Tag Archives: Cerveza Racing

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LeMons Sears (Even More) Pointless: Even More Winners!

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By Murilee Martin

Because the track at Sears Point aka Sonoma Raceway can’t fit more than 175 or so LeMons cars at one time, many of the hundreds of applicants for the 2013 Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons couldn’t be accepted for the race. What to do? Why, stay over through Monday and run a special one-day Sears (Even More) Pointless race, that’s what! This race featured all the same prizes as the full all-weekend-long race that preceded it, and that means we’ve got another set of winners.


Sears Point has always been hard on LeMons cars, with plenty of bent metal and obliterated engines. This jar of pickles flattened by an RV in the paddock sums up the condition of many of the cars after two or three days of racing.


Taking the Class A and overall wins once again, it’s Cerveza Racing and their 1983 BMW 533i. We impounded this car (back when it started turning some suspiciously quick lap times) and subjected it to a surprise dyno test a couple of years back, and it produced something like 120 wheel horsepower. It turns out, shockingly, that driver skill counts for more than horsepower in road racing, and the Cerveza wheelmen have used that skill to win five LeMons races… so far.


Normally, the LeMons Supreme Court puts most Volkswagen GTIs in the class for the fastest cars: Class A (yes, GTIs usually blow up in LeMons, but they can turn some quick lap times before the explosion). However, the Dirty Duck Racing GTI has been so terrible for so many years that they’ve earned a spot in Class B (it didn’t hurt that they gave your LeMons correspondent a very thoughtful gift). Finally, the Dirty Ducks were able to stay out of the penalty box and their car’s pistons were able to stay inside the block for an entire race, and they won the Class B trophy. The Class B battle was hard-fought, with the Communists-Я-Us BMW 320i hanging on about 40 seconds behind the GTI for what seemed like hours, but the Dirty Ducks held off the E21, placed eighth overall, and got their first class win.


Winning Class C was Legend of LeMons Spank’s 1962 Mini. How did a very loose, very tired Mini manage to place 15th out of 72 entries, with lap times 5-10 seconds slower than most of the other cars near it in the standings? Consistency, reliability, and clean driving.

<img src="http://blog.caranddriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/07-Sears-Even-More-Pointless-24-Hours-of-LeMons-Winners-626×426.jpg" alt="" title="07 – Sears …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Automobiles

24 Hours of LeMons Sears Pointless: The Winners!

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By Murilee Martin

174 teams started the race on Saturday, and perhaps 90 were still running when the checkered flag waved on Sunday evening. The fourth annual Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons proved to be the engine-killingest, metal-bendingest race we’ve seen in quite some time, which made victory all the sweeter for the teams that went home with trophies.

Overall, Class A Winner: If It’s Not Punk It’s Junk
These days, the mohawk-equipped ’92 BMW 525i of If It’s Not Punk It’s Junk and the Dos Equis-themed ’83 BMW 533i of Cerveza Racing are the cars to beat in West Coast LeMons racing. The Cerveza car was the race leader for most of the weekend, but the Punks grabbed the lead late on Sunday, built it up to two laps, and took the win. Zero black flags, zero mechanical ailments, and some very fast lap times were the keys to victory (again) for this team.

Class B Winner: The Flyin’ Hawaiians & 2 White Guys
The Flyin’ Hawaiians’ smog-carburetor-equipped Datsun 260Z had proven to be so unutterably terrible in previous races that the LeMons Supreme Court showed some mercy and classed the team in B this time. Next thing we knew, the team had managed to get their battered Datsun into 14th place overall, beating the nearest B competitor (an S10 pickup with 2,000 watts of audio amplifiers and a bed full of woofers) by 10 laps.

Class C Winner: Flaming A-Holes
Most V12 Jaguars (and V12 BMWs) get put in C Class by the LeMons Supreme Court (for obvious reasons), and this time an XJ12 managed to refrain from blowing head gaskets, spinning rod bearings, stretching head studs, or melting down its entire wiring harness for an entire race. The Flaming A-Holes held off a lot of tough Class C rivals all weekend, finishing in P29 and beating its closest rival (an ’84 Nissan Maxima) by four laps.

