As you may recall from yesterday – if not, check your journal entry from last night – I spent this past weekend judging the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Carolina Motorsports Park. As usual, there were all sorts of glorious abominations to the very concept of the automobile, and you, as a citizen of some country or another, have a right to know the kind of crap that was dragged in, with the wildly optimistic intent of racing. So, here, let’s look at some stuff!
Up top there is a car that proved to be the most disgusting of the race: a 1998 Kia Sephia from Mock Grass Racing that was covered at first in a layer of astroturf (hence the team name) but had now been gifted an extra layer of many, many jorts. Jean shorts, probably some Daisy Dukes, cutoffs, you name it. All denim, and after the hours and hours of rain we got over the weekend, all completely soaked. Even if it’s pure, delicious rainwater and not warm, redolent urine, wet jeans are still strangely gross.
What is it about wet denim that is so off-putting? Is it just memories of unpleasant times stuck in wet jeans, or is it something more? Anyway, this car was a dripping mess, and I bet all that soaking wet denim had to be adding, what 20 pounds of weight? Maybe? Water is eight pounds per gallon, and I bet at least two gallons of rainwater were trapped in all that indigo mess. Ew.
Want to see what a Lemons winner looks like? There she is, in all her majestic glory. The number 53 car, the Ford Mavarette, which was a Corvette wearing the skin of a 1970 Maverick like some automotive equivalent of the Aztec ritual to the god Xipe Totec, that involved wearing someone’s flayed skin. This unholy beast won Class A, and was fast as hell and raced clean all weekend.
One of my favorite cars was this one, the Tunachucker’s 1966 Volvo Amazon, done up in POLIS livery. They were running an actual Volvo B20 engine in there, and also had a lighting detail I really appreciated:
Recognize those? They’re Mercedes W110 fender indicator lights! I think they also doubled as stay-on-one-side parking lights like the Germans like so much. The team said I was the only person to recognize where they were from, but, hey, that’s what I do, baby!
Here’s a nice detail: the Loose Nuts team finally corrected the spelling of the model name on their 2000 Camero. How does Chevy let these errors get out of the factory?
We gave the Index of Effluency to this little trooper, the Garbage Raced In The South (GRITS) team’s 1982 Nissan 200SX. This thing still had the proper four-banger motor – complete with twin plugs per cylinder – and kept going throughout the weekend. Charming little boxy thing.
Remember GEM neighborhood electric vehicles? They kinda sucked. But this has to be the best-looking one I saw. That special pickup bed was actually made and sold for a few years there! It’s way better than what I usually saw on the back of these things.
The Senior Citizens Club of America (SCCA, get it?) ran this fine little Datsun B210 that had a pretty rough weekend, really. But I liked it.
I forgot how cool the sawtooth taillights of these things were! Too bad they got so lazy about incorporating the reflector.
Here’s a partial lineup of the top ten at the halfway point. See the pink Civic at the end? One of their team members had their truck stolen from their hotel! We gave them the I Got Screwed award, but, damn, that’s shitty.
Lemons racing is a blast, and you owe it to yourself to try it, at least once. You can use a pseudonym and none of your family has to know!
I’m still Impressed you I.D.’d those side marker lights on our Amazon so quickly. I spent months perusing period pictures of Swedish POLIS cars trying to figure out where they got those marker lights from (stock Amazons had no such illumination). When I finally did pin them down as MB lights, I had to scour international eBay and some random French car parts website to find a fairly shoddy pair of them. I retrofitted them with some cheap trailer LED’s and wired them to flash alternatingly with the red wig-wag lights on the roof, using some mechanical flashers and relay logic (none of this fancy solid-state electronics). The blue bubble light and roof-mounted spot are functional as well. These are, naturally, the things one prioritizes when building a LeMons car.
Are you going to do a food and beer review from this event?
“Garbage Raced In The South” is a hell of a team name. Well done, heh.
Twenty years ago in my native Deep South, there was a regional clothing line that was sort of Salt Life before Salt Life, but for women: GRITS. Girls Raised In The South. I’m sure this is a take on that.
