Photos from LeMons: Almost Like Being There
Anyone who would choose a big luxury RV over this option can just leave. Now.
LeMons Assistant Perpetrator Nick Ponn, also known as theeastbaykid, has headed off on an interesting mission. While everyone else was paying attention to the races going on around the track, he was out behind them breaking into and stealing things from photographing the participants’ cars.
Actually, now that I look at it, I believe his official title is “Also Culpable”, which is so appropriate it almost hurts. He informed us that, while he has lately been feeling like a cranky old man just because he’s owned a car with a carburetor, Hooniverse has helped him feel a little more “at home”. Also because his great grandfather’s name is Hoon. Could Nick Pon be the long-lost descendant of the Legendary Hoons McSmitty?
We have our crack team of experts frantically researching the possibilities. (Actually it’s one of Graverobber’s kids, and she’s making us a drawing of what she thinks Hoons McSmitty would look like. In crayon. But that’s the sort of thing that stands in for research around here.) We’ll let you know what they come up with.
In the meantime, enjoy a gallery from the semi-legendary Also Culpable Nick Pon.
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- I need to get closer to see what this is all about.
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- ‘BAGO!
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- The first window on the back of the van needs silver tint above the line of the red stripe. Otherwise, AWESOME.
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- Do you think they realize they just did all this work to a Beretta? Or is it a Cavalier?
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- I want to say it’s an Austin, but I’ll bow to the more knowledgeable.
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- ‘Ring time?
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- Anyone else think it would be more appropriate if they were grilling pork?
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- PROPER. Complete with roof-mounted Das Blinkenlights.
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- Back when Trans Ams were actually pretty attractive.
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- It is the rebuilt Eddie Griffin Enzo.
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- Another Bentley. Are all these racers stupid-wealthy or something?
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- Needs more wing.
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- Nngh. The GT is gorgeous. End of story.
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- Ah, I see the Navy is back from manoeuvres.
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- This makes me feel a little head-asplody.
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- That’s more like it!
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- That… actually looks really hot. Did I just say that about a Ferrari? I feel dirty.
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- That plate is awesome.
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- Caption this contest? Seriously, I got nothin’.
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- What they don’t explain is that the Lotus driver actually brought the BMW along just to provide shade.
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- Yup, 427! Want.
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- Having driven its predecessor, the S10 SS, I fear these trucks.
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- That paint-job is excellent.
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- For all the harping we do on Toyota, there was a time when they were pretty good-looking.
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- I’m gonna go ahead and assume it’s not stock. Anyone got more info?
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- Is it me, or do those headlights look a bit… odd…?
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- What they don’t explain is that the Bimmer driver actually brought the Budget van along just to provide shade.
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- “It’s great for commuting!”
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- That comes pretty close to being my ideal car.
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- I’m no pro at Mustangs, but something feels strange with this one.
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- It appears to be some sort of penile extension…
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- Yup. BABE Rally. I would love this old Yoda as my RV.
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- The BABE rally comes to town, I believe?
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- ‘Busa it.
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- Suddenly, I really miss our old 2002.
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- I believe it’s a Corvair Monza with an Olds 455, but I’m sure someone can correct me.
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- And so it shall. Click, Click, BOOM.
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- Woodgrain Sideblades!? Fuck yes!
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- VTEC Mini. Do I need to say more?
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- I can actually imagine this exhaust note in my head just from the picture.
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- I’m not a big BMW fan, but GOD do I love these.
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- That is F-You Money, right there.
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- Holy crap…. Goes Like Hell S’more!
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- It appears to be melting in the middle there…
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- “In case of Zombies, break glass.”
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- Hey… I don’t think that was actually $500. Let’s see the receipt.
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- It’s a pity that the LeMons crew are always so strapped for cash.
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- Barefoot Racing?
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- Innocenti. I admit, I had to look it up. It’s a Mini!
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- Rollerskate with laces undone?
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- Rollerskate!
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- MOAR PARTS! AAAHHH.
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- Mmm, Shooting-Brakey Goodness.
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- There is so much awesome in this photo, I don’t know where to begin.
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- I’da raced it.
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There's a 'bago much like the second pic that I pass on my way home nearly every day – now for sale for $2,500 and it's mostly covered in race stickers. I have to force myself not to stop every day as I have nowhere to keep it and nobody that I know would allow me to park it at their place. Apparently I need friends that are less concerned with property values and happy neighbors.
Oh my dear VW bus…how beautiful you are…even without safaris it's so beautiful I can't stand it. *sniff sniff*
I'll be back after I cogitate on that R8 a little bit…
VW busses are timelessly awesome. I have a dozen of them.
<img src="http://goingincirclez.com/Kaleid2G/STC/STCModels/STC_RS/STC_TTGX_BiLevel.jpg">
/just needs a reverse shrink ray
So I love this new commenting system because I get an email alert to my Blackberry when someone comments, etc…and I got yours. In plain text. And I was going to comment something completely different until I looked at the screen. I'm in tears laughing at this. I have a set of busses, beetles and single cabs like that, that I turned into ornaments for my tree. AWESOME.