Most Heroic Fix Winner: Absolute Lemon Motorsports
The BMW E30 3-Series is the most common LeMons car, and that means that we’re very, very familiar with this car’s Achilles heel: a very fragile engine computer. The ECMs in E30s tend to become unhappy when subjected to the extreme conditions of endurance racing, and just about every E30 team keeps a spare ECM on hand. The veteran racers of Absolute Lemon Motorsports, however, cooked their car’s ECM early in the race, then fried their only replacement. Rather than try to chase down the elusive electrical-system gremlin that was killing their ECMs, they went …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Automobiles

LeMons Sears Pointless Day 1: 533i Battles 525i For Lead, XJ12 Chasing Beetle In Class C

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By Murilee Martin

With 174 entries, we knew the first day of the 2013 Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons would be wild. Plenty of thrown rods, plenty of lunched transmissions, and a steady stream of black flags later, the race session ended with several very exciting battles that will be resolved on Sunday.


In the P1 position, we have the car that dominated West Coast LeMons racing throughout the 2012 season: Cerveza Racing’s 1983 BMW 533i. This car is on the same lap as the P2 car, the If It’s Not Punk It’s Junk BMW 525i, and ZZZZzzzzzzzz…


Let’s face it, it’s hard for a true LeMons aficionado to get excited about two fast BMWs going fast and clean yet again; we’ll let you know Sunday night who takes the overall win. But now we’re going to look at the most interesting race-within-a-race at this weekend’s event: the fight for the Class C lead. At the moment, the 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle of Bozos Sucko Racing (you may remember this car as the dual-control racing machine of Team Ferdinandwertschtzungsgesellschaft stands atop the Class C pyramid, in 32nd place overall. This car has had Subaru boxer power for its last few races, and the team has learned the hard way that Subaru engines manage to be even less reliable that air-cooled VW engines under LeMons conditions. However, the Bozos Sucko setup is working fine for now; the car has been quite reliable and (for Class C) fairly quick so far.


Just a single lap behind the Volksbaru is the tank-turret-equipped Jaguar XJ12 of the Flaming A-Holes. As we’ve seen, Jaguar V12s in LeMons racing have suffered from horrifically bad mechanical woes (hence the Class C berth for this car), but Sears Point hasn’t managed to kill this one.


A mere one lap behind the Jag, we find the twin-engined Toyota Corolla “FX32″ of Volatile RAM. This team, which has now built two twin-engined Toyotas, says the soft stock springs of their Corolla/MR2 mashup make for some interesting handling, but the car has been good enough to claw its way within grabbing distance of the Class C prize.


Meanwhile, the real shock of the race so far has been the performance of the Flaming A-Holes’ other car: this 1964 Hillman (badged as a Sunbeam for the US market) Imp. The Imp sat for …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Automobiles

From California to New Jersey, the 2012 LeMons Season Regional Champs

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By Murilee Martin


The 24 Hours of LeMons series travels all over the United States, making stops in such bustling cosmopolitan hotspots as Kershaw, South Carolina, and Deer Trail, Colorado. While the 2012 National LeMons Championship Awards are cool, we’re going to rip off Tip O’Neill’s famous phrase and say that all racing is local. So here we present the 2012 season winners of the five 24 Hours of LeMons regions:

East Region 2012 Season Champions

1. Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws, 54 pointsThe point system for determining regional champions works in exactly the same manner as the system for determining national champions: The top ten finishers in each race get one to 10 points each, depending on position, and every team that just shows up gets three points per entry. The Maryland-based Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws went for quantity over speed, competing in four LeMons regions with 11 vehicles. Though the Outlaws don’t mind traveling thousands of miles, their geographical proximity to the East Region tracks (New Hampshire Motor Speedway and New Jersey Motorsports Park) meant that they owned the championship here.

2. Rust In the Wind, 34 pointsOf course, your team can also do well in the championship standings by, you know, winning races. The Rust In the Wind Saab-powered Nissan 300ZX won the Halloween Hooptiefest and finished high in the standings in the other East Region races.

3. Rally Baby Racing, 33 pointsFollowing the Speedycop formula of entering lots of cars, the Rally Baby BMW-Audi-Mercedes onslaught got all their championship points via the 3-points-per entry method. The Audi pictured above has the (longshot) potential to prove your LeMons correspondent wrong in his belief that an Audi will never win a 24 Hours of LeMons race.

4 (tie). Keystone Kops, 31 pointsThe Volvo 240, believe it or not, turns out to be one of the quickest and most reliable choices in LeMons machinery (in fact, three of the top ten East Region teams raced Volvo 240s), and this turbocharged 244 played a big part in helping Volvo beat Toyota, GM, and Chrysler in the 2012 LeMons Constructor Standings.

