Repair-It

In Part 1 and Part 2 of our LeMons Cars We’d Like To See Wish List, we’ve explained why our favorite LeMons machines tend to be the ones that never belonged anywhere near a race track. But in reality, many LeMons teams choose to race cars known for decent performance figures and/or reliability, and after 78 LeMons races, we’ve learned that many of those “obvious” car choices turn out to be spectacularly bad for low-budget endurance racing.

The Mitsubishi Starion is the worst possible choice, in the entire universe, for a 24 Hours of LeMons car.

What about Cavaliers/ Sunfire ? We dirt track and enduro raced a few of these. The 2.2 or 2.8 are not the fastest but are very hard to kill. We ran a 2.2 3 spd auto Cavalier for 4 seasons, had 206k miles when we started. Made a few top 4 and finished 6th in a 100 lap Enduro race. Car was completely stock just added a full rollcage and eliminated a few non essentials. Never ran hot, always started, usually finished if I didnt get a flat. Most of the local guys run these cars and win with them. Ive seen numerous Hondas run fast than go boom. Neons are fast but handle very poorly on the Dirt. Had a ford problem enough said haha. Ran a Saturn S series a few years too fast but dont handle abuse well.

Several LeMons Cadillacs with the HT4100 engines have raced in LeMons, and the engines have held together just fine. Much better than the Northstar, in fact. Meanwhile, small-block Chevy and Toyota R engines blow up like clockwork. Street reliability and LeMons reliability are much different animals.

General Motors products have dominated the Index of Effluency, the top prize of LeMons racing, winning more IOE trophies than any other manufacturer

Index of Effluency (or IOE) is the top prize awarded in the 24 Hours of LeMons automotive racing series. General criteria to win this award is a car that is too unreliable to be driven effectively on the streets yet manages to complete a decent amount of laps on the race track. IOE can be awarded to a vehicle that was deemed unreliable from the factory (e.g. Volkswagen Karmann Ghia) or a more reliable car with an unwise engine transplant (e.g. Ford Thunderbird with a BMW diesel engine).