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One of our very own is battling it out on the race track this weekend. That’s right, Jamie is participating in the 24 hours of Lemons at the Carolina Motorsports Park as we speak! These endurance races are held all over the country and are limited to $500 cars. Jamie and his team are piloting the Austin Marina shown above. You can read a preview over at Hooniverse and learn more about the series on the Lemons site. It looks like a blast to me and it’s nice to know that you can still go racing on the cheap. We wish them luck and look forward to a full report after he has recouperated!
An Austin Marina???
Well it only has to do 24 hours, maybe 1500 or so miles, so maybe it’ll make it.
Go Jamie!
yes have fun. even with your past class C win the people writing about the racing seem to make fun of that car for some reason. i hope you win both your class and overall.
Jamie just let me know that they are 3rd in their class! Keep it up guys!
keep up the good work.
Look out for pianos !!!
Hey we are currently running 3rd in b Class 8th overall running a mazda mx6
damn this is fun
klharper
also great job. photo of your car please.
Thanks, folks! We’ve had some electrical and mechanical challenges this weekend, but we’re still out there and still running third in class C :-). The second place class C car (a 1964 Fairlane!) just got towed in but we have a lot of laps to make up…first place in class C, if you are wondering, is being held down by a Pinto!
Dare I admit it? I used to sell Morris Marina’s new! Actually they were Ok cars in their day matching well to Ford Escort, Hillman Avenger, Vauxhall Viva and more. They did not honestly deserve their lemon tag. The Allegro… well maybe that did….The high performance versions did not live up to any kind of expectation except stripes and trim, pleasant enough cars but…The best seller the 1.3, in all its versions, was often a fleet car, and sold well. I drove one around Goodwood once.. hmm…Best of all they could be bought cheap secondhand, and did not cost much to fix. A friend had many over the years never paying more than £100 for one and getting several years use from each one…Well done keep up the good work and have a ton of fun!!
Marinas are all MGB underneath. What’s not to like?
First off, thanks to all of you for the kind wishes! We managed to finish third in class despite some vehicle deficiencies on Sunday, and had a lot of fun doing so.
@ Dolphin — Most 24 HOL races are actually 14-15 hours; there are only 1-2 a year that race at night. This one went from 10 am-6:30 pm Saturday, then 6 hours on Sunday. But at an average speed of around 50-55 mph (according to our on-board GPS) that’s around 750 miles. We were on track for all but ~45 minutes of that time (2 failures).
@KL Harper — Enjoyed meeting you and running against…ok, getting passed by your MX-6!
@John — I think folks expect more from Marina’s than they were ever designed for. It’s an inexpensive saloon that was built to a price. And we do have a lot of fun!
@Graham — actually, while the engine is MGB (or almost, some detail changes for cost reasons), the normal Marina tranny is Spitfire/TR7 related, and rear axle is 4-speed TR7 related. Front suspension is similar to Morris Minor w/torsion bars. We have swapped the original transmission for an MGB one for reliability reasons, but otherwise the car is largely stock :-)
Austin Powerless Racing – love it. Nice work, Jamie. Looks like heaps of fun.
Good work out their Team Powerless! I look forward to hearing more about the weekend. Oh and KLHarper we need pictures of the MX-6!!!!
OK late picture, but here is one. I just don’t have a lot of pics of our car. That is me smiling in the foreground and if you look over the hood of the mazda in the background you can see the Marina
KL Harper