4 (tie). Bill Danger and the Road Hazzards, 31 points

After winning the Heroic Fix at the New Jersey ’11 race for overcoming their mechanical haplessness, Bill Danger and the Road Hazzards overnight became one of the toughest teams in the East Region in 2012. They and their Honda Accord won the Loudon Annoying race, then placed very well in the other East races.

6. Walk of Shame Racing, 29 points
7. Near-Orbital Space Monkeys, 27 points
8 (tie). Vermont Bert-One, 23 points
8 (tie). DTM Duct Tape Motorsports, 23 points
10. Swedish Mafia Racing, 22 points

South Region 2012 Season Champions

1. Hong Norrth, 48 PointsHong Norrth and their pair of Mazda MX-3s finished third in the national championship standings and straight-up ran away with the South Region in 2012. Their cars are fast, their drivers don’t get (many) black flags, and Mazdas break less than most other cars in the series.

2. Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws, 15 pointsYes, Speedycop went everywhere in 2012.

3 (tie). Team SOB — Screaming on Boost, 13 pointsIf a Volkswagen is going to take an overall win at a 2013 LeMons race, your LeMons correspondent’s money is on this well-driven Rabbit. The SOBs probably made a terrible mistake by adding junkyard turbocharging, but perhaps they’ll keep the boost at sane levels this year.

3 (tie). rbankracing.com Svenska I, 13 pointsAfter retiring their Saab 900 Turbo (the only Saab in LeMons history to take overall wins), Robin Bank Racing was back in 2013 with this 9-3.

5. Flirtin With Disaster, Ol’ Chuck Gots Guts, Morrows Racing, 12 points
6. Rally Baby Racing, 12 points
7. Road Warrior Racing, 11 points
8. Poor Boys Racing, 10 points
9 (tie). NSF Racing, 9 points
9 (tie). Terminally Confused, 9 points
9 (tie). Magnum PU, 9 points

Gulf Region 2012 Champions

1. Lost in the Dark, 43 pointsThis Texas team got most of their championship points courtesy of a fairly quick and very reliable Mazda Miata that finished in the upper reaches of the standings at several races, but it’s their Modular 4.6–swapped Fairmont that gets our attention.

2. Team Blue Goose, 34 pointsThis veteran team, run by a bunch of Tex-Mex restaurateurs, fields a very quick and sometimes reliable Audi and a very quick and occasionally reliable VW in Gulf Region races. Between those two cars, they rack up plenty of championship points.

3 (tie). Back To the Past, 32 pointsThis Nissan 300ZX team won the season-ender at Eagles Canyon Raceway, and they contended in most of the other Texas races.

3 (tie). Pulp Friction, 32 pointsThe gullwing-door-equipped, El Camino–ized Pulp Friction BMW 325 won the North Dallas Hooptie and contended in its other LeMons events.

5. Z-Wrecks, 29 points
6. Tetanus Racing, 26 points
7. Property Devaluation Racing, 22 points
8. Team Miagra, 21 points
9. TGTW Offroad Racing, 20 points
10. Team Sensory Assault, 18 points

Midwest Region 2012 Champions

1. Subliminal Racing, 44 pointsThe Subliminal Racing BMW E30 325is won the 2012 Showroom-Schlock Shootout in Illinois, and finished in P2, P5, and P4 in its other ’12 season LeMons races.

2. Skid Marks Racing, 30 pointsSkid Marks Racing and their Neon dominated the Midwest Region in 2011, and so LeMons HQ informed them at the end of that year that the time had come to upgrade their team theme to something of Eyesore Racing–grade quality. So, Skid Marks Racing 2012 went all Juggalo on us . . . and they won the American Irony race while contending at other events. What we like about this team is that they don’t give up even when some major mechanical problem knocks their car out of contention; they stick around and swap transmissions or whatever it takes to keep racing.

3. Bucksnort Racing, 27 pointsThe Bucksnorts and their BMW E30 have been around since the 2009 LeMons season (when they set a record for black flags at the Lamest Day at Nelson Ledges), and they kept improving their driving and wrenching skills until they finally won the 2012 Campaign To Prevent Gingervitis at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan.

4. Clueless Racing, 25 points
5. If You Can’t Duck It F–k It, 24 points
6. The Blue Shells, 22 points
7. Byte Marks Racing, 20 points
8. Stinky Rat Trap Racing, 19 points
9. Little Lebowski Urban Achievers, 18 points
10. Landshark, 17 points

2012 West Region Champions

1. Cerveza Racing, 59 pointsThe Cerveza Racing BMW 533i took three consecutive wins in 2012 California LeMons races, plus the team had a fairly successful Porsche 944 and the great-looking Beetle seen next to its faster teammate in the photo above. All this was enough to get the Cervezas into second-place in the national points standings and a huge lead over their West Region competition.

