The craziest $500 race cars from the 24 Hours of Lemons

you know the thing had been seized by customs and it had no title so around the 24 hours alignments we have this sang which goes like this $500 my ass and that is derived from people who know nothing about lemons they only know that this is supposed to be or a racing series for 500 other cars and they look at a bunch of the cars and they said yes $500 my ass so there's three reasons you're gonna see cars out there that don't look like they're $500 the first reason as well a lot of them don't look like they're 500 oars but they really are $500 cars and if you look at a 15-year old Mercedes sedan particularly like a c-class you know if it's got two warning lights it's totaled it's not worth anything and there are a lot of cars that they're rusty or the title is messed up or they won't pass state inspection or the truth of the matter is just nobody wants the damn things they really are $500 of cars that's one group the second group is a lot of those cars you see out on our racetrack the rule is really simple if we think you've overspent the limit for every ten dollars over limit you went we're gonna give you a negative lap so if you spend $2,000 over the limit you can start the race minus 200 and we get this all the time where you get these teams and they're in the grandstands and they're cheering because the guys raced all weekend long and he's almost to zero and he's trying to get to the checkered flag by the other day so that he will have zero laps right than finishing with negative five and then the third group there is this group of cars that are so cool and so weird and so funny we don't care how much you spent because there's no way they're gonna win a race they're just heavy and terrible and unreliable it's not gonna matter to anybody who's really serious about racing they're just gonna be passing these cars anyway so go ahead spend whatever you want we don't care and this phenomenon started out pretty small I think it was BMW 750 s after a first couple of years guys started bringing seven 40s and seven fifties and microts reaction was $500 my ass and then I very quickly realized this is a 5000 pound car with about 200 horsepower and a million things to go wrong makes no difference at all knock yourselves out this is how you want to go wheel the wheel great help yourself in fact best one of those bill Caswell brought a 750il long wheelbase to Nelson ledges years and years ago and he's driving it's like 3:00 in the morning this was a straight 24 I find this out later he's on the phone he's on the cell phone in the middle of the race he's talking to somebody when I read guess where him dingos flying off the track and I have to tell you about Nelson ledges nobody knows this but there's something unique about Nelson ledges when you leave the pavement at Nelson's it's like maglev I think they've greased the grass it all falls off you accelerate it's like getting shot out of a cannon you speed up when you leave the track so so kaswell's on the phone he leaves the track and the car is doing this and he's flying off into the forest screaming on the telephone and the thing goes backward into the forest and he misses all the trees any all of a sudden you say wow wow this was great me and he picks up the phone he says oh my god I just flew off the truck but I'm and another car comes off the track the same place totally wipes out the front of his car totals both of the cars so we started seeing these 750s and I noticed this mission creep of kind of fancy expensive cars but none of them are gonna be competitive in an endurance race so whatever and then one day at Thunderhill the bar gets significantly raised pendejo racing out of Southern California it's a bunch of guys that run a import restoration and repair shop they show up with a w140 s600 coupe Mercedes v12 coupe from 94 95 I mean this was a hundred thousand dollar car in the mid 90s right admittedly by 2012 it's about a ten dollar car and in fact if it's got a bunch of warning lights which it does it's a negative value car but I mean it's still really an impressive car I sort of scratched my head and they knew they were gonna be in trouble on this 500 hour limit things so they had this whole story one of their guys was dressed up as a Paraguayan dictator and they had this whole story that you know the thing had been seized by customs and it had no title and that's how they got it cheap when I finally said look dudes you're so not gonna win anything in this car it's fine just just race the car so they raced the car and it was exactly what you'd think it's a formerly a hundred thousand dollar car it's turning lap times that are 50 seconds off the pace and three hours later some tiny little water hose between the banks of the of the V blows and they have to take the entire v12 apart to get the car back on the road but they did it and they put the motor back and at the end of the weekend the guy who runs the team came to me he said hey um like in the rules it says you can claim any car right I said well yeah but that's just to scare people I mean I'm not really gonna do that so but could you please claim this car because it's so horrible and awful and hard to work on like we only want to take it back so I did and it turned out that a guy who worked for me wanted the seats for a hot rod projects so that all worked out really well now those guys came back later after that experience with an XJS they did it a group 44 treatment with flares people started getting used to the idea that some of these wackadoodle cars they're clearly more than five hundred dollars they're clearly not competitive no one's gonna care so what happened after this pendejo mercedes and their jaguar xjs follow-up car was a little bit of an arms