-We’re back at Carolina Motorsports Park in South Carolina for the sixth annual Southern Discomfort 24 Hour of LeMons, and today we inspected the 90 or so vehicles that will be competing this weekend. We saw more Mazda Miatas, BMW 3- and 5-series cars, and Ford Mustangs than ever before at this venue, which was disappointing, but we also had a good contingent of elderly Detroit Iron show up. We’ll skip the boring cars and get right to the cool stuff now.
-This 350-powered Chevy Monza is the only example of a GM H-body in LeMons that isn’t indescribably horrible on the race track. Sure, the drivers get a lot of black flags and small-block Chevrolet V8s aren’t so good at keeping the rotating assemblies inside their blocks in our series, but there is a slightly-better-than-lottery-odds chance of this car competing for an overall win this weekend.
-The Team S.O.B. (Sick of Breaking) Volkswagen Golf has spent quite a bit of time at the front of the pack at our CMP races in the past, often sitting in P1 by a healthy margin on the second day of racing… but then, as so often happens with LeMons VWs, something breaks. The team has such a massive collection of Volkswagen parts that they feel they must stick with this car forever, so perhaps this weekend will be the one for the SOBs.
-The members of this first-time LeMons team work at The Organic Mechanic in Asheville, North Carolina, and they picked up this very LeMony Volvo 940 Turbo for their debut race.
-The car has an amazingly squishy suspension and a tired automatic transmission, but at least the engine has plenty of head-gasket-blowing boost. Ommmmmm.
-This Mustang wasn’t all that interesting as a car, but the car-show theme was good. Note the creepy “Time Out Kids” dolls.
-A pushrod engine has a Single Under Head Camshaft, right?
-After winning the I Got Screwed By the Nazi Junkyard award at the Alabama race a couple months back, Team Fairlylame are back to chase Class C glory in their 3-on-the-floor-equipped 1964 Ford Fairlane sedan.
-There’s some tough new competition for the Fairlane now, though: this 1970 Plymouth Valiant sedan.
-This car was pulled out of a field, got caged, got a new fuel tank and brake lines, and is now poised to chug its way to Class C contention.
-Also in Class C, this first-time-in-LeMons Chevy S10 pickup. With terrifyingly stock suspension, no-name 400-treadwear tires, and a commanding ride height, we don’t expect this truck to be at its best in the corners.
-This Ford Ranchero made everyone’s jaws clank to the tarmac when it rolled into the inspection area. So beautiful!
-The team gutted a super-rare 1979 Lincoln Tomaso Versailles (the shell is available at scrap value) to provide suspension and brakes for the Ranchero, which would have been conceivable within the LeMons budget… but then they couldn’t refrain from adding a Tremec TKO transmission and a bunch of similarly nice suspension goodies while they were at it. The LeMons Supreme Court couldn’t possibly bury this cartruck beneath the many penalty laps it probably deserved, because it’s a 50-year-old Ranchero, but we did put it in Class A.
-So, the Holdme Moonme team has about as much chance of winning Class A as would a snowshoe-shod burro in the Kentucky Derby, but we’re sure it will look spectacular on the track.
-The Knoxvegas Lowballers brought their all-Ford-Contour-SVT-engined trio of custom-vanified cars. In fact, these three machines have four Duratec V6s between them; the Mazda MPV minivan has two engines and two 5-speed manual transmissions. Class C, of course, because there’s so much to go wrong here.
-With the addition of a chunk of Ford Taurus wagon sheet metal, the Lowballers’ Contour SVT became more of a van and now better matches the MPV and the (mid-engined) Geo Metro.
-The team made their lemon-shaped bubble windows by heating up plastic in a household oven and mashing it through a homemade metal frame.
-We had a couple of special BRIBED stencils for this event. Judge Steve made this Minion-themed stencil, which featured two-color paint application.
-I made this oversized BROUGHAM stencil, which was applied only to the classiest vehicles.
-Speaking of class, check out these Members Only-clad gentlemen and their tasteful sock gifts to the judges.
-You’ll want to know how things sort out on the first day of racing at the ’15 Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons, so check in later for updates!
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1EWSXzi
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