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A Car with a Body Only a Mother Could Love

Welcome to the Concours d’LeMons

If you live in California, there’s a good chance you’ve either attended or heard about a concours. Some of the most famous reside here in the Golden State: the Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance, The Palos Verdes Concours de Elegance, etc. These are typically weekend-long events where the crème de le crème of classic autos come to be admired and rewarded for their metallic majesty.

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But what about the Yugos, Pintos and jalopies of the world? I mean, where’s the love?

“The Concours d’LeMons is an antidote to that self-congratulatory decadence,” according to a piece in Wired. “Where the Concours d’Elegance prizes historical accuracy and the “you know it when you see it” quality that is elegance, here the judges look for shabbiness and the also hard to define absurdity. Winning your class or the overall show means a bag of gag gifts, maybe a cheap plaque, and bragging rights of a dubious kind.”

This year’s “oil stain” of the auto appreciation returned to Seaside, California on August 19, just miles away from the splashy happenings in Pebble Beach. Hoopties, Rust Buckets, Misfits, Mistakes and the worst of the automotive world were on display, and as expected, celebrity judges accepted bribes for the thrift shop-sourced trophies.

You can read about and see more of this prestigious event here.

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