2. Pit Crew Revenge/Chris Overzet, 39 pointsEven though the official spam from LeMons HQ stated that Eyesore Racing came in second in the West Region standings, that was before we went and counted all the points for every possible variation on the team names used by Legend of LeMons superpower Chris Overzet. In the end, it turned out that the Pit Crew Revenge family had 13 entries in West Region LeMons races, giving the team 39 points. Of course, the Ace Rothstein Special Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz was the greatest of all the Pit Crew Revenge 2012 machines; Chris is the gentleman in the pink suit.

3. Eyesore Racing, 38 pointsAnyone who has followed the series even a little bit knows all about this team. Cerveza Racing’s amazing run kept Eyesore from their fourth consecutive West Region championship, but the team’s promised new 2013 car could change everything.

4. Lipstick On a Pig, 26 pointsThis Nissan Sentra SE-R team has done very well for the last several years of West Region LeMons races.

5 (tie). Spank, 24 points
5 (tie). Tired Iron Racing, 24 points
5 (tie). If It’s Not Punk It’s Junk GP, 24 points
8. Ace Pump Racing, 23 points
9. Dust ‘n’ Debris, 22 points points
10. Crash Test Mummies, 21 points

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Automobiles

The 24 Hours of LeMons 2012 National Champions! The Year’s Best Teams, Marques, and More

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By Murilee Martin


The 20-race 2012 24 Hours of LeMons season is over, and we’ve been following all the LeMons action right here on Car and Driver for the first year of our inexplicable sponsorship. All the inspections of never-belonged-on-a-race-track cars, all the ill-advised engine swaps, all the super-creative teams, and all the harsh truths about which cars fare much more poorly than suggested by conventional car-guy wisdom. Now that all the individual race wrap-ups have been done, we need to look at the teams, drivers, and marques that came out on top during the past year. Here they are, the 2012 National 24 Hours of LeMons Champions!

Top Teams of 2012

The points system for determining the championship teams for a season works like this: Your team gets three points just for showing up to a LeMons race and putting at least one tire on the track surface. If you finish first overall, your team gets 10 points. Finish in P2, you get nine points, and so on down to one point for a still-impressive P10 finish. After adding up all the team points for 2012, here’s who came out on top:


1. Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws, 87 points

As Speedycop, the fast-driving, weird-car-hoarding Washington, D.C., police officer in charge of the Gang of Outlaws, writes in his team’s 2012 season roundup, “How did we win the 2012 National Points Championship in The 24 Hours of LeMons? The answer is simple: Volume!”


Speedycop and the Gang of Outlaws entered 28 separate team entries, with 11 different cars, at 11 of the 20 LeMons events during the course of 2012. All but three of their 87 points came from those three-points-just-for-starting awards, because only one of those cars ever cracked the top 10 at a race (the MR2-chassis-equipped Lancia Scorpion finished eighth at the season-ender in Texas). We can’t even begin to scratch the surface of what these Legends of LeMons have accomplished since their 2009 LeMons debut, but you can learn more about this Falcon and the other 10 Gang of Outlaws racin’ machines on the official Speedycop site.


They started the 2012 season in true Speedycoppian fashion, with this 1976 AMC Pacer at the Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons in South Carolina. Also in true Speedycoppian fashion, this car was later sold to a Colorado team, who drove it to Index of Effluency victory in the ’12 B.F.E. GP.


Of course, the Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws entry that most messed up our minds—in a good way—was the infamous Racing Trailer, which showed up at the Loudon Annoying race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. A pop-up camping trailer with a Suzuki X-90 inside, the Speedycop Racing Trailer looked fabulous on the track, managed to turn 168 laps on a grueling NASCAR-centric track, and won Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws their fourth Index of Effluency trophy (the top prize in LeMons racing).


Well done, Speedycop & the Gang of Outlaws! Get ready for even better stuff from these guys in 2013.


2. Cerveza Racing, 59 pointsThe other way to do well in the season points championship is to place high in the standings in a lot of races, and that’s exactly what the most dominating team of the 2012 season did. These guys have been competing in West Coast LeMons events for years, getting a little better with each passing race, and we predicted that they were poised for a bunch of overall wins earlier in the year, and we were right— three consecutive wins on laps for the Cerveza Racing 1983 BMW 533i (plus some points earned by their other two cars, a pretty quick Porsche 944 and a one-race-wonder air-cooled Beetle).


