I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of this one, but when you have both a big pumpkin harvest and a Wüsthof stiff boner, the Check Engine Light Pumpkin just seems necessary. 
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Years ago, before I became the Enver Hoxha of Image Consultants, I had the idea that I’d get together with my friend Walker Canada and do a car-advice column for cheapskate hooptie owners called “Sparky & Max.” It will still happen someday, but for now you can enjoy the animation Walker made as our logo.

We of LeMons HQ have started (or, rather, resumed the tradition of) issuing a region-specific trophy for each race, which means in practice that we bring a trophy with a blank nameplate and realize that we haven’t thought of what we’re going to call it until about 19 minutes before the checkered flag on Sunday. The idea is that we have a way to reward a team that achieves something special at a race, yet doesn’t fit into one of the normal trophy categories. At last weekend’s Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 500 race, we felt compelled to split the trophy three ways, for reasons that will appear obvious once you click the “Read more” link. 
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With 171 entries, the weekend’s LeMons racing activities at Infineon Raceway were a lot of fun. It always takes me a couple of days to process my photos into an Über Gallery entry, but that task is now done. 1,912 photographs of the action!

You’ve seen the Showroom-Schlock Shootout Über Gallery and the official results, but those things don’t always tell the entire story. As Official Historian of the 24 Hours of LeMons, I’m here to fill on the blanks on what happened at the Autobahn Country Club Joliet last weekend. 
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When I left Jalopnik and took writing gigs at The Truth About Cars and at Motor Authority, on top of my job as Justice of the 24 Hours of LeMons Supreme Court, I thought that the run of Project Car Hell episodes would be over… but now Autoweek has talked me into bringing the series out of retirement! Let’s go back and look at the original three-year run of the series. 
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All this post needs to complement the 1997-style animated GIF is some blinking text!

More than 1,000 photos from the action at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

I’m back in Denver, which means I now have time to go through some of my photos from last weekend’s Where The Elite Meet To Cheat 24 Hours of LeMons. Much coverage of the race may be found in my TTAC posts from the weekend, but my traditional post-race “winner posts” only cover the overall winner and the Index of Effluency winner. What about the rest of the teams that took trophies home? 
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I mentioned my 1993 experience as a Fish Driver in the latest installment of the ‘65 Impala Hell Project series, but didn’t want to clog up the gallery with too many Fish Driving photographs. While I was grinding it out at this unpleasant delivery-truck gig, I had an idea that I would record a Murilee Arraiac album entitled “I, Fish Driver,” with a musical piece representing each stop along the Fish Route. For the album artwork, I’d need a self-portrait, and so I took many while driving my route. Nothing ever came of the album idea, but I still have the photos of me piloting an Econoline, a Mitsubishi Fuso, and an Isuzu diesel pickup. Read more »

As I write the latest installment of the Impala Hell Project series (in which I drive the Impala to Los Angeles to look into a gig building bondage equipment out of car parts), I realize that some digressions take too much space and/or don’t belong on a car website. Of course, everything belongs on MurileeMartin.com, so here’s an excerpt from Torment, Incorporated that shows what I learned from that 1993 road trip. 
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In the end, the desperate Honda Prelude/Ford Tempo/random parts car mix-and-match attempt to get Team Swamp Shack onto the race track (as documented here was something of a disappointment. Actually, it was a heartbreaking, miserable failure… right up until the moment when the team got both the I Got Screwed trophy and the Organizer’s Choice. I had a timelapse camera shooting the first portion of their engine-swap attempt, so let’s check it out. Read more »

When it’s hot and muggy and the race goes on all through the night, some teams pack up and go home when something big breaks on their car. Others, however, keep thrashing; such teams become potential Heroic Fix winners (or, if the repair doesn’t work, I Got Screwed winners). We’ve got some of each type here at the 2011 Cain’t Git Bayou 24 Hours of LeMons.  
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I couldn’t make it to the Arse Sweat last weekend, due to some sort of terrible plague I picked up at the Boston Tow Party race, making this the first time I’ve ever missed a LeMons race at arse-freezing/arse-sweating Thunderhill Raceway. Assistant Perp Nick Pon was on the job, however, and he’s been kind enough to share his photos for the traditional Über Gallery. Enjoy.

The second-annual B.F.E. GP, which takes place somewhere in the wasteland between Denver and Kansas, starts today. It’ll be a day of BS Inspections in the blazing sun, driving rain, and/or tennis-ball-sized hail. Best of all, no airports for me!