Since I work as the Enforcement Warlord for a very successful race series, it happens often that the inspiration for a new/improved race series comes to me (usually when I'm on a red-eye flight or in a scary hotel room). This is how DUI Telepresence Crown Victoria Figure-Eight racing came about (still waiting for financial backing on that one), as well as Spec Dynasty (Fiat seems reluctant to back this series, no doubt due to the mistaken belief that the Dodge Dynasty no longer adds value to the brand).

Sometimes just shooting the breeze with some like-minded racers is all that's needed for great race-series inspiration. For example, the other night, over beers at a Denver watering hole, several LeMons racers— including one who built a Checker Marathon into a road-racer, one who built a Renault Le Car into a credible mid-engined Nissan V6-powered R5 Turbo, and one who drove 2,000 miles in the worst car in human history— brainstormed the race series that we're sure will be bigger than NASCAR: Spec Land Yacht!

The AMC Ambassador would be a fine Spec Land Yacht machine.

The basic idea of a spec racing series is pretty simple: the cars are supposed to be identical to one another, so that the drivers can feel that they are battling mano-a-mano on a level playing field, jousting like knights of old or some such gibberish. Spec Miata, the most efficient means ever devised for destroying once-happy little sports cars, is the best-known, but you've also got your Spec 944, Spec E30, and so on.

Those races might be sort of fun for the participants, but only the most tedious and/or obsessed of race fans would want to sit through one of those events. Not so with Spec Land Yacht! Everything about this spec series will be aimed at optimizing the stuff that made chase scenes in cop TV shows and movies of the 1970s and 1980s so great: the scream of skinny tires being abused, flying hubcaps, large-displacement V8s whooshing through restrictive factory exhaust systems, and more flying hubcaps!

All Spec Land Yacht cars will need Brougham, Landau, and/or d'Elegance emblems.

So, let's get into the basic rules of Spec Land Yacht. Rather than just sticking to a single make/model, the Spec Land Yacht organizers understand that all proper land yachts are more or less the same, and so this series will be open to any 1958-1990 passenger car with a wheelbase of no less than 109 inches and a minimum factory curb weight (3,500 pounds for 1958-69 cars, 3,600 pounds for 1970-1979 cars, and 3,700 pounds for 1980-1990 cars), and that has appeared as a participant in a chase scene in at least one cop show or movie released during the 1970-1989 period. There will be no limits on engines or transmissions (trust me, race organizers don't want to get bogged down in the quagmire of running-gear inspections if they can avoid it), but all cars must have a single functional tailpipe with an inside diameter of no more than 2-3/4" and mufflers that limit maximum noise to 85 decibels.

The Douglas Xtra Trac 2 all-season radial, size 215/70R15, will be the only tire allowed in Spec Land Yacht competition. Walmart

The reason that competitors won't gain much from modified engines or manual transmissions will be the spec tire of the series: the Douglas Xtra Trac 2 all-season radial, available in great quantity at any of 4,900+ Walmart stores across the country. This skinny, long-wearing tire, with a tread compound as hard as the finest old-growth mahogany, will ensure that each Spec Land Yacht competitor will present a spectacle of iffy traction and exciting squealing noises. Imagine the glorious sight of a trio of Lincoln Continental Mark VIs going three-wide into a corner, Xtra Tracs shrieking!

And just to make things more interesting, Spec Land Yacht's rules will mandate both factory steel wheels and full hubcaps… and if a car loses all four hubcaps, the driver will need to pit and apply a complete set of replacements (at the end of each race session, the wrecker crews will gather up all the hubcaps and the racers will be required to play poker to win them back, using hubcaps as chips). Each race team will need to bring at least a few dozen hubcaps as part of the crew's equipment.

You can get beater Lincoln Continentals for scrap value these days

There will be a few more refinements, all aimed at increasing the vintage-cop-show-style drama on the track— no limited-slip differentials allowed, for example— but you get the basic idea of Spec Land Yacht. Now all we need is some wealthy Cayman Islands-based investors looking to back a race series as part of a complex tax-avoidance scheme and we'll be ready to start booking tracks!

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