Grand Harbor Imports

High schools go wheel to wheel in Saturn race; BMW to “marque” Hilton Head show

From early model Saturns to even earlier vintage BMWs, racing has recently highlighted the world of wheels in the Charleston area and coastal South Carolina. Here’s a couple of examples.

Students: Chump Car champs

The match race had been in the works for weeks: 19-year-old Saturns retooled by high school auto body students going head-to-head on the track.

This past weekend, the challenge took place at Roebling Road Raceway near Savannah. It was part of the Chump Car Series races June 18 and 19.

The Chump Car Series — yes, that’s the real name — is an endurance race series established for $500 race cars, said Brad Davis, one of the team drivers and executive general manager of Rick Hendrick Imports in Charleston.

Similar to the 24 Hours of LeMons series, Chump Car’s rules allow any type of vehicle as long as “if you put it in front of your house with a for sale sign, nobody would offer you more than $500 for it.”

Two 1992 Saturn SC Coupes were brought to the race in the MINI of Charleston/MINI USA.com trailer. They were once part of a track day fleet that Hendrick Motorsports used for sponsor events at Charlotte (now Lowe’s) Motor Speedway. When the fleet was set to be scrapped, Rick Hendrick Imports rescued them “with the thought of one day making a usable car or two out of the six broken Saturns,” Davis said.

They wound up, three cars apiece, at Garrett Academy of Technology in North Charleston and Stratford High School Auto Tech class in Ladson. The instructions were to piece things together to create a $500 race car for an informal inter-school competition. The models were completed late this winter.

The driver teams were divided between the two cars for 14 hours of racing, seven hours apiece on Saturday and on Sunday.

The Garrett team included Car Chief Andrew Giaquinto, Davis, Leon Fox and Ben Barnes. Driving for Stratford were Car Chief Chip Hall, Stuart Kestenbaum, Tom Blocker and Wayne Simpson.

Calvin Mathews and Chris Gathers, recent graduates of Garrett Academy, were the lead techs in preparing the race cars and joined in as the weekend race team crew along with the school’s Auto Body instructor Michael Branch.

Saturday, both cars lapped the track at remarkable speeds with surprising reliability, Davis said.

The Stratford car had “one small clutch linkage problem” and finished 19th, completing 208 laps. The Garrett entry placed 18th, completing 211 laps on the nine-turn 2-mile track with an average speed of just above 76 mph.

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