Motoring J Style: 3rd at 24 HOURS OF LeMONS!

In-car footage from one of the VW Golf GTI's. A great battle between our MR2 (#64 green/yellow) and the #34 Alfetta GT of the California Mille team. Motoring J Style fought hard and finished the race 3rd overall...a personal best for the team. 89 cars started the race (though the lone Fiero only lasted ten laps).



As you've probably read by now, the race was tainted by the untimely death of Court Summerfield, driver of the #39 Team "Cant Am" Volvo 242. This has been covered extensively on Jalopnik. Witness accounts and a CHP investigation lead us to believe that Court lost consciousness in the car due to some medical problem, causing him to hit a concrete wall head-on. This occurred Saturday afternoon at approximately 2PM, and racing was called off for the rest of the day while an accident investigation took place. This was a very disturbing event, and it proves that even in a carefree race like LeMons, the age old adage remains true: "Motor Racing is Dangerous". We express our heartfelt sympathy to Court's family and his teammates for the loss that they suffered. It is uplifting to know that Court's teammates are looking for another Volvo to build as a race car for Thunderhill in December. We didn't know Court personally, but from all accounts, he was a true gearhead and he would have approved.

Jay Lamm, founder of the 24 Hours of Lemons, made the extremely difficult decision to resume racing on Sunday. We think Jay did the right thing, and we applaud him for his composure and for the heartfelt words he delivered during Sunday morning's drivers' meeting. As he said, quoting another competitor, "racing brings us the best, and racing brings us the worst". Thankfully today, with modern safety equipment, we endure the worst only infrequently. Saturday was one of those days. We dedicate our race to Court's memory.

The Motoring J Style MR2: A Study in Carnage

If you follow this blog you're probably aware of our exploits at the 24 Hours of LeMons in some of Japan's finest machines of the last several decades. We thought it might be inspirational to shed light on how a vehicle comes to be a participant at this fine motor race, with the goal of properly documenting carnage.

We found our MR2 while perusing craigslist one day last January. It lived on the mean streets of Berkeley with a rather optimistic asking price of $700.00. We arrived in the Lexus LS460 press car (hardly a good choice to roll up in when you're buying a $500 car), and succeeded in parking far away so that the owner would not realize we arrived in a $70,000 Lexus. That way, we thought, he'd be more susceptible to our bargaining tactics. We found the owner (pictured above, right), in the middle of a major street in Berkeley preparing his two cars for sale: The MR2, which simply had "$700" written in shoe polish in the back window, and a much worse '95 Mustang V6 Convertible (salvage title), which he was painting in high-quality Krylon flat black for that sinister "aggressive" look.

We drove the car around the block, and despite a truly horrible clunking sound in the right front suspension, decided it was worth buying. After offering $350, we settled on $450 and (cautiously) drove the car home.


The car was horribly rusted out, so bad, in fact, that there wasn't enough of the driver's floor left to bolt in a roll bar. Of course, we didn't find this out until after we dragged it home and ripped out the carpets. Well, nobody said it was going to be easy. The photo above shows master mechanic Mack of the Motoring J Style Racing Team trying to diagnose the loud clunking noises in the right front. I'm not really sure what he did, but it got quieter and we deemed the car "safe to race".


I'm going spare you all of the boring mechanical parts and maddening problems we encountered in trying to get this former East Coast car into race-ready condition. It was a real pain in the ass and I don't want to relive it now. Painting it was fun, and as you can see we assembled a large army of rattle-can wielding LeMons enthusiasts to help us with this task...


....which took us a long-ass time! Note to self: when you use grey primer, it takes a few hundred coats of flourescent yellow and green paint to cover it all. We painted, and painted, and painted until our index fingers were frozen to the Krylon nozzle and we had ruined several formerly-presentable outfits.


No, that's not our car. This is another LeMons devotee who shall remain nameless. He showed up in his MR2 to help us with our little artistic masterpiece. We quickly surrounded his car and demanded numerous parts be taken off, at which point he smartly backed up as quickly as possible and got the hell out of there. Look closely and you can see him looking over his shoulder trying to get out of this predicament as quickly as possible. Life went on.



There are few things in life more satisfying than a freshly painted race car. Isn't she a sexy beast?


Even better with numbers on! Finally at the track: Altamont, July 2007 before the MR2's first race. She wouldn't look like this for long.


And we're off! A little traffic, no big deal...


12th place finish and not too bad damage to show for it!


Race #2: October 2007 24 Hours of LeMons, Altamont


Moments like this gave some cause for concern...


But mostly we just chugged along without any mechanical issues, everyone driving well, always in the top 5...like a fine wine, she was getting better with time.