3. Rally Baby Racing, 45 pointsRally Baby Racing is another team that follows the quantity formula, running 15 separate entries at various Eastern and Southern Region 24 Hours of LeMons events. Their 1975 Mercedes-Benz 450SL, which we think is one of the most beauteous Benzes we’ve ever seen on a race track, debuted at the Real Hoopties of New Jersey, where it won a well-deserved Organizer’s Choice trophy. Rally Baby also runs a couple of Audi 4000s and a BMW 325is with an excellent “Speedykop Mall Security” meta-theme. Not a single Rally Baby entry managed to make it into the top 10 of a race, but those three points for making the green flag add up quickly when you have this many cars.

The other top teams of 2012 were:
4. Subliminal Racing, 44 points
5. Lost In the Dark, 43 points
6. Eyesore Racing, 38 points
7. Keystone Kops, 37 points
8. Team Blue Goose, 34 points
9. Rust In The Wind, 34 points
10. Pulp Friction, 32 points

Top Drivers of 2012

Individual 24 Hours of LeMons drivers rack up championship points in the same way that teams do: three points for suiting up and driving at least one lap on the track during a LeMons race, 10 points for a first-place finish, nine points for second, and so on. Here are the Driver’s Championship winners for the 2012 season.


1. Anton Lovett, 65 pointsAnton has been competing in the 24 Hours of LeMons series since the very beginning. In 2012, he roamed the country, traveling from race to race and signing up for arrive-and-drives with teams running everything from an Austin Mini to a diesel W126 Mercedes-Benz. From California to New Jersey, Wisconsin to Texas, Anton participated in 13 of the 20 LeMons races in 2012.


Anton dragged his 1984 Chevrolet Cavalier wagon from California all the way out to the Flat Rock, Michigan, race in 2007, where his team won the Index of Effluency. By the end of that year, Anton had won his first LeMons Driver’s Championship, making him the only two-time winner of that award in 24 Hours of LeMons history (the Cavalier went on to get destroyed in spectacular upside-down-and-on-fire fashion at Sears Point, but there’s a Cadillac Cimarron replacement in the works).


Anton mostly chose teams with lots of heart but not much horsepower during 2012, but his adopted teams clawed their way into the top 10 of the standings a few times.


At the season-ender in Texas earlier this month, the Harley-Davidson-engined Toyota Prius that he helped build earned him his second Index of Effluency—and the season championship. Congratulations, Anton!

2. Harry Demas, 56 pointsWhen you drive in every race entered by the winningest team on the West Coast, you get plenty of championship points. If only Cerveza Racing had hauled their car out to the season-ender, Harry might have grabbed the 2012 Driver’s Championship. Well, there’s always next year!

The other top drivers of 2012 were:
3 (tie). Pete Pressley (Cerveza Racing)
3 (tie). Charles Gayraud (Cerveza Racing)
5. Steve Kohli (Clueless Racing)
6 (tie). Eric Cayton (Subliminal Racing)
6 (tie). Justin Lauderback (Subliminal Racing)
6 (tie). Jim Mosher (Subliminal Racing)
6 (tie). Matt Phillips (Subliminal Racing)
10. Steven McDaniel (Silver Errors – Big Blue)

2012 Constructor Championship Winners

The marques that compete in the 24 Hours of LeMons are also building up point totals as the teams and drivers are doing the same. A marque gets no reward for its cars just showing up—if there were, General Motors would have done much, much better in this competition—so top-10 spots in the standings are needed to bring Constructor Championship glory to a car manufacturer. Win a race, the marque gets 10 points. P2 gains the marque nine points, and so on all the way down to the single point for a 10th-place finish. At the end of the season, we added up all those points, and here’s how it sorted out:

1. BMW, 283 pointsFor the second year in a row, BMW wins the 24 Hours of LeMons Constructor Championship by a commanding margin. Much of this is the sheer quantity of BMWs in LeMons racing (the E30 3-series is the single most numerous type of vehicle in the series), but it’s tough to argue with seven overall wins for the Bavarian brand. On top of that, BMWs finished second in four races, third in four races, and fourth in eight races. E30s, E12s, E28s, an E34, and even a couple of 2002s grabbed points for BMW in 2012. Much as we’d like to see more E30 teams switch to, say, Autocars Sussitas (or at least convert their cars to rolling monuments to Warsaw Pact dictators), we can’t help but respect the achievements of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG in this series.

