I feel a little like I’m made of jerky right now because I spent the weekend out in the desert wasteland of Buttonwillow, where there is surprisingly good Indian food and a nice, large racetrack that hosted the Button Turrible 24 Hours of Lemons race. I was there, judging judgementally, and there were, as always, a whole host of fantastic cars that I feel compelled to share with you.
So, you know, spread a dropcloth under your chair/sex swing/standing desk and prepare accordingly.
As you all already know, every Lemons racing team and car is beloved in the eyes of Automobiliana, the goddess of cars, but I can’t show you every car at the event, so I’ll just be picking some highlights that caught my eye, ear, nose, or throat. There were a great number of interesting cars at this race, among the expected Miatas and BMWs and others. Like this one:
That’s a 1941 Ford! The Distilled racing team did a lot of work on this car, which now sports an LS motor shoved way back, necessitating what may be the longest air intake pipe I’ve ever seen:
It’s like an elephant’s trunk jammed in there.
Of course, one of my favorite cars there was this 1965 Beetle, which has been racing Lemons since 2001. This thing was actually putting down some surprisingly quick lap times! The engine choice is interesting, too:
That’s a Type 3 engine! There’s nothing wrong with Type 3 engines – they have the advantage that you can’t lose your cooling fan if a belt breaks – but usually when people look to upgrade their Beetles to another VW air-cooled engine, they tend to go with the Type 4 engine, as used in Buses and the Porsche 914. This one is over 2 liters, though, and seems to make decent power!
This Lotus Eclat was a fantastic and very fast car, with a big V8 and different livery on each side: one mimicked the old Camel yellow livery (changed to Llama, for shits and, where applicable, giggles), and the other side was a parody of the old John Player Special livery:
…with JPS here standing fro Just Plain Stupid. This car also had a carb with these great little windows in the bowls:
See the little round portholes there? You can see the fuel sloshing around through them. I just think that’s cool.
This Miata was from a team of firefighters who ran it with a ladder inside, like a tiny fire engine.
Mostly, though, I’m fascinated by that fiberglass front end; I think it’s from one of these Cobra-like front-end kits? It’s amazing how much it changes the look of the car.
I was really fond of this Volvo PV544, with its fine headlight eyes and scrappy overall look. These cars were actually raced a fair amount back in their day, an excellent object lesson in not judging books by covers and all that. The team had an issue with a clutch plate being some number of millimeters too thick, which necessitated essentially splitting the whole car in half:
This looks like a huge deal, but these guys had this down to an art! They split this car open like taking the top bun off a sandwich, and popped it back together. Amazing.
This 914 was at that optimal level of rough:
The old air-cooled Type 4 engine was replaced with this Buick V8; that’s an impressive shoehorning job:
When was the last time you saw a Pinto this clean driving around? Let alone racing!
Speaking of clean, check out this Rabbit:
This car looked so damn good! It almost looked too good to be a Lemons car, but it’s still an ’80s Rabbit, so don’t get too worked up.
Also fantastic was this MGB GT, also with a big V8 shoehorned in. These are such good looking cars! It’s easy to forget that until you see one zipping around.
Remember the Metro Gnome? The Geo Metro with the Honda CBR 1000rr motorcycle engine, shoved into a big box right next to the driver. This thing is deeply, richly bonkers.
Another bonkers thing: this looks like a Subaru BRAT, but it’s really a Miata wearing a BRAT costume, which works far better than it should.
These guys in a non-turbocharged New Beetle had a Big Lebowski theme that they stuck to all weekend. Also, they mix a hell of a Caucasian.
As always, Lemons is a proving ground for experimental aero advances and research, as you can see with this bold four-tier wing design, which leverages the most advanced bookshelf tech.
As always, the themes were impressive, like this one that I suspect was secretly funded by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s grassroots outreach programs.
When was the last time you saw a first-gen US-market Ford Escort anywhere? Here one was, a wagon version even, tearing it up on the track!
Holy crap, a Merkur XR4Ti! Damn, what a rare car to be seen, well, anywhere, but especially at Lemons! Wait, what’s that over there?
Yes, there were two XR4Tis at the race! This one above had some lovely paintwork done, like the lovely handlettered numbers and the swimming pool-like paintjob on the wing:
One of my absolute favorite cars that was there had to be this DAF 55:
This thing was slow, so very slow, but it kept making laps, and just being out there on that track with all those other cars whizzing by was an act of wild bravery on the part of all the drivers. It got hit once but kept going! Going using these rubber bands to drive it:
Yep, that’s the incredible Variomatic transmission, the first production CVT! The little DAF won the coveted Index of Effluency award, so rest assured it has been suitably rewarded.
