$500 limit for race cars on LeMons circuit CARS

Jeff Vier, of the Jaywatch Lemon Car team, welds the underbody of the team's 1986 BMW 325es at his garage in Belmont. Jaywatch, a Lemon Car team based in Belmont, purchased a 1986 BMW 325es that was underwater for $500 and turned it into a race car. The team will race the car in the 24-hour LeMons race circuit. less Jeff Vier, of the Jaywatch Lemon Car team, welds the underbody of the team's 1986 BMW 325es at his garage in Belmont. Jaywatch, a Lemon Car team based in Belmont, purchased a 1986 BMW 325es that was underwater ... more Photo: Kevin Johnson, The Chronicle Photo: Kevin Johnson, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close $500 limit for race cars on LeMons circuit 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

Nobody knows how the BMW 325es got underwater.

The used car ran, so Ryan Doherty bought it, and only then did he detect mildew from carpet to ceiling and mold on the engine. Any other buyer would have felt duped, but not Doherty - a lemon is exactly what he was in the market for.

Doherty is the captain of a team in the 24 Hours of LeMons, and his previously submerged 1986 Bimmer will be at Buttonwillow Raceway near Bakersfield in June. To qualify for this amateur circuit, owners must convince a team of judges that they have not paid more than $500 for their lemon. The true test is not what you pay for it, but what you keep paying into it. Doherty's team has dropped an additional $25,000 into the race campaign for a $500 car that is not even street-legal.

"It's still a barely functioning rust-bucket, which is the funny part," he says. Or in the words of teammate Jeff Vier, "It's an absurdly expensive hobby for such a cheap theoretical hobby." Which raises the obvious follow-up, is it worth it?

"If it's not," Vier says, "we're going to maintain the illusion that it is."

Which is what they do on weekends and weeknights, in a Belmont warehouse that they have equipped with a hydraulic lift, air compressors, pneumatic tools and a sand blaster, all in the service of "Cheesy," as they lovingly call their four-wheeled sinkhole.

"Driving in LeMons is nothing like driving in any other competitive race," says Doherty, 29, a computer programmer who lives in Mountain View. "You have really crappy cars that have terrible handling, that break and fall apart and catch fire. There are drivers that are really good, and drivers that are really bad, and 150 cars on the track at once. It's basically trying not to get hit."

From novelty to circuit

Founder and Chief Perpetrator of the 24 Hours of LeMons is Jay Lamm, 36, a San Francisco automotive journalist who was tired of seeing $500,000 cars on the track. So he decided to slice three zeros off that with one novelty race that drew 32 cars. Lamm stayed with it, and the circuit is now a full-time job with an office in Emeryville and a staff of three putting on two dozen races a year nationwide ( www.24hoursoflemons.com). As many as 3,000 spectators pay to watch the wrecks go round.

The cars in the 24 Hours of LeMons are closer to the art cars at Burning Man than they are to the cars in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the famed French sports car race. A LeMons race is won by total number of laps in the allotted time, which can range from 14 hours to 24. There is a prerace inspection, and the judges will dock a team laps if a car looks like more of a cherry than a lemon.

The entrants range from Pinto to Peugeot, and when Cheesy made its debut with a steam-cleaned engine, it was docked 300 laps, meaning it would have to go around the track 300 times before starting at zero. Luckily the judges are also weakened by bribes, so an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label got the penalty reduced to 30 laps.

Most races get more applications than there is room on the track, so selection is based on a clever theme. Doherty's squad is named Team Jaywatch, which is a triple entendre on "Baywatch," the '90s TV series about lifeguard studs and studettes; the car's own amphibious past; and the head race judge, Jay Lamm.

The BMW had its rear roof sawed off to become a lifeguard truck, then was given a coat of yellow house paint, applied by roller, and accessorized with a red siren. The pit crew wears lifeguard shorts and aviator sunglasses, and a 1980s boom box plays the "Baywatch" theme song during the "B.S. Inspection," where the team must convince the judges that they "haven't spent their way into competitiveness," Lamm says.

But the contestants are required to spend their way to safety, which means a roll-cage, racing seat, safety harnesses and a fire-retardant suit and helmet for the driver.

Safety rules

Drive too aggressively and you will get black-flagged into the pit and made to exit the car to sing and dance to "Macho Man" by the Village People. Spin the car sideways and you will get flagged and ordered to write on the car in permanent ink, "If you spin you can't win," 500 times before being allowed to go back out.

The last time Team Jaywatch was at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, its most experienced driver, Austin Robison, came over the crest of a hill and rear-ended a stalled Camaro at 40 mph. That took a pit stop of an hour and a half to pull the front end apart and put it back together.

"You have a bunch of amateurs working on a race car under pressure, using parts that are borrowed from other teams or found in a junkyard. Then you're making the car go as fast as it can go, based upon that work," explains Erica Muxlow, who works at Mozilla, maker of the Firefox search engine, as do most of her teammates.

Muxlow, 32, is the only woman on the team and the only one too short to drive Cheesy. So a few Jaywatchers bought a 1971 VW Super Beetle and formed a spin-off team with the catchy handle Team Ferdinandwertschatzungsgesellschchaft, which translates to Ferdinand (Porsche) Appreciation Society.

Under captain Philipp von Weitershausen, 29, of San Francisco, the Bug they call "Ferdi" races in the C-class, which means "no prayer of finishing," Lamm says.

Before her first race, at Infineon earlier this year, Muxlow got these driving tips from her captain: "If the engine blows up, it's not your fault," she recalls. "If you see smoke, get out of the car. You're on fire."

Muxlow made it through 10 laps, doing 50 mph tops, and passed one car before the engine conked out. She didn't catch fire, though, which was a small victory.

"You have to be a little insane or crazy to want to do this," says von Weitershausen. "I don't know what the attraction is."