Topic: Southern Discomfort Roundup
The race for the IOE wasn't so exciting, as the shockingly non-terrible LeSabre ran away from the competition early on; the prerace IOE favorite was the dragged-from-a-swamp-3-days-prior mid-80s automatic Accord, but it fell apart as soon as it realized it was on a race track. The de-body-fied Lincoln Town Car (above) looked like a strong IOE contender at first glance, but proved incapable of moving under its own power for more than 10 minutes without breaking and/or picking up a black flag.
The overall-win competition, however, was quite exciting. On Saturday, the BoomPow Surprise Ford Probe- ominous black cloud of cheating suspicion hanging over it all the while- looked to be running away from the competition early on, but the engine let go during the afternoon; meanwhile, the long-suffering ex-SVX drivers in the Team Top Gear 200SX showed that they can, like, actually drive when their car doesn't suck... but losing all but third gear knocked them out of contention. On Sunday, the action never stopped: The South Of The Border GTI, Endurance Karting Miata, and Robin Bank Racing Saab 900 stayed within a few laps of one another all day. The Red Rocket team tantalized us with the possibility of an Escort win, lurking in second for much of the early going, but back-to-back black flags torpedoed their checkered-flag hopes. Late in the day, fuel stops and an extremely unfortunate mental error by the Miata's driver during a wave-through-the-Penalty-Box first-offense black flag handed the lead to the Saab.
The weather sucked, officially knocking the '07 Arse Freeze off the Most Miserably Cold Lemons Of All Time pedestal, but at least we didn't get rain during the race itself. We learned that you don't need 100-degree temperatures for CMP racers to fry their brake pads and/or calipers; the engine carnage was top-notch.
We saw the first-ever Lemons Mitsubishi Diamante, which vaulted right onto the short list of Most Terrible Lemons Cars We've Ever Seen. The nightmarishly great E30ata had the Organizer's Choice race sewed up from the start (now we need to see an E30 with Miata front body parts) and was driven extremely well. No cars from the 1970s survived to take the Highest Placing 70s Contender award, so the designed-in-the-70s '83 280ZX "Super Bird" went home with that one.
Lemons HQ did a very poor job of organizing and promoting the first-ever Lemons Chili Cookoff, but we still had three entries- just what we needed after a freezing-ass day in the Penalty Box. Texas racers, get your chili gear packed up for the Gator-O-Rama! We'll do a better job of getting the word out, choosing a location, etc. next time.
The Teach Chantelle How To Drive Stickshift Penalty turned out to be even more spectacular than we'd hoped. For Texas, we may have to do the first-ever Teach Some Random 12-Year-Old How To Do A Proper Burnout penalty; what could possibly go wrong?
