The D15B7 engine that Honda installed in my beater/daily-driver ’92 Civic DX was rated at 102 horsepower. Car and Driver managed to get the ’92 DX down the quarter-mile in 16.7 seconds… but that was at sea level, in a brand-new car. With its tired 200,000-mile engine gasping for air at 5,280 feet up, my Civic is definitely short on power in its new Colorado home. The good news is that I have an Integra GS-R B18C1 engine in the garage, and it’s getting swapped into my Civic very soon. That means I needed some “before” dragstrip numbers, so I can see just how much improvement the new engine will bring. Time to visit Bandimere Raceway for Test-&-Tune night! (Read More…)

Introduction • Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10
In the last Impala Hell Project episode, the now-disc-brake-equipped Chevy and I hit Interstate 5 for some Generation X-style road tripping. Through late 1991 I continued my process of junkyard upgrades, and the car racked up some serious highway miles. (Read More…)

The Organizer’s Choice, which goes to the team that most epitomizes what LeMons racing is all about, is one of the trophies that many teams chase for years. You can take the Org Choice home by racing a monstrous piece of rolling sculpture, dressing the team up in ridiculous costumes and having them stay in their bewildering roles all weekend, slogging through an all-weekend death march to keep a never-belonged-on-a-race-track car in semi-trackworthy condition, or some combination of all of the above. The LeMons HQ staff chooses the Org Choice recipient via a highly scientific procedure involving a lot of shouting and hand-waving during the panic-stricken, million-things-to-get-done 20 minutes before we drop the checkered flag on Sunday; sometimes the decision is an easy no-doubter, but other times we’re ready to tear out our spleens using rusty bottle openers, so agonizing is the choice. The Organizer’s Choice decision at the Detroit Irony 24 Hours of LeMons, a few weeks back, was definitely of the latter type. (Read More…)

Weirdly vivid car colors were all the rage in the early 1990s, along with clear products, and so this Justy’s Cherenkov Radiation Turquoise paint fit right in with the times. Sadly, the jarring hue and econo-four-wheel-drive weren’t enough to save this rust-free, 5-speed-equipped Subaru sedan from The Crusher’s cold jaws. (Read More…)

Denver is home to plenty of AMC Eagles, BMW 325iXs, the occasional Vanagon Syncro, and just about every other oddball four-wheel-drive vehicle made. Until yesterday, however, the only Justy 4WD I’d ever seen was this Crusher-bound example. Then this extremely clean red Justy 4WD showed up in my neighborhood. (Read More…)

We’ve seen some Volvo 240s do very well in the 24 Hours of LeMons, but never before has a 240 this terrible managed to crack the top 10 in a 100-plus-entry 24 Hours of LeMons race. This hacked-up ’92 244 has a creaky, squeaky much-worse-than-stock suspension and an octillion-mile non-turbo B23 engine, but it still beat up on most of the E30s, 190Es, and Integras in the Capitol Offense race over the weekend. (Read More…)

Yes, it is possible to buy an ugly, theft-victim 1998 Mercedes-Benz S500 and sell enough parts off it to get the purchase price under 500 bucks. No, it is not possible to win a weekend-long endurance race at a twisty, technical track with a monstrous, bloated, ungodly complex luxury sedan… yet the Team Opulence—We Has It S500 has done just that. For the second time. (Read More…)

Sometimes I wonder how it’s even possible for some vehicles to slip through all the steps that should stop them from washing ashore on Crusher Island. Something as useful as a kei-sized dump truck, for example. (Read More…)

The temperature soared well into the 90s today, causing fearful mechanical carnage among the cars that had survived the first session of the 2011 ‘Shine Country Classic in South Carolina. Through all the busted engine blocks and vaporized head gaskets, one Screamin’ Chicken-bedecked Mazda just kept blasting out fast lap after fast lap, padding its lead and avoiding even a hint of a black flag. In the end, the Hong Norrth 1994 Mazda MX-3 took the checkered flag with a dominating 12-lap cushion separating it from the second-place car (the Team SOB VW Golf, a perennial South Region contender that’s way overdue for a LeMons win on laps). (Read More…)

According to VWVortex, 1,461 Etienne Aigner Edition 1991 Golf Cabrios were sold in North America. I found one in a Northern California junkyard last year, and now here’s another. You’d think such an exclusive, one-year-only Golf would have legions of collectors driving the values well above scrap price, but the junkyard evidence shows otherwise. (Read More…)

Even though I still think the Achieva was saddled with the very lamest car name of all time— what ether-huffing focus group OK’d that abomination?— the SCX was actually quite quick for its time, and incredibly quick for a marque that appealed primarily to octogenarians too frugal to spring for a Buick. They were fairly rare to begin with, and this is the first SCX I’ve ever spotted in a self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)

The San Francisco Bay Area once had one of the world’s highest Volvo 240 concentrations, but a number of factors are conspiring to send vast numbers of Swedish bricks to The Crusher in recent years. How many? Let’s take a look at the 240 inventory I spotted yesterday at a high-turnover East Bay wrecking yard. (Read More…)

As Detroit was skipping a decade or two of car R&D by concentrating on packing increasing numbers of 128-ouncer-ready cup holders and faux-wood trim into big trucks, it became necessary to make it clear to the targeted buyer demographics that these trucks really weren’t, you know, trucks. In fact, they were more about protection from street crime and potholes than anything else, which is where slapping Mercury badges on the Explorer and Oldsmobile badges on the Blazer came in. (Read More…)

Really cheap, low-optioned Detroit cars haven’t done well for decades, but that didn’t stop Chrysler from following up the super-downscale Omni America with the car advertised as “the lowest priced car on the market available with a standard driver’s-side airbag.” Apparently, no 1991 Plymouth Sundance Americas made it out of the showrooms. Well, none except for this example that managed to dodge The Crusher’s jaws for two full decades before its final tow into a Denver self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)

What does it take to win the Heroic Fix trophy at the heroism-heavy Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons? Frantic engine swaps are a dime a dozen in LeMons racing, but what happens when the replacement engine goes bad? (Read More…)