Magazine Articles

Roundel - All's Fair in Love and LeMons, by Dave Boffa

Any racing event in which having your car catch on fire is not grounds for automatic disqualification is bound to be an interesting scene - the sort of thing worth watching just to see how far otherwise responsible people are willing to push the boundaries of automotive reason. That's exactly what the 24 Hours of LeMons is...

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Car and Driver - LeMons Real Hoopties of New Jersey Day One: BMW 318 Leads

We had beautiful racing weather in New Jersey today, but the action on the track got a bit brutal at times. Lots of black flags, plenty of cars scattering engine parts all over the tarmac, and no shortage of bent sheetmetal. Still, some teams managed to avoid busted parts and miscreant drivers; when the checkered flag waved to end today's race session, the Duct Tape Motorsports BMW 318 was leading the 100-car field by a scant two laps. Yes, a four-cylinder BMW E30 is holding all the big-engined cars at bay, thanks to the clean driving of the Duct Tape Motorsports wheelmen...

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Car and Driver - LeMons Real Hoopties of New Jersey 2012: The Winners!

There's no decision involved in counting which team got the most laps, and this time that honor went to Duct Tape Motorsports and their BMW 318. Yes, a four-cylinder E30 beat more than 100 cars (including too many six-cylinder E30s to count) on a horsepower-friendly road course with lots of pedal-to-metal straights. We've been watching this team climbing the ranks for quite a few races now, and they earned their trophy with a near-flawless performance, beating the second-place Near-Orbital Space Monkeys Mustang by a comfortable five laps...

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Motoring Con Brio - More David and Goliath Action

Here's an entertaining (if at times frustrating to watch) clip of a $500 24 Hours of LeMons entrant giving some P-cars a run for their money at a local track day.
What we see here:
1. A terrific driver driving the wheels off his 134 hp E30 318is
2. Very obviously slower drivers of far more expensive and exotic machinery being stingy with point-bys (and perhaps nursing sore egos)
In other words, typical stuff. One would think those who have made it to the advanced run group of a DE organizer like PCA would somehow be above that...

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Car and Driver - LeMons Halloween Hooptiefest BS Inspections

The last time we came to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, in May, we were floored by surrealism of the self-towing trailer race car. This time, we're bewildered by the combination of fall weather in New England, disturbing Halloween costumes, and the biggest arsenal of LeMons-style potato cannons we've ever seen. LeMons teams often dress in costume, but the proximity of Halloween (and our promise to drop the Saturday-morning green flag on the team with the best costumes) increased the costume rate from the usual 25 percent to more like 75 percent...

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Fox 61 News - 24 Hours of LeMons in Stafford

The 24 Hours of LeMans is, perhaps, the World's most storied automobile racing competition, a celebrated tradition of engineering and endurance. This is not that race -- this is the 24 Hours of LeMons, its an endurance road race for cars $500 or less.

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Car and Driver - The 2012 Season Regional Champs

The 24 Hours of LeMons series travels all over the United States, making stops in such bustling cosmopolitan hotspots as Kershaw, South Carolina, and Deer Trail, Colorado. While the 2012 National LeMons Championship Awards are cool, we’re going to rip off Tip O’Neill’s famous phrase and say that all racing is local. So here we present the 2012 season winners of the five 24 Hours of LeMons regions:

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Car and Driver - LeMons New York Inspections: Many 2002s, Greatest Forced-Induction AMC Battle

...At that point we figured, OK, we'll have to create a special trophy for the winner of the Blown Kenoshawagen matchup. Then we realized that we were seeing more BMW 2002s than usual. Way more 2002s. We saw a dead-stock 2002tii with Kugelfischer fuel-injection. We saw a 2002 with super-cheaty suspension and M43 swap. We saw everything between those extremes; in all, we saw six 2002s. You can get rusty examples of these cars for cheap, so we believed the budget stories of some of the 2002 teams and scoffed at some others. Perhaps we need a trophy for the best-performing 2002...

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NJ BMWCCA - Finish Lines, by Thom Rossi

I was convinced that my car was absolutely wrecked as I sat there pinned against the the tires... But I hadn't counted on a paddock-side mission-impossible repair crew materializing. Among the first to converge on the now bumper-less car and piles of plastic and carbon fiber was Scott Barton. Scott, if you dodn't know him, is the proprietor of Duct Tape Motorsports, and was racing the "Red Baron" in F-Mod class. The Red Baron is 40% dents, 20% duct tape, and the remainder is composed of zip ties and a 4-cylinder engine, all of which adds up to 100% E30 fun. Scott took one look at the wounded No. 726, and proclaimed that we should step aside because "Now you're in my area of expertise." Three hours later we were to finish 2nd in the one-hour enduro.

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The Rusty Hub - Movie Monday: One for the little guy!

Movie Monday demonstrates that it's not what you drive, it's who drives it and how. This video from recent race winners Duct Tape Motorsports (DTM), who took their four-cylinder E30 coupe to a Porsche Club track day at New Jersey Motorsports Park. The first thing you'll notice in this video at the 0:25 mark is when a Porsche 911 GT3 RS eases past the DTM car. The DTM E30 then passes several polite if perhaps shocked Porsche owners out to play with their nice things on a sunny day. More than anything, this is a credit to the Duct Tape driver, who clearly knows his way around a track and also knows his car's limits. One could argue the Porsche drivers are perhaps a bit reticent to push their supercars--many of which are probably driven daily--the way the DTM driver pushes his crapcan. But that spoils the fun of watching a $500 heap hack its way through a field of what are essentially refined road-going race cars from Stuttgart.

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