Later, there was a spoof brand called “SLUTS – Southern Ladies Up To Somethin’.”
Oh yeah, I remember GRITS. I feel like it was a saying before the t-shirts, though.
Good to see you out there this weekend!
Perhaps the truck was stolen by a self-appointed guardian of ‘Merican Masculinity who thought, “Anyone with a pink car doesn’t deserve a manly truck.”
Can’t unread GEM driver’s hat.
He is uninvited to my 8th birthday party.
So he’s not allowed in your ool? Because he can’t keep it that way?
I can vouch for the charm of the ’82 200SX. I had one as my first car, although mine was the hatchback variant. I’m pretty sure only one set of plugs actually worked during the year-and-a-half I owned the car. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the one pictured. It’s just asking to be made into a 240RS tribute.
Was that a Nissan or a Datsun? I had an ’84 and I thought that was the first year they branded the cars Nissan. I think it was titled as a Datsun Nissan or something like that.
In 82 and 83 the badge said, “Datsun 200SX by Nissan” In ’84 when the S12 200SX replaced the S110, they were badged “Nissan 200SX” on the back right, and had a Datsun badge on the back left. Starting in ’85 the Datsun name was gone.
My family had a 1982 Datsun Maxima wagon, then a 1983 Datsun By Nissan Stanza.
Yeah, it seems to have varied by model, like they tried to do the name change together with a model change or refresh where they could. I have a Datsun brochure from 1982 that lists the 210, Maxima, 310, 280ZX and pickup as Datsuns, but also shows the Nissan Stanza, noting that it’s “The shape of things to come.” 1982 was the year the FWD Stanza replaced the RWD 510.
Our 1957 190 had those parking lights, one fell into the fender due to rust
Is that a Mr. Sparkle livery on the EF Civic!? Simply outstanding!
It is, that’s the current car of Duff Beer Racing
Indeed it is, and it’s really well done. There’s a full Bosuzoku theme to go along with it, but the team quit carrying that around with them awhile ago, unfortunately. There’s a bit of time devoted to it in one of the wrapup videos, I want to say Road Atlanta 2022? You could also search Duff Beer Racing and see what you can find.
Yay! I strongly encourage Lemons racing coverage like this!
If anything should be covered in jorts, it’s a C5 Corvette. Bonus points if it has a missing bumper cover that you can replace with white New Balances.
This looks like a blast. I’d love to attend a Lemons race sometime. The guys who put jorts all over their car should have realized that there’s hardly anything in this world heavier than wet jeans!
The Kia reminds me of one of the best Lemons team names I’ve seen recently – a Lincoln Town Car also completely covered in demim called the Jeancoln Jown Jar. So dumb it comes full circle.
I used to know an artist who specialized in retread tire fragments reclaimed from freeways and thrown out denim. Both surprisingly durable bits of detritus ready to be reclaimed.
The Camero got the guffaw from me. There should be Spirit of Lemons award just for this.
tbh that joke went right over my head, could you explain it?
um, I mean, explain it to my dumb friend, yeah. I totally get the joke of course…
“Camero” is a very common misspelling of “Camaro” in want ads. Hell, I believe it was actually spelled that way on an old syndicated game show in the 80’s.
I had a 1981 200SX coupe like that one complete with the double plugs. It will run absolutely forever, like a dog that’s too stupid to know when to quit, and then run a bit more after that all while getting 40mpg.
I’d love to get another S110 like the 1982 200SX hatchback I had when I was 16.
Mm, man, dig that crazy car!
Who wears jort shorts?
KIA wears jort shorts.
They’re such jort shorts,
We like jort shorts.
Who wears jort shorts?
KIA wears jort shorts.
The Mavarette may have crossed the finish line first, no small feat, but the real winner of any Lemons race is the Index of Effluency recipient. ConGRITulations!
This is the first iteration of the 1998 Kia Sophia Levi’s Edition I’ve seen in the wild! ????