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Automobiles

Automotive April Fools' joke roundup [w/videos]

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By Jeffrey N. Ross

Autoblog Podcast Live

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Happy April, everyone. And we all know what this first day of the month means: April Fools‘ Day. Today is a national holiday for pranksters with the Internet acting as a serious enabler, and it’s always fun to see what kind of vivid imaginations exist out there in the automotive world. The abundance of fake news gets a little old as the day rolls on, but we did manage to get in a few chuckles thanks to a handful of major automakers and automotive news outlets that got into the pranking spirit this year

Some of our favorites this year includes Subaru showing what happens when you combine a bunch of rumors, a Corvette some may have already thought was a joke or Honda providing some in-car innovation circa the late 1980s. Honestly, we’re still waiting for official confirmation from Mitsubishi that the recently introduced 2014 Mirage is an elaborate April Fools‘ joke using a failed design intended for the 1995 Geo Metro. We dug up as much “official” OEM foolishness we could find, as well as some of our other favorites, and posted them all below.

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Automotive April Fools’ joke roundup [w/videos] originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog

Automobiles

2013 LeMons Season Opener: All that Matters Is Someone’s Racing a Cessna (Yes, a Plane!)

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By Murilee Martin

Here we are at the fourth annual Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons, held at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina, and our neurons have been fried like hairs facing a blowtorch. Why? Mainly due to the 1957 Cessna 310 converted to road-race configuration, but that’s far from the only completely amazing, only-in-LeMons race vehicle that showed up for today’s inspections.


How does the idea of a Geo Metro with Ford Duratec V-6 in the back sound to you? It seemed like a fine idea to Team Georassic Park!


Many LeMons teams address your correspondent, who also doubles as Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court, thusly: “Judge Phil,” they ask, “How can I get my car through the BS Inspection and avoid penalty laps for my cheaty car?” This is the question that led to a BMW 3-series team turning their E30 into a rolling monument to Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha—and the very same question culminated in this homage to Thomas Pynchon’s great 1966 novel.


They’ve got a muted post horn on the car’s roof, a team member dressed up as a credible Oedipa Maas, and a W.A.S.T.E. mailbox. Well done!


The NSF Racing ’87 Plymouth Reliant wagon that was such a hit at the 2012 season-ender has returned, this time with all-Rosie-the-Riveter driver roster.


After a bunch of teams with John Galt/Ayn Rand themes scrawled in Sharpie on their snoreworthy race cars, John Galt Racing finally went ahead and installed a glammed-up Ayn Rand graphic on their car’s hood.


We had hippies, and another team called the “On Site Hippie-Abatement Team.”


We see precious few 1960s Detroit cars in our series, so it’s always a treat when something like this ’64 Ford Fairlane shows up to race. 289 engine, C4 transmission, sagging rear leaf springs, what more could you ask for?


Well, what we always ask for when we see a half-century-old Detroit car is another half-century-old Detroit car to be its on-track rival. This time, we got our wish: this 1964 Dodge Dart, complete with slant-six engine and pushbutton automatic shifter. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Automobiles

There’s Nothing Wrong with the Fiat 600 that a Moto Guzzi V-Twin Can’t Fix! [LeMons Insanity]

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By Murilee Martin

The 24 Hours of LeMons is the perfect venue for deranged engine-swappers, whether it’s a Honda Z600 with Saab 900 Turbo power or a twin-engined Toyota Corolla/MR2. Some teams have decided that motorcycle engines are the secret to LeMons success, and so we’ve seen a Honda CBR1000–powered Geo Metro, a Honda Magna V65–powered Honda Z600, and the Hell’s Treehuggers Harley-Davidson–engined Toyota Prius on the race track. One of the greatest LeMons motorcycle-powered race cars of all time drove in just a single race a few years ago, and LeMons aficionados still speak in awed, hushed tones about the Italian Stallions’ Moto-Guzzicated Fiat 600. Here’s the story!


The Italian Stallions first appeared on the LeMons scene way back in the early days, when they showed up to the 2008 Arse Freeze-a-Palooza race with this Fiat X1/9. The X1/9 has been one of the most heartbreaking heaps in the LeMons world, although it does offer some performance potential. Just last year, we saw an X1/9 win the Chubba Chedda Enduro at Road America, but that car had a potent V-6 pulled from an Alfa Romeo 164 and required a lot of races to tame its quick but ill-handling ways.


The Italian Stallions’ X1/9 was fairly quick for a stock-engined econo-Fiat, but it suffered from not-very-unexpected reliability problems. The team eventually swapped some motorcycle carburetors onto it and turned decent lap times in the brief period between the green flag and something breaking.


Nowadays, the Stallions run their X1/9 with Mazda rotary power, with results about as good as those of the Scuderia Craptastic Opel GT.


But let’s go back to 2010, to the Arse Freeze-a-Palooza at Buttonwillow Raceway Park, where we first laid eyes on the Italian Stallions’ 1964 Fiat 600D with Moto Guzzi 1000-cc motorcycle power.


The mastermind—if that’s the right word—behind this project was Italian Stallions team captain Chris Ice, who has been kind enough to write up the story of how this race car came to be:

We wanted to build an Index of Effluency car, and were trying to figure out a concept. We had already put motorcycle carbs on the X1/9, and the Geo was hammering it with a motorcycle engine. So what Italian car could we put a motorcycle …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver