The Purchase

The time has finally come to do an event that's been calling my name since its inception in 2006, the 24 Hours of LeMons. It's a maniacal endurance race that is now held 6 times a year at tracks all across the country. The challenge: purchase and prepare your race car for UNDER $500. I put the word out to some adventurous car nuts and miscreants, and was lucky enough to get just about the best team of ringers imaginable. Our crew includes professional mechanics, track veterans and instructors, engineers, welders, and more enthusiasm than common sense, which may be the most essential component.

We decided to go vintage with our race car, and I blame Norm.

After weeks of kicking around '80s BMWs and Volvos on Craigslist, a phone call with Norm caused a revelation. Everyone on this team is an old car guy. In fact everyone on this team owns one, or several, vintage BMWs. And since the 24 Hours of LeMons is saturated with boring, reliable, modern cars, cars that run well and are sensible choices, we naturally decided to be different.

Our search commenced for the perfect BMW 2002. Fun to drive and easy to work on, the '02 is a car that is close to our hearts and was the obvious choice. A '74-76 big bumper car, with reasonably strong mechanicals, cosmetically challenged - this was our holy grail. But a few weeks of searching had me feeling a little discouraged. The only cars I was running across were field finds that were thousands of dollars away from running, or examples that were too solid to be cheap. That was, until one Thursday afternoon.

An ad popped up on my Craigslist RSS feed at work: 1976 BMW 2002 Rat Rod: $500. The ad was up around 2pm, and by 4 I was driving the car.



Sure it was raining, with rush hour traffic clogging the streets of Noe Valley where the car resided. Sure I had to leave work early to beat other interested parties to the punch. I never even got the chance to drive the car more than a few blocks before laying down the cash, but damn, what a find! Dave, owner of the little car for 20 years, had managed to get it into shape to pass CA Smog, which meant at the very least she had to have a pretty solid motor. But that wasn't the end of pleasant surprises in this little gem. Bilstein shocks, weathered E21 Recaro seats, a smooth shifting transmission and a basically rust free body were the icing on the flat black cake. Oh, and barbed wire license plate frame? Check.

We had found our race car.