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We saw one of the highest cool-car-to-ordinary-car ratios in LeMons history at the fourth annual B.F.E. GP 24 Hours of LeMons, held last weekend at High Plains Raceway in northeastern Colorado. Many early-80s Corollas and Celicas, the largest number of AMC race cars in LeMons history, and the first-ever LeMons Checker Marathon all dove into the fray, and we saw a much-battered veteran of the earliest races break a three-year winning streak by the reigning B.F.E. GP champion.
Ghetto Motorsports and their 1980 Mazda RX-7 had won every single Colorado 24 Hours of LeMons race since the very first B.F.E. GP in 2010, and just about everyone expected this team to get #4 this time. Ghetto Motorsports has the right combination of fast drivers, good team organization, and reliable car, but they caught a few black flags this time and that made all the difference.
Taking advantage of Ghetto Motorsports' minor stumble— and we're talking about a 344-versus-343-lap difference here, which shows you how close these things can be— were the drivers of the Raized Crazy 1989 BMW 325i. Raized Crazy took home the Overall Winner and Class A trophies and added some more heat to the already boiling Mazda-versus-BMW LeMons rivalry.
The Raized Crazy E30 has quite the 24 Hours of LeMons pedigree. This car (under the ownership of different groups of racers) competed in the very earliest LeMons races, held at Altamont Motor Speedway. It contended at many West Coast races during the 2007-2011 period, but this was its first overall LeMons win.
Winning Class B, improbably, was the twin-engined "FX32″ Corolla of Volatile RAM Racing. This team brought two two-4AGE/four-wheel-drive Toyotas (the other being the "MRolla" AE92/MR2 combo), and this time one of their weird-handling, parts-breaking, manual/automatic-hybrid Toyotas held together well enough to finish tenth overall and beat all its class challengers. Anything can happen at one of these races!
The Class C winner was the Rocket Surgery Racing 1978 Checker Marathon, a car that had spent many years sitting forgotten in front of a Denver warehouse. Rocket Surgery caged the car, left the suspension all original (except for the addition of a junkyard Ford Explorer-sourced front sway bar), swapped in a tired Chevy 350 engine, and did all the ex-taxi's pre-race testing by driving it 75 miles to High Plains Raceway on Friday afternoon. Normally, this sort of thing is a recipe for a long weekend of spinning wrenches, but the Rocket Surgery Marathon never missed a beat. When the checkered flag waved on Sunday, it had finished 276 laps (that's 703 miles of racing, which is like driving all-out on twisty, hilly roads from San Francisco to Phoenix), placed 25th out of 56 entries, and beaten its nearest Class C challenger (a 1962 Austin Mini with a 998cc engine) by 20 laps.
Most cars making their LeMons debut have many more problems than did the Checker; the experience of the Petty Cash Racing "Cheatonium-430″ 1989 BMW 325e is more typical. Petty Cash has had great success campaigning their Jeep Cherokee in West Coast LeMons events, and the Colorado chapter of the team decided to add a BMW to the stable.
When the dust settled on Sunday evening, just about every part of the freshly-painted Cheatonium-430 car had failed at least once, the team had spent just about the entire weekend in a wrench-spinning/parts-fetching frenzy, and the car managed to place a miserable P49. For using chewing-gum (really!) and beer-can aluminum to fix wheel-hub problems, we awarded Petty Cash a hard-earned Most Heroic Fix trophy.
The flip side of the Most Heroic Fix award is, of course, the I Got Screwed award. This time, the nerve-ripping, heart-breaking ways of The Syndicate's "K-Bomb" 1987 Plymouth Reliant-K wagon all but forced the I Got Screwed trophy into the team's hands. This car, which is being passed from team to team around the country for the 2013 LeMons season, used up an average of 1.2 Chrysler 2.2 engines per race during its stops in Texas, Michigan, New York, South Carolina, and (again) Texas. The Syndicate— a Texas-based team that normally races a Mercedes-Benz W126 and a Volkswagen Jetta— decided that they'd make the K-car more reliable by replacing the 2.2 with a Mitsubishi 3.0-liter V6 out of a retired LeMons Dodge Daytona.
Well, the Mitsu V6 worked just fine (other than some oil leaks), but the rest of Lee Iacocca's dream car didn't hold up quite as well. Many other parts failed, including— but not limited to— the steering column, struts, ECU, axles, charging system, springs, and various suspension components. The Reliant managed to turn just 60 laps, which was a disappointment after a month of pre-race preparation and 1,000 miles of towing to get to the race track. Screwed!
The Judges' Choice trophy was handed over to Team Der Truffeljäger von Zuffenhausen and their "Pink Pig" 1978 Porsche 924. This team, which is captained by the owner of the Boulder-based Chocolove Chocolate Company, very thoughtfully bribed the LeMons Supreme Court with some delicious Chocolove wares.
How could Der Truffeljäger von Zuffenhausen have known that they'd be slaking the powerful chocolate cravings of the first-ever pregnant 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court Justice? Was it just luck, or was it careful planning? Here we see Judge Mary disciplining a wayward Corolla team. Photograph by Brooks Freehill.
For our event-specific award, we created the Canadian White Elephant Trophy for Team Big Wheels. The captain of the Big Wheels won free admission to a LeMons race as a prize in the Targa Newfoundland, then discovered that it was up to her to obtain (A) a race car and (B) a team in order to enter the race. No problem— she found a retired LeMons-veteran Mazda RX-7 and recruited a full complement of drivers on the 24 Hours of LeMons forums, got everything ready, and raced all weekend.
For the Organizer's Choice trophy, the very laid-back two-team effort of the Blue Flag Specials and Speed Holes Racing took home the hardware this time. Their 1978 AMC Pacer wagon and 1966 AMC (actually Rambler) Marlin had a few problems, including a blown-up engine in the Pacer and a shredded oil pan in the Marlin, but that didn't stop the AMC guys from having a great time and helping other teams with their dead cars all weekend. 45-minute driver changes and leisurely lunch breaks were the rule for these guys, and they had a lot more fun than the teams timing their pit stops with stopwatches.
For the Index of Effluency, the top prize of LeMons racing… well, what else could it be than Rocket Surgery Racing and their Checker Marathon? Rocket Surgery, which won the Index of Effluency in the 2011 B.F.E. GP with their mid-VW-engined 1956 Renault 4CV, got zero black flags and didn't break anything during their taxi's racing debut (though its engine did develop a death rattle on the drive home). Congratulations, Rocket Surgery Racing!
For Murilee Martin's complete gallery of 2013 B.F.E. GP photos, go here; for all your LeMons-coverage needs, head to Inexplicable Sponsorship Car and Driver Headquarters. 
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | 
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