(Lead Photo: Mark A. Johns, who owns the sweet Imperial) You know about the 24 Hours of LeMons, the race that pits $500 beaters with racing brakes and safety gear against each other. It’s fun, it’s carnage, it’s grown adults dressing up in costumes and generally being silly at a racetrack while Team Roadkill grenades yet another 4.3L Chevy in the Rotsun…split crankshaft, anybody? We’d love to do the race, but what if you didn’t have to fully set up a car? Maybe you’ve got a beater that might cruise a little bit further than around town. Would you road trip it? How about in Southern California…in August?
From August 16th-20th, 2016, The 24 Hours of LeMons will be hosting the Hell On Wheels Rally ’16. The plan is to start out in Monterey, California (just in time for Monterey Car Week!) and drive, in order, through the Sierra Nevada mountain range to:
- Fallon, Nevada
- Las Vegas, Nevada
- Death Valley, California (better check that A/C and radiator level!)
- Bakersfield, California
- San Simeon, California
- Big Sur, California
- Santa Cruz, California
…and finally, if you haven’t managed to overheat yourself or your car, haven’t driven off the side of a mountain pass, and didn’t let your beater roll off of a cliff into the Pacific Ocean, you will return to Monterey, to the renewed horror and disgust of the Concours D’elegance crowd. That is a total of just over 1,400 miles of desert driving, with nothing between you and your destination but the rapidly climbing temperature gauge and that one vulture that keeps hovering high above your car…What would you take?
I know a few clapped-out beaters that play for Newcastle United soccer team and I’d love to leave them in Death Valley to die of thirst and exposure. Taxi for Fabricio Coloccini, Steven Taylor and Darryl Janmaat. A warm welcome to any of the international Toon Army who might be reading these pages and Raffa Benitez will keep us safe!
Why do I want to put a car together?
maybe I’ll buy a car in the morning…should be interesting. Trying to keep the LeMon theme strong with this one