I just heard from my buddy Scott, who was driving the '67 Fury III in this past weekend's 24 Hours Of LeMons at Thunderhill. Apparently the old C-body was only the second oldest car in the race this time (the oldest being a '65 Mercedes), but the team was still awarded the prestigious "Index of Effluency" prize. Here's the word from Scott:
We entered a field of 71 cars, among a field dominated with Miatas, RX7s, Honda Civics, Acuras, 3-Series BMWs, Porsche 914 and 944s, and about every other good handling import you've ever seen, and we finished in 12th! (That is a serious win for us!) We only had one mechanical issue, a bad alternator, it cost us about 7-8 laps. I got black flagged for not seeing a yellow and passing a car (woops!) and was parked for about 10 laps. And one of the other drivers, Mike Tucker, was black flagged because he got hit by an aggressively driving BMW (no fault of Mikes but when two cars connected BOTH were black flagged off the track, strict rules) and that cost us about 8 laps. We were in 10th position prior to those incidents so who knows how well we could have done without the penalties! We had 5 drivers and all ran competitive/similar times, average laps were in the low 1:30s. On Sunday I somehow managed a 1:27 best lap speed but while out hammering on it a sway bar end link broke and it slowed us a few seconds a lap for the rest of the day. All things considered it was a REALLY fun event and unlike previous Lemons races, it was more like a real race than a destruction derby, there were some SERIOUS cars on hand running VERY fast times!
When I asked Scott how our CarDomain decal got smudged, Scott wrote:
The door was already pretty bad from a Ranchero with a 460 plowing into it at the last race at Altamont...... However, the damage was "touched up" by a couple of us giving the tire barriers through the chicanes a little "rub" on the way through....... Sort of like threading a needle with a tow rope! We also had a few wheel to wheel side swipes from other cars trying to squeeze by in corners.... Most didn't try it twice! LOL!
Scott also added this tidbit:
A 944 Porsche was lapping the field ($500.00 car....Uh yea RIGHT!) . He had just passed me in the front straight and cut back hard in front of me then promptly blew up the engine sending back a GIANT cloud of "James Bond quality" oil smoke. I had to slow to a near stop just to see again, it was a comforting feeling hearing his connecting rods and other engine internals bouncing harmlessly off the bottom of the Fury's giant American steel underbelly.
More pics and (hopefully) video soon! For now here's one more pic of the car and a pic of the team (that's Scott in the black driver's suit). The other team Size Matters drivers were Tom, Mike, Sam and Gary. All of these guys did a killer job keeping the old Mopar in the mix til the very end.
By David
AKA Highspeedhijinks
So now that the new KITT is out, comparisons are inevitible. The guys at Popular Mechanics Magazine really went all out--just check out their "special features" chart. I'm hoping that the suggested retail of "KITT Version 2.3" will prevent any super nerds from attempting to build a fully functional replica.
This weekend I picked up a copy of the Standard Catalog Of American Cars 1946 - 1975 on the bargain table at Barnes and Noble. I've been meaning to get a copy for years. What a cool resource! (Though I have found an error or two--still, beats the heck out of Wikipedia.) A must have for fans of old Detroit iron. And yes, I have Cobras on the brain.
David Freiburger, formerly of Hot Rod, just picked up this hacked up Hemi Satellite drag car for $750. He's planning to race it in the new NHRA Heritage Series. I hope he keeps the paint scheme. Anyway, they're still out there, folks...
It's been a pretty cool year. Groups and Video went live. The blog turned one. We added some guest bloggers like David from Grassroots Motorsports and Andrew from Left Lane News. We hired SuzyBruisy and had a blast at SEMA. And we even managed to beat back some annoying pop-up ads. Here are a few of the top stories we followed this year.
1. Colin McRae Dies. Everyone's favorite rally driver died in a helicopter crash in September. RIP Colin.
2. The GT-R is born. The new supercar from Nissan is here, and it's coming to the US!
3. Freiburger Quits Hot Rod. He made Hot Rod cool again. But now he's quit print to go online.
4. Gas Prices Crept Up. But you guys kept modding and driving!
5. Tesla Has Issues. Wired called it vaporware. Ouch! Have faith people!
6. Plug-In Hybrids Are Coming. Toyota and GM are serious, and the race is on.
7. Gumball Is Cut Short. A bunch of spoiled rich kids driving too fast in foreign countries--it was just a matter of time before someone got killed.
8. Mr. Angry Stalls Out. And Morgan wins SpikeTV's Bullrun. But stay tuned for more from Mike in 2008. He's got a few tricks up his sleeve.
9. GRM's UTC Challenge Is A Success. We had a blast at VIR. Tommy Archer smoked everyone and our CarDomain wagon embarrassed a few high dollar cars. Stay tuned for the next one at Buttonwillow in June!
10. The Pony Car Wars Are On. But will history repeat itself?
As Jen mentioned this weekend I love 4x4 cars. Well, I found a guy who's been collecting photos of these jacked up vehicles in one place. He's got everything from the '68 Camaro below to a Delorean. Check 'em out.
I found out that my new diesel Escort's fuel system is clotted with congealed vegetable oil, which in the Seattle winter is approximately the viscosity of snot. Needless to say, it's going to take a little more than I thought to get it running. Yay!
How about you? What did you do this weekend?
I went through CarDomain finds (be careful, that page takes a while to load!) and on my first run through I came up with 25 rides. So then I started thinking I'd make it a top twenty list, but Jen wouldn't let me off the hook that easy. So I narrowed it down to ten. It was painful, but here's the list (in no particular order). Please note that Mopar did not make the final cut.