2. Mazda, 150 pointsAlso for the second year in a row, Mazda finished a strong second in the LeMons Constructor Championship. Three overall wins, four P2 finishes, five P3 finishes. Miatas, MX-3s, and RX-7s did most of the heavy lifting; if we’d given points to Mazda instead of Ford for badge-engineered Dearborn-ized Hiroshima cars (e.g., Probes, second-gen Escorts), Mazda would have come much closer to unseating BMW.

3. Honda, 129 pointsCivics, Integras, Accords, and Preludes can be among the quickest of LeMons cars, and every race features quite a few of Soichiro’s offspring. If not for the tendency of Hondas to blow head gaskets and shoot connecting rods through engine blocks, these cars would rule the LeMons world.

How did the other major marques fare in our series, you ask? Here you go:
4. Ford, 127 points
5. Nissan, 114 points
6. Volvo, 53 points
7. Toyota, 48 points
8. General Motors, 40 points
9. Chrysler, 36 points
10. Volkswagen, 30 points
11. Audi, 24 points
12. Porsche, 21 points
13. Alfa Romeo, 17 points
14. Mercedes-Benz, 12 points
15 (tie). Saab, 10 points
15 (tie). Fiat/Lancia, 10 points
17. Mitsubishi, 2 points
18. Subaru, 0 points


Yes, with the ten or so Subarus that compete in LeMons races across the country, not a single one managed to squeeze into the top ten of the standings at a race. The photograph above tells most of that story… but someday one of those quick Imprezas is going to prove us all wrong about Subarus in LeMons racing!

2012 Deconstructor Championship

The Deconstructor Championship goes to the marque that most symbolizes futility and heartbreak on the race track during the year. Detroit tends to dominate this award, but not this year!


For 2012, Volkswagen gets a well-earned 24 Hours of LeMons Deconstructor Championship award. From unfixable Sciroccos to quick-but-blow-uppy Golfs to fragile Jettas to spinout-prone and fragile air-cooleds to Brazilian-build-quality Foxes, the car company that started life by ripping off Hans Ledwinka’s designs gave hundreds of LeMons racers the opportunity to test their willpower and patience during the 2012 season.


While there are LeMons Rabbits and Jettas that can turn lap times every bit as quick as any Integra or BMW 3-series, the Volkswagens just don’t hold together as well over the course of a punishing race weekend. Only one VW has ever won a LeMons race (the 2010 Mutually Asssured Destruction of Omaha race saw an eight-valve Mk3 Golf take the win on laps . . . barely).


For all the Volkswagen engine innards that clanked onto asphalt at LeMons races throughout the 2012 season, we salute our friends from Wolfsburg. Congratulations, Volkswagen!

2012 Coppa di Bondo Winner

The Coppa di Bondo award goes to the team that LeMons HQ feels most represented the spirit of 24 Hours of LeMons racing during the previous year. In this case, it’s also something of a lifetime achievement award, taking into account the team’s accomplishments during the last few seasons.

For 2012, the Coppa di Bondo goes to NSF Racing. These longtime Legends of LeMons manage to combine bite-off-way-more-than-they-can-chew optimism with great (i.e., ludicrous) car choices inspired by really bad advice given by the likes of your LeMons correspondent.


NSF started off the 2012 season in dramatic fashion, by bringing a Mitsubishi Cordia to the Southern Discomfort race in March. Since nearly every Mitsubishi product that has ever participated in a 24 Hours of LeMons race has been terribly unreliable, we figured a Cordia would be even worse than that. The NSF Cordia has not disappointed in that department, and yet the team understood that our dream is to put on a LeMons race in which all the cars are as hilariously miserable as the Mitsubishi Cordia.


They say it’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slow, and NSF’s 1950 Mercedes-Benz 170S—powered by the 57-hp engine from an MGB—served as Exhibit A for that argument. Just look at it! Sure, it ended up blowing a tire and flipping over, but NSF won their third Index of Effluency trophy anyway.


For the season-ender, NSF once again paid too much attention to the cars that LeMons HQ personnel dream of seeing on the race track, this time bringing a genuine Dodge Aries K wagon.


The Aries was every bit as slow as you’d expect, and it broke a few parts during the course of the weekend, but NSF kept hammering it back into shape and returning it to the track. America is back!


Congratulations, NSF Racing! Next up on the home for all your LeMons news, we’ll have the regional award winners for 2012.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver