters: Even rarer is the T16 with the turbo 4.