This team was fascinating for a number of reasons: first, it’s somehow the first Ford Aerostar to compete in Lemons, and second is that it is the car of the official Scaled Composites Racing Team. As in Scaled Composites, the aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan, the first person to fly around the world without refueling, and the first to build a privately-funded vehicle that reached space. Virgin Galactic’s aero-launch system was built by these guys.
The star stickers all over the van are from the same batch of decals used on SpaceShip One, and this van was used as a utility vehicle by the company, including carrying ol’ Muttonchops Rutan himself inside. This thing has some pedigree!
Of course, no Lemons race is complete without stupid penalties for stupid driving, and there was plenty of that this race. At an earlier race, a very clever 10 year old girl suggested throwing American cheese slices on hot car hoods as a penalty, so I adapted that into something called the Cheese Invader:
Yes, naughty teams had to make pixel-accurate space invaders on their hoods with cheese. The cheese-like substance melted almost immediately, and formed a hard-wearing polymer that is pretty much impossible to remove, except maybe with anti-cheese particles they can make in some particle accelerators.
One team had a whole USS Enterprise theme for their Crown Vic, so when they came in for a penalty, I had them attempt to re-create the big Enterprise painting from Captain Picard’s cozy office. Considering the context, they did a pretty credible job!
Lemons racing is fantastic; if you have yet to try it, I can’t recommend it highly enough!
way back in my youth i built up a morris minor 1000 with healy sprite engine bits and some homebrew suspenion changes. i dearly would love to had something like le mons play at. it wasn’t fast, but it handled better than you would think.
This is fantastic Jason. I thing my new life goal is to race in Lemons and meet the real, live Jason Torchinsky who then judges my car. Perhaps even earn a penalty so I have to do some silly feat of idiocy. I’m really good at those.
That LeMons race wasn’t in the desert. It was in the Central Valley, which in its own way is even more miserable than the desert!
I made this same distinction on their article about the drive from Galpin up to Monterey Car Week. They showed a photo of the rolling hills around Tejon Ranch and called it desert. If that was in February those hills would all be green.
Desolate and dry, yes. Desert, no.
“I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”
I was NOT expecting this reference.
Wow, that one dug deep into my brain…..
Love the Lotus Elite and its liveries.
Yes it’s an Elite, not an Eclat as it says in the article (though they are similar cars for sure, but the Elite is the shooting brake). I happened to see this Elite on its first Lemons at Buttonwillow years ago, when it was in a maroon/gold paint job – they spent about 15 mins on track over the 2 days! Rest of the time they were working on it. But my brother, who’s been doing Lemons in CA for over 10 years, says they’ve really got it in great shape now and it’s regularly one of the fastest cars.
I guess you could say Eclat is…
Not It’s Real Name? Ha ha
Great pics, thank you!
Best bribe you were (allegedly) offered? (And of course turned down, 😉 )
I think the literal rocket scientists at JPL might object to this characterization. 😉
There was another team at this race called Junk Propulsion Laboratory. I think he might be mixing them up.
Burt/Scaled (known as Rutan Aircraft Factory at the time) built Voyager, but Burt didn’t fly it. Dick Rutan (his brother) and Jeanna Yeager (no relation to Chuck) flew Voyager around the world unrefueled in 9 days.
Later Steve Fossett had Burt/Scaled build the Global Flyer that he flew around the world unrefueled solo in just under 3 days.
Dick was also something of a Yeager-scale badass: He helped pioneer the concept of the fast Forward Air Controller in Vietnam, essentially flying a jet low over enemy positions to draw fire, then loitering overhead to call in air strikes. Somehow he survived 325 missions in one of the most dangerous specialties in a dangerous profession.
I’d bet that flying the Voyager was like sitting by a fire reading a book, compared to the skies over Vietnam.
Yeah, Dick Rutan was up there with Bob Hoover on pilot skills. He did a lot of the tests flights for early RAF/Scaled Composites stuff.
Voyager was a handful to fly. At take off, their fuel load was over three times the empty weight of the plane. They used 14,200ft of the 15,000ft runway at Edwards to take off. Dick stayed at the controls for the first three days of the flight since the plane was so pitch unstable, they couldn’t switch spots.
After Voyager, he flew around the world again, this time with multiple stops in his LongEZ, with Mike Melville (another extraordinary pilot) in his LongEZ.
The owner of that N. Korea car has some cojones.
I would absolutely love to spectate (or take part in some capacity) a Lemons race. These seem like a total blast!
Seeing the ‘cheese’ invader picture reminds me so much of the time I spent a Saturday afternoon scraping the remains of some heavy-duty plastic sheets off of my ’09 Jeep’s exhaust.
