24 Hours of LeMons fanatics have been hoping for a vintage NASCAR-style entry for years, and Legend of LeMons Unununium Medal winner Speedycop and his henchmen came through at the Southern Discomfort race last month.
South Carolina artist, racer, and LeMons enabler Walker Canada has been working on a 1965 Impala NASCAR replica for LeMons (yes, a couple of teams ran Impalas that year, in spite of zero factory support), but the distance between the absolute basket case somewhat challenging starting point and the artist’s conception above meant that the Chevy wasn’t ready for Southern Discomfort.
Team Police Brutality, however, doesn’t let nickel-and-dime stuff like reality deter them from getting their projects done in time for the second day of a LeMons race the green flag!
Parnelli Jones actually drove a Fairlane in 1967, but Ford styled their full-size and intermediate cars so that they looked nearly identical.
Speedycop and The Gang really did this project right, printing up custom decals that matched the ones used on Parnelli’s Fairlane back in the day. The car looked absolutely amazing.
The car was very, very rough to start with, but an application of Bondo, blue paint, and a billion hours of sweat made it look great (go here for the complete photo gallery).
It has valid Virginia plates, so the folks living near Kershaw, South Carolina, had the chance to see this machine on the street; you can imagine the reaction in NASCAR-crazed South Carolina. Apparently, dudes were chasing after the car on foot and offering to buy it as it roared by.
The engine was an EFI 5.0 that was dragged out of a trashed ’68 Torino and dropped into the Galaxie. It ran, but the Galaxie had only been driven a block or so before rolling into the Carolina Motorsports Park paddock on Friday morning. Naturally, there were many some issues.
Ignition woes, chronic overheating, the usual stuff that goes wrong with a relatively untested LeMons car. By Sunday morning, however, the Galaxie was running pretty well.
The Galaxie started the race as a serious Index of Effluency contender, because it was actually fairly terrible under its pretty skin, but the NSF Racing ’62 Fury was even more terrible; the Fury’s 218 laps were deemed more effluent than the Galaxie’s 243, and the Galaxie had to settle for the Judges’ Choice this time.
The Judges’ Choice really got nailed down by the culinary contribution of Speedycop and The Gang: Deep-fried Oreos!
We’ll be seeing the Galaxie again at the Real Hoopties of New Jersey race next month, and it will have another shot at a well-deserved IOE. I plan to suit up and drive it this time; I turned down Speedycop’s kind offer of a stint behind the wheel at CMP, because I wanted the team members who’d killed themselves getting the Ford ready to get maximum seat time, but I’ll be hooptying it up in New Jersey!
March 8th, 2011 - 2:01 pm
Nicely written as always, Phil. Thanks for the props! The before gallery is here:
http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af172/kirchbed/The%2067%20Galaxie/
Look for a build summary on my site by this weekend: http://www.speedycop.com
March 8th, 2011 - 2:18 pm
Great write-up Phil, thanks! Be sure to bring your driving gear to NJ & Summit!
March 8th, 2011 - 3:26 pm
Here’s more on one of the ’65 Impalas that ran back in the day:
http://nascarimpala.com/
March 8th, 2011 - 5:14 pm
the Car was tons o’ Fun on the track. like driving a big ol’ marshmallow! fortunately car owner and primary sweat-sink, DC Doug will have BOOSTED BRAKES for the Galaxie when it shows up at NJ. Should be a hoot that I’m sorry to say I cannot manage to show up for 🙁
Chris AKA “Serj”
Captain; Track Pillagerz! (A&D for Speedycop’s gang of outlaws!)
March 8th, 2011 - 5:30 pm
I’ll offer that it was a very neutral handling marshmellow!
March 8th, 2011 - 11:34 pm
We got to tour C.C. Canada’s “stable” of pure win after the race…. very nice cars!!!!
and the Oreo’s were supplemented with twix’s, snickers, and everything else in the snack isle of the local Walmart… we ran out of batter though…
March 10th, 2011 - 5:18 am
You forgot to mention the best punishment meted out that weekend was having the Galaxie follow the Fury for 3 laps after the Galaxy went off in turn 1. That had to be the most agonizing 3 laps for the Galaxie and the most sweat inducing 3 laps for the Fury. I’d like to see more of that in future races.
Why are they following me!!!
March 14th, 2011 - 5:37 pm
As of today the Galaxie no longer sways like a fishing trawler in downtown Tokyo. Rotted rubber and a 12lb. deformed sway bar replaced with poly bushings and a 35lb. sway. Still a lemon, but no longer frightening to drive alongside another car through the curvies. Stopping on the other hand…
March 14th, 2011 - 5:38 pm
…still stops like a trawler.