Chrysler’s Mopar parts division turns 75 years old this year. To celebrate, the company has begun gifting itself customized products, including the Mopar-ized Chrysler 200 Super S and Dodge Charger Redline that appeared at the Detroit auto show. Among the latest birthday presents is this limited-edition Chrysler 300, which has been built up mainly from parts available in the Mopar catalog. The 300C-based sedan will be shown off at the Chicago auto show before 500 examples go on sale this summer.
Keep Reading: 2012 Chrysler 300 Mopar ’12 – Car News
Welcome to the first installment of the 24 Hours of LeMons Good/Bad Idea of the Week series, where we’ll share good racing ideas that go terribly wrong, bad racing ideas that go unaccountably right, and the general maelstrom of fabrication genius/madness that one encounters at every 24 Hours of LeMons race. We’ll start off with one of those ideas that looks great on paper: drop a big six-cylinder engine into Datsun’s beloved-but-underpowered sporty 510!
We admired the Pancho Villa-style costumes of Team Dirty Sanchez Datsun in the 2011 LeMons Team Costumes roundup, but this photograph didn’t show what made this car really special.
Yes, the Dirty Sanchez Datsun 510 showed up to the Where The Elite Meet To Cheat race at Charlotte Motor Speedway with the L28 six-cylinder out of a wrecked Datsun 280Z. While it’s true that you can get plenty of power into a 510 by hot-rodding the factory L16 or swapping in a junkyard KA, the LeMons Supreme Court finds those solutions boring (not to mention suspect under our budgetary limitations). Instead, the Dirty Sanchez guys did what the 
Of course, the 510′s natural rival is the BMW 2002, and we’ve had a few examples of each type in the 24 Hours of LeMons. The kind of 510 or 2002 that you can get for LeMons prices tends to be on the tired side—OK, they’re all staggeringly horrible basket cases, usually plucked from the very jaws of the crusher—which means that the LeMons 510-versus-2002 battles are fought more in the pits than on the track. At the Charlotte ’11 race, we made ourselves busy fanning the flames of the rivalry between the Dirty Sanchez Datsun team and the Jynweythek Engineering BMW 2002tii team from the moment we saw them pitted side-by-side. The Datsun had more power, but the BMW team had more LeMons racing experience (i.e., an entire weekend spent spinning wrenches at the Capitol Offense race at Summit Point Raceway, with a grand total of zero laps completed). Who would pile up more laps in this showdown?
Weather conditions in Charlotte weren’t ideal for a couple of 40-year-old heaps, and both cars suffered early and often from numerous mechanical ailments.
The 2002tii managed to get onto the track during Saturday’s session, but then stuff broke and the downpours dampened the team’s enthusiasm for repairs. Meanwhile, the Dirty Sanchez guys continued to try to get their Datsun running at all.
Saturday night, both teams forgot all about their woes during one of the most legendary all-night pit parties in LeMons history. Here we see the Index of Effluency–winning 1975 Ford LTD Landau of Team Tunachuckers carrying 44 racers on a tour of the paddock. Your Spec Miata can’t do this!
On Sunday, the green flag waved and the Jynweythek Engineering car clattered onto the track . . . but where was the 510? Wait, what’s that black car passing the MGB-GT and the LTD? It’s the Dirty Sanchez Datsun 510! The 510 sounded great, ran some decent mid-pack lap times, and stayed on the track for most of the day. When it was all over, the Dirty Sanchez Datsun had 184 laps and the Jynweythek Engineering 2002 had 183 laps. You can’t make this stuff up!