Then our man Jordan rammed a Honda Prelude with about a 30mph closing speed, causing grave damage to our front end and seriously rearranging the rear end of the Honda Prelude. Oddly enough, the Prelude guys got the sour end of that deal and lost precious time in the pits repairing their car. Prelude guys, if you're reading this, I'm still sorry about that.

We thought the race was over. Surprisingly, the MR2 has pretty good frontal crash protection (and I'm the one to know, I tested one before at the age of 16). Despite a gouged radiator core, the car seemed to be holding its water and continuing despite a few bent panels.


Looking pretty worse for wear here. This is in the last 30 minutes of the race. Amazingly, we finished 4th! More amazingly, we drove the car home on the public freeway.

Photo Credit: Jalopnik

Post Race Carnage:



And if you don't think we're stupid enough already, we're bringing this car BACK for the 24 Hours of LeMons on May 10-11, 2008, at our old stomping grounds, the riotous Altamont Motorsports Park in lovely Tracy, California. Come see us!

24 Hours of LeMons Arse Freeze: The Aftermath

Well, the 24 Hours of LeMons Arse-Freeze-a-Palooza is history, and it's taken me four days to fully digest. Words and static pictures just fail to capture the impact of seeing this event actually happen in real life.

The 24 Hours of LeMons just might be the greatest automobile race of modern times. It is the opus of Jay Lamm, irreverent automotive pundit, Berkeley resident (close enough), and sometime freelance journalist. This is a guy who once brought a Mazda RX2 4-door dressed up as a Tokyo police car on our Double 500 road rally. I heard he also reconstructed the Berlin Wall in his apartment for a recent Berlin: 1989-themed birthday party. Whatever the truth, he's an eccentric. But I'm not sure even Jay himself realizes how truly wonderful his spectacle of bullshite is. For example, witness the total destruction of a late-model 7-series BMW for none other than sacrificial purposes:



All this, of course, as 80+ out-of-control crapcans careen around the bankings and tight switchbacks of the appropriately dubbed "Altamonterring". The silver 7-series BMW suffered the "People's Curse" penalty, one of countless penalties awarded for over-the-budget cars or shitty driving. Believe it or not, it even came back after this punishment to finish the race.



LeMons is, of course, a parody of a race (the 24 Hours of LeMans in France). But make no mistake about it: this is a serious road race, with determined drivers vying for the glory, and, of course, the winning purse, $1500 in nickels. For an in-car glimpse of how intense the on-track action is, check out the following clip from Team Santa Cruz, who ran a Porsche 944:



We'll have in-car video from the MJS MR2 soon, but for now this will have to do!



The winning Black Iron (#65) team, fellow three-time veterans of LeMons, drove a BMW 5-series with most of the identifiable bodywork chopped off. In the closing moments of the race, the Circus Maximus team (formerly known as the Holy Rollers), who appeared to have had the race locked up, lost a tire and went parading around the track. The hard-charging Black Iron boys saw this last-minute vulnerability and upped their pace - at the finish line, after approximately 14 hours of wheel-to-wheel racing, Black Iron emerged victorious with a sub 8-second margin of victory! Spectacular job!



Here we see a typical 4-wide pack navigating the notorious back banking....better get in line before you get pinched at the ridiculously narrow Esses! If you don't, you're liable to run into a large tractor tire strategically placed to aid you in your destruction.



The Motoring J Style MR2/MeR deux Toyota MR2 made its second LeMons appearance, after a solid 12th place finish in July's championship race. We avoided behemoths like this quite terrifying Richard Petty themed Ford Thunderbird (above), and showed the "Canola Rolla'z" (below), how we roll...that's right, Toyota 4AG style and none of that vegetable oil business.



We managed to stay out of the pits for most of the race, which is essentially the key to success in endurance racing...gotta keep your driver circling the track at all times! We had a few incidents, but thankfully none compared to these:


The AMC Hornet's wheel decided it no longer wanted to be attached to the car....and rolled away...


Our friends from Fantasy Junction used this Mazda to run into a lot of things.



Conrad Stevenson's excellent Alfa Spyder benefitting from some late-night repairs.


This team brought an '80s 5-speed Camry, and spent most of the race in the pit next to us doing a clutch job.


And our sister car, the California Mille entry (#34 Alfetta) ran in the top 10 for the first half of the race before the car began a slow death on Sunday morning. They finished 35th. And hey, check out that Conquest TSi and the AE92 in the background!

Before July 2007 race:

After October race:


Despite some close calls (and, let's face it, many outright impacts and straight up crashes), the MR2 kept circling. The Motoring J Style team brought the car home 4th overall, a mere 29 laps down from the winning BMW!

We'll be back for the season finale at Thunderhill on December 29-30 to challenge LeMons once more. Is our MR2 bound for even greater glory that it has already achieved? We think so!

See more about the October race at:

Jalopnik
24 Hours of Lemons Website
Full October Results