And the Real Winner Is…
I’m in the passenger seat of the very bouncy ’97 Ford F250 LeMons Department of Highway De-Beautification Vehicle as I write this, heading up I-5 after one of the best races of the ’11 season, and I’m unable to dredge my depleted brain for the parts of speech necessary to do justice to Unununium Legend of LeMons Spank‘s achievements this weekend.
Spank combined four extraordinarily terrible European cars (Simca 1204, Austin America, turbocharged Austin Mini, Mini Moke) and a crew comprised of arrive-and-drives from all over the country to keep at least one car on the track at all times. The America had a replacement engine driven down from Seattle (just over 1,000 miles) after the original engine blew up during Friday’s practice, the turbo Mini had the front suspension from a semi-similar Austin Metro swapped in on Saturday, and the Simca and the Mini nuked their engines on the checkered flag lap. All in all, it was the Class C Onslaught Spank promised.
And so the Index of Effluency, LeMons racing’s top prize, goes to Spank, his Class C Onslaught posse, and his four indescribably effluent cars. Congratulations, Spank and the Class C Onslaught!
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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Is that a Spitfire between the Moke and the Mini? Was it run by a different team?
I captured the moment when the Simca overtook the limo down the pit straight. The noise from the frogmobile was epic. http://tinyurl.com/74sr8x6 The best part of this team's weekend was having one of their drivers shrink-wrapped to the Mini with a megaphone and forced to drive around the paddock confessing to all of us that he was "a VERY bad driver." Best. Penalty. Ever.