Last weekend, New Hampshire Motor Speedway hosted the insanity that is the 24 Hours of Lemons, so naturally, we at Bangshift felt it necessary to check it out! The Halloween Hooptiefest is the final Lemons event of the year for the New England area, so before all the nutcases pack their crapcans away for the winter, they flog them on the same high-banked turns that are usually home to NASCAR stock cars and Superbikes. Here’s some of the more interesting things we saw at the event. Check it out!
There were over 100 cars at this event, including some familiar faces from the Thompson Motor Speedway race earlier this year. This W-Body Buick makes me laugh every time I see it, with a real park bench attached to the trunk. Some of the guys over at the Hooniverse blog campaign this car.
Three Pedal Mafia brought their Civic and Citroen SM back for the Halloween Hooptiefest. I’ll leave figuring out the theme for their team to you…
Mod Squad Racing brought their Toyota MR2’s to NHMS for the race. Yes, you are looking at TWO MR2’s here. The VW Vanagon-shaped one on the left has to be one of my favorite Lemons cars in existence. They slapped a Vanagon body on an MR2, and the driver sits right in the middle of the vehicle. Funky, but very effective.
Futility Motorsport fielded their Dodge Daytona “Hellkitten” at NHMS. They were off to a good start, but they ended up breaking an oil feed line on-track, which seized up a rod bearing, which then bent a rod, and then destroyed their engine entirely. Last I heard they were going to slap together a motor from some spare parts, but I’m not sure if they succeeded.
And yes, these stickers were proudly displayed on the fender of the Hellkitten. Foreshadowing a bit?
Sorry For Party Racing was in attendance as well at the Hooptiefest with their zebra-print Firebird. They had an incident-free outing, with a side of inflatable zebra rave going on after hours in their section of the paddock. Lemons can be a strange place, folks!
Well, this is interesting. These guys took a mid-90’s Audi A6, gutted it, painted it pink, and then INSTALLED A SNOWMOBILE ENGINE IN THE REAR. The snowmobile engine served as a power adder of sorts, kicking in via a chain drive directly to the rear end when more power was needed. Fun on paper, but they ended up having to pull it out in the middle of the race.
On the first day of the event, each team needs to tech in their car as well as their gear. It’s also where you try and bribe the judges with various offerings, and if they like what you bribe them with, you can gain an advantage. They had a bribe table that was stacked in all sorts of food, beer, and homemade creations. It’s good to be a judge.
Someone also brought this sweet Demolition Derby pinball machine for the Judge’s garage. As an old-school game collector and lover of pinball, I wanted it very badly.
The tech area is also where everyone shows off their car’s theme. Yeah, there’s a baby on a rotisserie on that Honda CRX. Yup, we are at Lemons, folks!
This VW GTI was just too cool. It had gun pods, a riveted-on wide body kit, and window slats fit for post-apocalyptic action. I’d definitely drive the thing in my daily commute and scare the crap out of everyone!
And yes, this guy was hanging off the back. He stayed there on-track, too. Brutal!
Hey, a Ford Capri! I haven’t seen one of these in ANY condition in years. Seriously, the last time I saw one of these around here was in a junkyard, it was approximately 77% Bondo, and it was the year 2001. This one is nearing the end of its life, but it definitely makes a cool Lemons car.
Now here’s an interesting take on the Chevette. This one has a wide body, and is now mid-engined and Subaru powered.
The car looked very well engineered. Note the gauge cluster hanging out in the passenger side corner! This has to be one of the coolest Chevettes in existence, and right up there with the Bad Seed Chevette in my book. Definitely an interesting build. They won the Best Engineered award for the event, and it was well deserved.
This VW Beetle definitely had the look: it was ratty, but looked cool with its giant flares.
Hey, wait a minute… that’s not an aircooled VW engine back there…
It’s an early 70’s Ford Pinto 4-banger! While I have no clue what it’s doing back there, it was kinda cool in a weird, Lemonsy (yes, that’s a verb now) way. An open header and a 4-barrell topped Offenhauser gave it a bit more power than your aunt’s Pinto had back in the day.
Just like any other Lemons event, if you do something dumb on-track, you will almost always have to do something a little embarrassing to make up for it. What you might find embarrassing is usually hilarious for everyone else. This guy did something bad while driving on-track, so the judges strapped him to the roof of his own car, gave him a bull horn, and made him apologize. TO EVERY TEAM.
Half the fun of the event is seeing all the weird stuff that people bring with them to use as pit transportation. This mini-Mystery Machine van go-kart was the winner for the Hooptiefest in my book.
Lemons events always attract strange daily drivers and other cool cars too. Oh hey, it’s just your run-of-the-mill Porsche 959 Rally Car… wait… WHOA!!!
Not sure if this was a real deal Porsche 959, but this beast was incredible. It was also wearing snow tires and New Hampshire plates, which makes this the coolest winter beater I have ever seen.
A Datsun 280ZX, a Volvo Bertone Coupe, A Volvo 240 Wagon, and a Chevy Citation X11 on track at the same time? Was I caught in a time vortex? Nope, just a regular day at a Lemons event.
If you haven’t attended a Lemons event, put it on your automotive bucket list. To quote a friend that came to check out the event for the first time, “There’s just so much going on! It’s complete insanity!” It’s one of those events that has as much crazy action going on in the paddock as on the track. If you are interested in checking out an event for yourself, head over to the 24 Hours of Lemons website for info on upcoming events.
We brought the Demolition Derby pinball game as a possible penalty for drivers with highly magnetic cars. Not sure if the judges used it for that, but we did see it getting plenty of casual use throughout the weekend. Fortunately we never visited the penalty box all weekend, mainly because our ‘weekend’ effectively ended around 3pm on Saturday, but we had a blast anyway!
Dave – (wrenching on and driving the Doofwagon #123)