race of these really spectacular super eyeball funny weird collectible totally uncompetitive but pretty expensive race cars I think the next year NSF Racing showed up they had a 1950 Mercedes 170 s which is terrible terrible car but you know it's worth certain amount of money that thing rolled over in the gas tank fell out the next year they showed up with a 450sel 6.9 that the guy who runs the team had had his garage and he knew it was a hundred thousand dollars away from being a $25,000 collector car so they said alright let's go race it I mean five hundred dollars my ass but spectacular right after that this team three pedal mafia they showed up with our Rolls Royce 70s Silver Spur Silver Ghost whatever it was thing barely ran they had a big monocle on the front made out of I think it was a pickle jar lid so the bar kept getting raised 3 p.m. after that they brought a stitch Irwin Maserati barely ran pendejo responded with a Maserati Quattroporte 3 barely ripped there is a great picture on the Internet of Johnny Lieberman cranking the Maserati Quattroporte into a turn and it's I mean it's it a 35 degree angle there's a team out of California hell excited to get it on the mix they had this 911 SC tub totally stripped it had been rolled three times it's in the back of the shop for 25 years they knew we wouldn't let them get away with making a real 911 out of it but they said you know if we put a 1.8 diesel out of a Volkswagen in that they might let us run and we let that car run they came back with a Bricklin after that they came back with a couple of bidders after that so there's this whole subclass of pretty cool cars and they're getting cooler and cooler right now there's a 1974 Lotus Elite the red van one that was were just terrible guy got it out of a junkyard which is probably where I got part three days after it was purchased he put a small-block v8 out of the junkyard in it a Chevrolet 350 called it the chodas he's been running that car for three years it'll do two incredibly fast laps and then shoot some component skyward and now this trend has gotten a punt there's this great guy at Texas Jerry Ringel he had the secret project that was gonna blow our mind it was taking forever taking forever and taking forever and because that one wasn't ready he went out he bought a Fiero with an f40 body kit on it just to fill in the blanks while he was preparing his real car builds this f40 Fiero decides he's gonna make that into a super race car buys these special billet suspension parts from some guy in Michigan you can guess how well that turned out so Jerry his wheels flew off in his first race the second race he managed to get the wheels to stick on but he went off the racetrack and the clamshell from the up 40 shot forward broke the windshield broke the top of the car and so he had some adventures but what he was waiting for was the half Aston which is a db7 shell bare shell that he got out of a junkyard and he put a small-block motor in it and he put an old Mustang fox body rear end in it so he's out there in an Aston Martin db7 in lemons now admittedly he is turning the slowest laps he said it was the most terrifying car he'd ever driven slowest laps out there but he's got an Aston Martin ulemas and we've gotten to the point now I think the latest salvo is a or another rolls-royce it's about a 77 completely terrible rolls-royce and it's run by a guy who owns Pacific motor specific motors is an exotic car dismantler recycler interestingly in Michigan I don't know why it's called Pacific motors but he's got all the spectacular stuff and then the guy who runs it says Eastern European named Darko because of course it is and Darko is awesome he's this big imposing guy with a big man bun sweetest guy you've ever met unfortunately because it'd be much better if he was you know not a sweet guy but he is Darko decides he's got a rolls-royce shell he's got all of these old Viper and srt-10 motors from trucks lying around he's got some Camaro subframes he's just gonna put all this together he's gonna make an awesome rolls-royce well needless to say the first couple of years this thing it won't run it won't steer it drives off the track viper motors between you and me are terrible and they all fail and they're throwing rods but he did finally get it together at the last race at Gingerman he took this Viper powered rolls-royce $500 my ass who cares and he's drifting around the racetrack and there's fire shooting out of side pipes on both sides and he's got it crossed up so this was the greatest moment of my life and that is why to this day when somebody says $500 my ass or more likely they're sitting in their basement at a computer screen going 500 dollars my ass I just said dude you just don't understand what we're doing here a watch can do a lot more than just tell time it can make a statement to the world or show people a little bit more about who you want to be then chero offers an awesome line of designer watches at a great value that you can check out today at the link in the description below you can also use the code vin wiki for a discount at checkout so be sure to check them out and thank them for their support of the channel and find your next watch it might start a great conversation turn some heads or who knows lead to your next great story [Music]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 516,501

Keywords: Jay Lamm, 24 Hours of Lemons, rules, racing, Lemons Racing, Chump Car, cheap cars, project cars, Mercedes S600, BMW 750iL, depreciation, V12, Lotus, Jaguar XJS, title, Aston Martin, 450 SEL 6.9, Rolls Royce, Silver Spur, Bricklin, Bitter, Lotus Elite, laps, nelson ledges, endurance racing, DB7, Dodge Viper, engine swap

Id: y8NwzoTBCQM

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 13 2020