It reminds me of the Mooninites
When I walked up on that scene and said “hey a Mooninite,” Jason chastised me for not knowing it was a Space Invader.
That either makes him old, or more likely, all of us old
That looks like wonderful fun! Thanks Jason! 😀
You feel like jerky? Try standing out directly in the sun for 6+ hours all three days! Yesterday I had to eat lunch in my car with A/C on just to stop overheating.
Sadly the Volvo 544 packed up and went home early Sunday, and the MetroGnome blew a hole in the block. The Chotus sprung a hole in their radiator and the famous welder Erica saved their day.
It was great meeting you again and hanging out with you for a while!
When I went to Joliet a few years ago there were two different Merkurs! (Both from these and from each other, of course.) They’re weirdly popular Lemons cars.
As for that Corolla(?) with the wings… everyone knows four wings means for times the downforce. Gotta keep that thing on the ground at the blistering speeds it surely doesn’t hit.
pretty sure thats a reference to this guy from Cars
https://pixarcars.fandom.com/wiki/Wingo
Correct, they were Team Wingo.
Ah, never seen it. Something about the whole concept was weird to me, even though I generally like Pixar movies.
I’m stumped on how some on these got past the $500 limit for vehicles.
If you go over $500 (which doesn’t include safety equipment–of which tires and brakes count) then you get penalized in laps, subject to the judges’ discretion. This is where the popular contest of bribery comes in. If you show up in GT3 BMW, expect to drive 1000 laps before you’re gonna be at your official Lap 1.
edit: Also you keep really good track of how much everything costs and if you make anything back on selling off parts, you make trades, you buy junkyard parts… folks get really creative with their accounting, and the only people you have to convince are the judges.
We were at the race in Sonoma and a team showed up in a 05 GTO. They got penalized 1,000,000 laps. The funny thing is the rear end of that car kept on overheating and puking gaskets.
The $500 rule isn’t super strictly enforced. There’s a lot of leeway and discretion involved. If you bring a super unique or wacky or awesome car the budget may be overlooked. Also, if you bring a cheaty car, they’ll bury you in penalty laps so you can still race. Remember only 4 teams actually win a cash prize.
Also Lemons has been going long enough that they know which vehicles are fast but fragile and will never win anything.
I feel like the $500 limit was appropriate and attainable when this series was new. It has been a decade or more though since that was possible, at least anywhere within 6+ hours of where I live.
Don’t forget that parts sold off the car are deducted from the purchase price. I bought my Lemons car in 2007 for $400 and sold about $300 of parts from it.
Another big part of it is that the cars evolve, 500ish dollars at a time. Wheel bearing go bad? Well it’s unfortunate that it’s easier to just swap in these knuckles and suspension from a better car wink wink, that now means I need to do a brake upgrade? Good thing that doesn’t count towards the cost… Engine blew up? Well here’s a junkyard LS I found for $400…
While your general sentiment is correct, wheel bearings and brakes (and several other items like wheels, tires, lights, etc.) are considered safety items and don’t count towards the budget. An engine swap is a different story.
I think the de-swaps can sometimes get bonuses. There’s been people swapping flatheads into late model cars for a while, and that always gets a kick out of the organizers. I want to say they even turbo’d one once? Just some bizarre choices being made there.
If you haven’t been to the DAF museum in the Netherlands, highly recommend!
Wonder if this should be called kvetching start, Jason always starts with a comment about how miserable he is, “It’s 2am and I need to fly out in an hour but here’s a story”, “I feel like jerky from being in the desert”, “I just got in from a 14 hour flight overseas where I left early cause I was sick”, “I just had a quadruple bypass but I have to write this anyways”.
Like we get it, you’re paying for some terrible grievance in a past life, most of us are, the 1900s were not the best of times, by the 20s we’d already had a world war and were heading towards the great depression.
I guess the main point is I don’t have a lot to comment on these cars, they’re neat but also lemons. Will there be another article going over winners/losers/best in shows?
“Cheese”-in-name-only-product
Technically, it is a pasteurized processed cheese-food product.
Technically.
Technically cheese is the best kind of cheese!
Wait, that can’t be right….
Kind of amazing how near-flawlessly (within the context of Lemons, anyway) that VW Golf/Jetta Mk3 front bumper fits the no. 37 Merkur.
I want nothing more in my life than to do a few laps in the Metro Gnome.
I’ve been tempted to go, but I’m in the US Southeast, where rust is a thing that exists. Is this event representative of how amazing the cars are at all of them, or is this more representative of CA car culture?
there’s great stuff at the Carolina Motorsports Park race, too!
An awesome assembly of automobiles.