March Crapness: Sweaty Sixteen (April 1)

The field narrows and the rounds come quicker now that we've reached the third round. We expect some close results from these matchups so be sure to vote!

Voting ends at 10 a.m. EST tomorrow.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: We'll be using Google for the polls from now on. You may notice that you can vote multiple times. DON'T DO THIS. We get a log of all vote and WILL NOT COUNT ANY VOTES WHERE YOU'VE STUFFED THE BALLOT BOXES (even though we live near Chicago).]

Go to the March Crapness tab for the full rundown, up-to-date bracket and schedule.

Read the introduction to March Crapness here.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates. Tweet about March Crapness using the hashtag #crapness.

[Extra-special thanks to Murilee Martin for assisting with many of the photos. All photos as credited.]





TRASHED TRANNY REGION:
Tetanus Racing (11) vs. Three Pedal Mafia (10)

Tetanus Racing - Dodge Neon, Porsche 944

Chris Champion and Mary Harris--Tetanus Racing's perpetrators--have driven in something like 40 races between them, including several successful ventures with the Tetanus cars and numerous arrive-and-drives all over the country. They even renewed their vows at the 2012 race at Road America. (Murilee Martin photo)

Tetanus Racing's original Dodge Neon is in fairly close competition with the Keystone Kops' Volvo, the Schumacher Taxi Service CoROLLa and a handful of California cars for most-campaigned. They've yet to podium, but the husband-wife team of Chris Champion and Mary Harris hold the team's till with a steady hand. And they're highly entertaining people to boot. They've suffered through the predictable maladies of the  Porsche 944 and eventually given up on the stock motor, which only had some snake eggs in it when they took ownership of it.

Resume: LeMons - 4 Top Tens, 1 Class B Win

First Round: def. Speedycop and His Gang of Outlaws 58-49
Second Round: def. Geo Metro Gnome 57-54



Three-Pedal Mafia - Honda Civic Wagovan, Sea Sprite (Chevy S10), Rolls Royce

After some races behind the wheel of a Honda Civic Wagovan, Three-Pedal Mafia upped the ante by dropping a boat hull over a Chevy S10 frame. It's not a fast combination, but the S10 has proved itself unexpectedly reliable several times over in crapcan racing. (Murilee Martin photo)

Chevy S10s have done well in the Index of Effluency hunt and Three-Pedal Mafia's S10 is no exception...except it is because the team pitched its silly truck bodywork and the S10 frame is instead clad with a 1971 Sea Sprite. The boat and its nautically themed crew sailed it to an IOE at New Jersey Motorsports Park and allegedly forayed into the experimental sport of paddockskiing (No longer allowed, according to the LeMons fun police). Next up on Three Pedal's plate: A Rolls Royce for 2013.

Resume: LeMons - 1 Index of Effluency  

First Round: def. Time Travelers of Doom 47-10

Second Round: def. Bucksnort Racing 61-15

WRECKED ROD REGION: 
Team Bear Patrol (6) vs. Cerveza Racing (15)


Team Bear Patrol -Lexus SC400

Team Bear Patrol's Lexus SC400 poses for an opportunistic photo at Iowa Speedway, displaying its battle-scarred hide and a terrific theme based on one of the countless points of plot-twisting minutiae from a Simpsons episode. (Greg Brawley photo)

For us at The Rusty Hub, one of our favorite aspects of crapcan racing is luxury marquees with little-to-no track pedigree dicing on the track with sports cars. Team Bear Patrol's Lexus SC400 is one such crapheap, a battered and ugly V8-powered, slushboxed personal luxury coupe. In addition to a great theme, Bear Patrol have managed to throw their SC400 at the Bimmer-heavy ChumpCar Central region with solid results and minimal collateral damage. This could very well become the first Lexus with an overall win in 2013.


Resume: ChumpCar - 4 Top Tens

First Round: def. Rolling Chicane Limo Service 48-39
Second Round: def. Tubby Butterman Racing 51-14



Cerveza Racing - BMW E28, Porsche 944, Volkswagen Beetle

Many people overlook the BMW 5-Series as a road racer, but the Cerveza crew have maximized the platform's potential with a slew of consecutive victories and a resounding Western Regional Championship in 2012. (Murilee Martin photo)

In 2012, Cerveza Racing accomplished something that only Hong Norrth had done previously in LeMons: Won three consecutive races they entered. Unlike Hong Norrth, Cerveza campaigns their BMW E28 in the much-more-top-heavy West Region. In the only California race they didn't win in 2012, they finished runner-up to Eyesore Racing. In just seven races, Cerveza has cemented themselves among the elite crapcan teams while running the "most interesting car in the world."

