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We inspected about 170 race cars at Infineon Raceway yesterday, but the line of beaters, hoopties, and heaps (plus a few fairly well-set-up race cars) awaiting the judgment of the LeMons Supreme Court felt like thousands. After a while, you start to hallucinate faces on the cars.
This can't be real, right? 
What really stood out about this field of LeMons racers was the quantity of great classic Chrysler machinery. The veterans of the Faster Farms Chickens team showed up with their well-traveled, street-driven '67 Plymouth Belvedere. With its 360 engine and experienced drivers, the Faster Farms car is pretty quick. 
Then we've got this '72 Plymouth Duster, also powered by a 360 small-block.
This "blower" ought to be good for at least 10 seconds per lap!
Team Oly Express showed up from Washington with this 1965 Plymouth Barracuda, equipped with slant-six power and factory four-speed transmission. This team campaigned a '66 Fury in LeMons for years, but the old C-body finally wore out.
This isn't the first slant-six LeMons car (that honor goes to the BMW E30/6), but it's the first slant-six in a car originally equipped with Chrysler's legendary million-mile motor.
Then a few minutes later, this car showed up. Could this Valiant be another slant-six car?
Yes! With four ancient Plymouths in this race, we've decided to issue a special Mopar Cup trophy to the one that gets the most laps this weekend.
With the death of the Saab marque, this 9000 Turbo team went with a "pallbearer" theme.
Speaking of dying Saabs, this 900 Turbo burned a few valves driving off its trailer today. Ah, the evil lure of the turbocharged LeMons Saab: very fast, very fragile.
We were puzzled by the appearance of this Super Beetle. What's up with the two-tone body suits?
Dual controls! This is so the team doesn't have to rig up an adjustable seat to accommodate their tallest and shortest drivers. Really.
LeMons Legend Speedycop flew out from Maryland to captain his California-based V8 Volvo team. This time they've gone with a Blue Man Group theme.
It was very difficult for the loquacious Speedy to stay in mute Blue Man character, but he managed the feat.
The BS Inspection process works like this: If the LeMons Supreme Court feels that your car isn't really a legit $500 hooptie, we assign penalty laps that start your team out in a negative-lap hole. Usually, we're talking something in the 5-to-25-lap range. Sometimes, however, a team brings a car so completely over-the-top cheaty that we assign a larger number. Say, a 2004 Pontiac GTO with Monaro badging.
Yes, that inspection sheet shows two billion penalty laps! Hey, might as well go big if you're going to get penalized, right?
Right next to the GTO was this Mazda RX-8. The team's story was that the car was washed out to sea by last year's Japanese tsunami and drifted as flotsam to California. We didn't quite buy that tale.
We were easier on the RX-8 than we were on the GTO: only 500,000,000 penalty laps. Since both teams still get to spend the weekend racing wheel-to-wheel at Sears Point, they weren't particularly upset about their record-setting penalty-lap scores.
Good team costumes abounded. The White Trash Barbie Crown Vic team showed up with this chola-fied theme. They traded one of their two five-speed-equipped P71s for a pair of Acura Integras, which was a little disappointing, but we couldn't argue with their great theme.
The judicial bribes, as always, were plentiful. Here we see all the important food groups represented.
We've seen a lot of modified Miatas, but nothing quite as wild as this: how about a two-stroke snowmobile engine under this Mazda's hood?
Yes, it's the first-ever LeMons car with pull-start technology!
This Pinto-engined Ford Cortina GT looked promising, but its drag-racing cage will require an overnight welding session to pass the safety inspection.
The other British cars fared better. In addition to the Pink Lloyd, we have two MGBs and a Spitfire.
This Angela Lansbury–themed Volvo wagon features a big-screen TV showing "Murder She Wrote" episodes for the enjoyment of the other racers. Why don't more race cars have this feature?
We could go on and on, but it would take another 100 photographs to do justice to the rest of the cars we saw today. Check back soon to see what happened during Saturday's race session!
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | 
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