That's a "rebigulator"….muw'hey!
I drove by a VW garage with amazing things parked out front yesterday; it's in Westminster, Vermont. I didn't have my camera, though… I'll be by again someday, I'm sure.
Oh pleeeeeeze do get pics. I would love to see.
I will, next time I make it by that way! Might be a while, though. Sorry.
Hm. It seems to have decided to redirect you to a landing page for the photos, rather than to a big version of the photos themselves. I'm trying to get that fixed; sorry guys, it's not a lame-assed attempt at more pageviews, it's just a glitch in the Matrix. I'm working on it.
I'm actually okay with a landing page for photos, as long as the photos are easy to download.
I'm not okay with (1) a hokey floating gallery widget that makes the background web page dimmed; (2) hard-to-find next-back buttons that don't work half the time on new browsers, or any of the time on old browsers; (3) a hokey floating gallery widget that animates itself into being, for several seconds, while I grow increasingly annoyed and bored with it; or (4) a gallery where every graphic is loaded at full size but displayed at small size, looking terrible, because somebody didn't learn in 1996 that resizing in the browser is bad, and some people will see jaggy edges on everything. Argh!
Yeah, I'm looking at you, [Redacted], [Redacted], [Redacted], and [other]! </flame>
An actual issue on this site: it doesn't seem to work to type a comment, then sign in when it's ready to post. Comment evaporates; happened just now in both Firefox and Opera.
Yeah…that's gonna be a hard one to fix.
IntenseDebate is not the most robust system.
ProTip: whenever there's a problem, refresh. If that doesn't work, hard-refresh (Ctrl + F5). If that doesn't work, clear all cookies associated with ID.
I'm not hugely into Camaros, but that one is causing some serious bloodflow issues for me.
Also, just so everyone knows, they hit the track in that Alfa wagon at Reno.
The Alfa wagon didn't just hit the track (as the pace car) at Reno; it was driven all the way up from the Bay Area with a dog in the back.
No, the dog wasn't still in the car when it was doing pace laps.
I'm torn by this gallery. The rides are all incredibly worthy in their own right, but I'm surprised how upscale many of them are. I was expecting more workaday trash – the kind you'd wonder / hope was actually brought to be raced.
Don't get me wrong – I can appreciate a paddock Ferrari as much as the next guy, but really? At a LeMons race? What are you trying to prove: that your "$500 race car" was just a trivial expense-account line-item to you? Congratulations, d-bag. And Bentleys? Unless the driver is getting fully oil-encrusted in the trenches, something seems very wrong about that.
I understand LeMons is about encompassing the broader car cult in general and not just the hoopties committing seppuku on the track, but still… this is a dichotomy you'd expect to find at Yankee Stadium… not Murileeland.
I'm with you on that… however in my conversations with Nick, it appears that the guys in the Bentleys, for instance, were the ones getting down and dirtiest in the pits. At the end of one day of Racing, four guys, filthy as all hell, stinking to high heaven and covered in grease, oil and track dirt, piled into a Bentley, or Bimmer 7-series, or something like that, and headed down to the pub for dinner and a beer.
There are some awesome cars here, and some of the people have plenty of money, but from what Nick tells me, almost none of them are the D-bag variety. They can afford the nice cars, so they buy them. But they'd rather spend their time working on a beat-up Mercury Capri, and getting elbow-deep in grease. The fancy car is just a way to get them to the track. Their REAL car is the Capri.
Ahhhhhhh I feel much better. And your explanation makes things seem oh so very right. Still, I had to check right? Can't be too careful sometimes.
I'll tell you this: Once I finally get the Kentucky Fried Cougar on track, if I see a bunch of wrench heads piling their greasy, sweaty hides into a Bentley, that round of brews they're heading out for is on me. (As long as I get to drive).
Yeah, I give a lot of credit to the guy who steps out of an Enzo, into a crapbox Neon, and goes racin.' D-bags are d-bags, regardless of bank account–and fortunately for LeMons, the well-heeled dudes "get it" just as much as the average Joes.
At some point, they made an announcement on the PA that the Bentley needed to be moved.
Over the PA, Jay said something like "Baron Von Toffeebottom, we need you to move your car!"
second row, middle picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Anglia
To be pedantic, it's an Anglia 100E. Which is not to be confused with its Harry Potter approved sucessor, the Anglia 105E .
also, corvair-camino is the beans
You mean the Corvair 95?
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1963-chevrolet-corv…
oh god it has a ramp too!!!
Those things are awesome. Leno has one.
Dang, cool cars are all over the US!
I'll have me some of that Corvair Monzanado, please!
BTW, the "Austin" I'm pretty sure is an Anglia…
And now that I refresh, I see VFX-jockey Jeremy has beat me to it…
damn right!
Damn, that T/A is hot! That car is my dream, right down to the paint scheme. I only hope it's got a matching blue interior and factory wheels.
Dearthair, I demand a detailed account of the 2002 that Nick's 2002 makes you suddenly miss.
The Olds-powered Corvair has a 425. That throws down the gauntlet for someone to put a Cadillac 500 in one, doesn't it?
Actually, a certain Ferrari V12 comes to mind…
This is why I love LeMons, the infield is as entertaining as the track. I can't wait for ThunderHill!
<img src="http://dodson.smugmug.com/Cars/24-Hours-of-LeMons-Goin-For/DSC2619/550113957_oiRP6-M.jpg">
Might this have been at Burning Man? Fernley isn't that far…
<img src="http://dodson.smugmug.com/Cars/24-Hours-of-LeMons-Goin-For/DSC3047/550137722_7Zf4G-M.jpg">
I don't remember seeing any brown skid marks on the track.
<img src="http://dodson.smugmug.com/Cars/24-Hours-of-LeMons-Goin-For/DSC3133/550145691_8hiSH-M.jpg">
This fellow showed up after the racing was over.
One of each, please.
Seriously, I know we tend to categorize people driving Bentleys/BMWs/Ferraris/etc. as rich d-bags, but this should teach us all a lesson. Douchebaggery exists regardless of a person's wealth for vehicle of choice. You can have a poor douchebag in a Yugo just as easily as a rich douchebag in a 7-series. Sure, it seems that the rich douchebag is more prevalent, but could it just be that his car is more flashy and therefore attracts attention to his douchebaggery while the poor douchebag tends to fly under the radar?
Nice gallery, and thank you eastbaykid for bringing us an insight into the eclecticness of the LeMons paddock.
The woodgrain R8 is stupendous.
Love this gallery. I'm going to have to whip up my own gallery submission real-soon-like. (Not LeMons, but I won't spill the beans.)
The Mercedes-Porsche E500 is an all-time bucket-list car, but possibly the scariest on the wallet of any of those, since I assume many of the parts were made from pure unobtanium, ground Unicorn horn and German Lorelei tears.
What is the "panel" Station wagon? My memory cortex is spitting out a punch-card that says "Datsun", but it's been known to fail me before.
If you mean the green wagon, it's an Alfa Romeo with a special shooting brake conversion by an Italian coachbuilder. It's based off of a mid-'60s Giulia Super.
I second your endorsement of the E500. My mother used to have a W124 300TE wagon, and I dreamed about swapping a 500E drivetrain into it– it turns out that M-B and Porsche had to do so much reengineering to fit the big V8 in the W124 that it would be easier to graft the wagon rear end onto an existing 500E than to try and do an engine swap.
Wow. I don't doubt it. In the factory, I guess you can have a different variation of sheetmetal to put it together, but once your engine bay is built, and it's too small, yechh..!!
You want a caption for that Volvo pic?
How 'bout this:
"It has crabs, it smells like fish, and it starts with the letter V, it must be a…"
Bwahahahaha! Brilliant!
I understand the inability to find comment sufficient for the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir… words just don't quite seem to be able to encompass its greatness.
For those unfamiliar with the filtered then double distilled eclectic awesomeness that is the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir
http://www.sashimitabernaclechoir.org/
[youtube kYlSTvAW1Po&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYlSTvAW1Po&fe... youtube]
My thoughts precisely.
Wow. Suddenly I feel like I can't afford to run LeMons.
Srsly! The Speed:Sport:Life article was pretty clear that $500 is just the ground-floor price. Though I admit I have started to do the mental arithmetic and craigslist searches: ($xxx running car – $yyy parts sold + $zzz parts needed >=? $500.) Like, can you pull it off with a $1000 car, off of which you sell all the unnecessary parts on eBay? Or do you really have to start with a $500-$600 car.. bearing in mind you probably need replacement parts, I figure you have to get the basic car, once it's liberated of its parts, down to about $400 before you start buying replacement parts for it.
It's definitely not Audi R8 money but it's definitely several thousand all told.
Anyway, since I don't have enough tools, trailer, or knowledge, yeah, the whole idea could end me.
And since safety equipment (wheels, tires, rollbar, etc, etc), spare parts and consumables are also independent of the $500 figure, it adds up fast. Then you have to get your team and car to the track, feed them and find them a place to sleep.
I think we're going for "Lemons: College Student Budget Edition"
Some one missed the RX-7 with the 350 in it, didn't they? In New Orleans there were nice cars everywhere, mostly M3s-5s, Porches of different variances, that orange Mustang, and the Viper. At the Lamest Day in Ohio, I didn't see all that much, other than Ben's Jag stuck in a mud pit.
Porsches, Bentleys, Audi R8s, Ferraris, I've seen them all. But I've never run into a GMC Typhoon in person. This makes me sad.
I'd prefer a Syclone though.
I've never seen a shinier Toyota pickup of that vintage. Now, I've seen plenty of rusty old hulks still moving under 22R power, but none without faded and pock-marked paint.
I want that F150 pre-runner! Who needs a track when you can do 120MPH across the desert?
the Mustang was the Saleen PJ (parnelli jones) 302 mustang. it was so nicely done.