Resume: LeMons - 4 Overall Wins, 8 Top Tens

First Round: def. Race Hard Race Ugly 27-4

Second Round: def. Bust-A-Nut 30-23

SHEARED SHAFT REGION:
NSF Racing (6) vs. Rally Baby (7)


NSF Racing - Plymouth Fury, Plymouth Barracuda, Mercedes 170, Mercedes 6.9, Dodge Aries, Honda CRX, Chrysler Saratoga...Basically, all of the cars

NSF Racing loves the old Mopar and their decrepit Plymouth Fury limped its way to an Index of Effluency and occasionally to the LeMons Penalty Box, mostly for the car itself just being dangerous. (Murilee Martin photo)

NSF remind us that, like YouTube, LeMons has a weird section that people periodically stumble into. NSF started out innocently with some econoboxes before diving headfirst into that aforementioned weird part. Characteristics of NSF entries may include (but are not limited to): decrepit, obscure, dangerous, awesome and on fire. Maybe the most impressive initiative on their very long resume is passing on their K-Car wagon in a sort of Sisterhood of the Traveling Fails manner...not that we've read that book or cried at seen the movie or anything.

Resume: LeMons - 2 Class Wins, 2 Indexes of Effluency
First Round: def. Nutjob Racing 43-10
Second Round: def. MR2 Biohazard 58-24



Rally Baby -Audi 4000, BMW E30, BMW E36, AMC Hornet, Mercedes 450SL

Rally Baby's 1975 Mercedes 450SL is one of the best-looking crapcans of all time, a product of rampant depreciation in Malaise Era German luxury coupes. Who knew? (Murilee Martin photo)

In the space of about a year, Rally Baby Racing evolved from a team campaigning a surprisingly good Audi 4000 to the LeMons version of an autonomous collective with a driving roster of approximately 274 people driving a bevy of German machines in 2012 while simultaneously heading toward a collection of automotive oddities for 2013. Look for strange and terrifying things from Rally Baby in the near future.

Resume: LeMons - 1 Top Ten

First Round: def. The Eh! Team 61-26
Second Round: def. Eggboy Racing 57-30





CRACKED CRANK REGION:
Schumacher Taxi Service (3) vs. Crushed Red Pepper (2)


Schumacher Taxi Service -Toyota CoROLLa, Toyota MR2, Chevy Citation X-11, BMW E30, Mazda Miata, Ford Crown Victoria

Schumacher Taxi Service retired the venerable CoROLLa at the end of the 2012 season after more races than we can count, a minor rollover, a handful of liveries, an overall win and a hell of a lot of fun. They'll carry on racing with an E30 and Mustang in 2013. (Murilee Martin photo)

 Schumacher Taxi Service's original CoROLLa FX16 recently entered retirement after well more than a dozen crapcan races (probably more like 20), including a race win at Sebring in ChumpCar. In addition, the team has raced all over the eastern half of the country entering whatever they can get their hands on: a Miata, an MR2, an E30, a skeletal Crown Victoria and a brake-fire-tastic Citation X-11. The length and breadth of their crapcan experience defies brevity and reason, but the Schumacher crew(s) are a staple of  both crapcan series.

Resume: ChumpCar - 1 Overall Win, 7 Top Tens; LeMons - 5 Top Tens, 1 Index of Effluency
First Round: def. Ferdinand... 21-8

Second Round: def. SHOtime 64-16


Crushed Red Pepper -Toyota MR2

This is one of our favorite photos from LeMons, but we've seen it so much that we hardly think twice of the fact that this MR2 is powered by an antique airplane engine. (The Rusty Hub photo)

Marc Labranche stuffed a World War II-era airplane engine into a second-generation Toyota MR2. The build thread for this project literally takes about four hours to read and makes us scratch our collective heads several times throughout. There is no way any other crapcan has anywhere approaching this amount of custom fabrication. Next up for Marc: A turbine-powered Chevy Nova, naturally.

Resume: Exploitation of the budget-exempt radial engine clause
First Round: def. Rust in the Wind 21-17
Second Round: def. Hong Norrth 28-27