One of the most proficient teams competing within the many venues of the 24 Hours of Lemons is Speedycop and his team of crazies. If you have ever followed the antics of this team, you are left with more than a little “Shock and Awe” at what they produce as racing machinery. A few of their machines included a Pink Cadillac, A Rusty 1963 Thunderbird with a BMW V-12 (and later with a BMW Turbo-Diesel), A Pontiac Bonneville Donk (with 22″ Rims), and a Pop-Up Camping Trailer turned race car. So, what does a team build after winning 4 Index of Effluency‘s, 3.5 Organizer’s Choices, 2 Least Horrible Yank Tanks, an I Got Screwed, an Epic Repair Failure, a Class C victory, and a Judge’s Choice? Make the jump to find out…
This is a 1957 Cessna 310, and it is the next Lemons project for this legendary team. According to Speedycop himself:
Yes, you read that correctly. A Cessna, as in an actual airplane. Not just any old plane either, a sizeable twin-engine airplane from the fifties, a bygone era predating flight computers for such an aircraft. To fix the mechanical gauges mid-flight, you simply tapped on the glass cover until it produced a reading you agreed with. These planes are 27 feet in length, with a wingspan of 35 feet, and an empty weight of nearly 3,000 pounds. In other words, most definitely NOT a potential LeMons candidate, right? Well, okay, not in stock form, but then this forlorn-looking relic of aviation’s yesteryear no longer retains all of the accoutrements it was originally built with. Pesky, minor details have kept it on the ground since I was in diapers (the early seventies, if you must know). Little things like—oh, I don’t know—NO ENGINES, for starters. Then there’s the missing tail section, the damaged wings, and the total lack of seats. No matter how hardcore an aviation buff one might be, this bird is not a viable restoration candidate, short of being the only remaining 310 in existence. It’s not.
And he is looking for team members to help in the completion of this project, with a scheduled maiden voyage sometime around early 2013. Take a look at his posting at the 24 hours of Lemons Forum here, and tell me what you think about this latest hair brained idea.
Images Sources: Lead Image Collage from MurileeMartin.com Uber Gallaries. Cessna Images from DC Doug Flickr Gallery.
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