By Murilee Martin

The fourth annual Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons, held at Carolina Motorsports Park in South Carolina, ended up being one of the best races in the seven-year history of LeMons racin. The battles for class wins were nail-biters, the weather was pleasant, and we had an exceptionally good crop of racin’ machines. Let’s take a look at the teams that went home with trophy hardware.

Overall and Class A Winner: Molde Carlo Racing
If there ever was a team that paid some serious dues before getting an overall LeMons win, it’s these guys and their wretched 1984 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. They took the checkered flag at the ’13 Southern Discomfort with a two-lap edge over the P2 car (a Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth), after contending in many races and blowing up in many more over the years.

Usually, drivers as skilled as the ones on the Molde Carlo team will choose a vehicle known for better reliability (and fuel consumption) than the GM G-Body with a small-block Chevrolet V8 engine, but the Molde Carlos wanted to prove some sort of point about big Detroit hoopties holding their own against those annoying Neons and 3-series BMWs and Integras that most of the fast drivers choose as their LeMons steeds. Here we see the Molde Carlo dropping a couple of wheels in the dirt in 2009, a year filled with busted engine and suspension parts for the Molde crew.

Just to make their car as different from a nice, shiny BMW as possible, the Molde Carlo team sanded off all its paint, sprayed the bare steel with salt water, and let it rust. This is what a winner looks like!

Class B Winner: Questie’s Racing Team
Classing a Ford Escort, even a Mazda-based GT model, is always a dilemma for the LeMons Supreme Court. Escorts get eaten alive in Class A, but a well-driven Escort that doesn’t break can run away with Class B. That’s what happened here, with the Questie’s Ford finishing fifth overall and taking its class by a dominating 13 laps. No black flags, no mechanical problems, and lap times just a few seconds slower than the A cars spelled victory for this team.

Class C Winner: PBR
As we’ve pointed out before, Subarus tend to do very, very poorly in LeMons racing, falling somewhere between Audi and Mitsubishi on the LeMons Unreliability Index. They blow head gaskets, they throw rods, and they develop maddening …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver