What are our odds

From the Lemons FAQ (bold added by moi for emphasis):

"And even if your car survives out on the course, halfway through the race one entry will be chosen by popular ballot for immediate crushing. Could be yours. Heck, it probably WILL be yours. Be prepared.

This.

I prefer E38s to E30s and E36s in Lemons.

That said, we'd be overjoyed to see a Volvo 740 with a BMW 740i engine: Volvo 740i! How hard could it be?

There was a 7xx bimmer at NL last fall.  IIRC, it didn't turn many laps, don't remember why.

Bring the bimmer to a race.  Don't drive like a douche.  You'll be fine.

PS I think the cursed car the OP refers to was a heavily modded 540i.

IIRC, the 740i at Lamest Day got t-boned, but what put it out of the race for good was computer failure. I'd bet that Murilee remembers this better than me, I think he had good photos of the driver's side t-bone damage.

As SpeedyCop can attest (it appears), the main downside of the big Bimmers is that you just can't run them without their computers all being attached and talking to one another in properly accented Bavarian. And unfortunately, those are the kind of gremlins that often don't fix cheap.

All that said, strip it down and run it. I like the Katrina theme idea, but what I really like is the idea of making it a roadster.

Yes, I don't wanna lemon-ize a '95-newer OBDII vehicle, because as soon as the cats and stock airbox go in the trash, it's gonna light the MIL, throw eleventeen codes and go to limp mode.

Nah, somebody will build a $10 equivalent to the Megasquirt that'll make these motors run. It'll be a wallet sized plastic brick with twenty wires hanging out the end of it. You'll just run the wires and fire it up.

Team Petroman would like to think everyone for their commits. Some great ideas and intelligent incites have been floated.  The idea of a Volvo 740 \ BMW 740 mix is a intriguing twist, applying Volvo 740 front sheet metal and grill on the BMW body could be easy accomplished. Leveraging the Katrina theme is a great idea. The idea of a 740 roadster would offer many advantages, such as light weight. I do not believe that the intake or exhaust modifications will be an issue with the computer. I have done these mods on many, ODB1 BMW V12’s and several, ODBII V8’s with great success. With the type of abuse the car will receive in the race, malfunctions with the cars ODBII electronics is a real fear. I could see us easily throwing engine or transmission program codes and going in into limp home mode.  Most likely the codes could be cleared in a 3+ min pit stop. A custom built performance chip for this specific application could help, allowing codes that would normally side line a car running a stock chip. Regarding the vision of what 24hours of Lemons will looks like in 15 years, the Team Captain of The Rusty Nuts was dead on, Computerization! I recently built a Mega-Squirt to replace the world’s first computer controlled engine management, a weber-marelli on my 1986 Aston Martin Lagonda with the famous quad cam V8 and it has open my eyes to the possibilities. This technology will only get more robust, capable of easily replacing the cars original complex production computers. Custom built engine computers will pull the most performance out of these engines adjusting for modifications on the fly and capable of programming itself by just driving the car. Automatic transmission with enhanced computers technology that will out performs manuals. Transmission shift points will be optimized and mapped for each race course as well as learn the driver’s style and apply it. ABS breaking systems correcting out of control situations on the track. Paddle shifters on the steering wheel, will all become the norm in the future.

Roger that!

I built my last Megasquirt for $140
www.msefi.com

and ... http://www.diyautotune.com/catalog/mega … -p-28.html

I keep wondering if an arduino board would be fast enough to control an engine (with the proper relays, etc.)