1. Theon's awesome V8 Festiva (which recently got featured on Autoblog as well).
2. Brian's "hatch-rod" Civic--nice documentation and making great progress!
3. Ronald's 240Z--original owner who put his car back to stock!
4. Frank's Mustang Hi-Riser that everyone loves to hate.
5. Piper Motorsport's amazing Franken M3.
6. Brandyn's REDEEMD--the coolest rat rod on CarDomain.
7. Jeff's Retro Rides Camaro project that we have been following in the blog.
8. Donna's Cobalt is over the top.
9. James's Escort kicks Prius butt.
10. And who can forget Billy's Motley Crew (below)?
Post links to some of your favorite ride pages from this year. Oh, and here's my list from last year.
Mike's Mustang has been through a lot: in two separate accidents, the entire passenger side and the front clip were badly mangled. Undeterred, Mike, who works at Mission Progressive Tuning in West Virginia, turned the carnage into an opportunity to build an ultra-bad ride. After stripping off all the EFI equipment, he upgraded the 'Stang with a Holley double-pumper and B&M supercharger, along with headers, an MSD ignition, and a lot more. Plus he's got a detailed write-up of his automatic-to-5-speed swap on page 2 to help out anyone who's interested in doing this awesome upgrade. Great project and great page—congratulations, man!
We just launched CarDomain video back in August, and our members have already uploaded over 7000 clips! The best part? There are like three good ones! Just kidding, there's plenty of killer stuff posted. To wrap up the year, I used a state-of-the-art, extremely scientific method to select the ten best, and I'm sure you'll love each and every clip. Did I miss one of your favorites? Let me know!
- Flight of the Redneck! What happens when you combine a Suzuki Samurai, a big ass dirt jump and a redneck with pork rinds where his brains should be? Watch this and find out!
- Lambo Hits 219! Cameras? Check. Lambo? Check. Legal representation and complete disregard for the safety of other drivers? Check and check. Don't try this. Ever. Just enjoy the clip.
- Cruisin' in My 300C! The production on Pakisalim's entry into our GoPro Contest just completely blew us away. We initially thought it was jacked from a music video. Great job man!
- Sweet! No Ticket! When they sent me to Vegas to drive exotic cars, I thought for sure I'd be coming home with a suspended license and some serious explaining to do. But I was wrong.
- Toyota Tacoma Rod Bearing Replacement! Sure, this title is a mouthful, but the video is totally hilarious. It also happens to be pretty informative. Everyday driving never looked so hard.
- Most Underrated Car Ever! If you want the CarDomain staff to love your clip, it never hurts to use AC/DC as the soundtrack. This totally made us take another look at the Ford Tempo.
- Clearly Insane! When we released the video of Karl Krantz lighting up the "30 clears on the Garfield Box, it seemed like the whole internet went completely insane. Makes sense to me!
- School Bus Takes a Jump! You can learn pretty much everything you need to know about this clip from the title. A school bus takes a jump. Then some fireworks go off. Hell and yes.
- Wicked Reverse Donuts! Theon dropped a Chevy 350 into the back of a Ford Festiva, and he opted to keep it front wheel drive. It that crazy? Sure is. Does it make for great video? Yup.
- Skyline Jumps Off the Dyno! I've always been impressed with how much power you can get out of a Skyline motor, and this just blew me away. What would it be like to drive that monster?
Ronaele is transforming this Mustang GT vert into a 700hp monster. It's still not complete, but Bud expects it to be done by January, so watch his ride page for updates.
There's been an absolute crapload of stuff in the blog this year! I didn't even realize how much we'd written in '07 until I started trying to load those gigantic archive pages, which left me wrangling with a jammed computer for about half the day. Narrowing our material down to the "best" is futile, especially since a lot of our "best" blogs are in in fact, quite unapologetically, our "worst": those stories that contain what's enigmatically referred to as "a high R-quotient." Take a browse through our top ten, you'll probably see what I mean.
- Nice Parking Job! Sean found a site offering a hilarious and totally nonviolent way of retaliating against inept parkers.
- Jiffy Lubed. Ever wonder what goes on at your least favorite grease-monkey chain? Hint: there's a reason why that oil change only takes ten minutes.
- Lambphibian: I suspected this floating Countach to be a hoax—until the guy who built it spoke out in its defense.
- First Ride: Congrats CaliChevylover! We've really watched our Number-One Superfan grow up—and we sure were stoked when he finally got his first car!
- The Chevy Tantrum! After John posted The Onion's spoof article on this furious little GM, at least a few of our readers seemed to think that the rage-powered ride was for real. Awesome!
- Charger Mud Bogger. Rob has this uncanny knack for finding classic Mopars that've been converted into over-the-top monster trucks. Go figure.
- Finally, Cool Auto Art! For some time in the blog, there was a rash of car-themed "art," much of it highly dubious. Then at last, John found an example that didn't suck.
- The Holden Ute. Who would've known that our readers would be ready to sell their own organs for a chance to import Australia's modern-day El Camino? Our intrepid guest blogger Dave nailed it!
- Boat-Tail Donk on Clears AND Spinners! Send CarDomain to SEMA, and the first thing we'll do, naturally, is make a beeline for the goofiest, most outlandish rides on the show floor. It's why you love us!
- Man Attempts to Shoot Nut Off. Someone had to try this, sooner or later. We're still waiting to hear if it actually worked.
Hey, it's been an awesome year. And the blog sure would be a lot less fun if we were writing for anyone other than you guys. Thanks for keeping it real, for lolling and hating, and for running your mouths whenever you were the least bit inclined to do so. The best part of blogging is hearing back from you in the comments, and it's been a blast to have you with us. Happy New Year!
