Last weekend was the 10 year anniversary of LeMons racing, and as such some teams went all out to impress the judges and their competition. In this case, Charnal House updated their old MetSHO racer to a scale model of Porsche’s famous 935 “Apple Car”. There isn’t a single Porsche part on this car, but it’s hard to tell that from a distance. In any case, it sounds like fun to me.
The car has been racing in LeMons events for years, starting life as a standard 3-cylinder Geo Metro, the team bodged together a mid-engine platform to shove a Taurus SHO (Super High Output) V6 in the back. From the outset, the car has always had sketchy handling thanks to a short wheelbase and too much power. They’ve shown up at events with a variety of motorsport livery themes, including the Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9, and Monster Tajima’s Suzuki Pikes Peak car. This Apple 935, however, might be their best work yet. Possibly the best of any LeMons car in history.
The team took painstaking efforts to make sure the 935 fenders looked the part, modelling the entire car in CAD and scaling everything from there. They created paper templates for the body panels, and then crafted them out of large aluminum signs they scored from a scrap pile.
Late last year, the team was offered a pair of take-off used turbochargers from a Honda Performance Development powered LMP2 car for essentially zero cost. The team wasn’t about to be caught sleeping on that deal, and quickly worked to get their new turbos fitted to the Ford V6. Plumbing was crafted from old plastic swimming pool ladder frame while they custom fabricated the exhaust and turbo plumbing from cast off truck parts. After eight months of testing and tuning they finally got the engine to run properly and produce over 300 horsepower.
This car never had any chance of winning a race, as it is a bit too thirsty on fuel to be competitive, but it did win the “Organizer’s Choice trophy” at LeMons’ anniversary “Decade of Disappointment” event last weekend at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan.
What do you think about this car? Is their custom work and junkyard ingenuity cool enough to be worthy of Porsche praise, or is this an abomination that should head to the scrap heap post haste?
See more photos and information about the build on Roadkill.com.
[Source: Roadkill.com]
