A team of Rice University engineering students performed a time-bending feat by turning an almost half-century-old vehicle into a race car.
The Lemons Racecar senior design team, winner of a Staff Favorite Video Award at the 2026 Huff OEDK Engineering Design Showcase and Competition, rescued a retired 1980 Datsun 200 SX ⎯ a model also known as a ‘Silvia’⎯ and turned it into a race-ready vehicle for the 24 Hours of Lemons, an endurance car racing series that is a tongue-in-cheek take on 24 Hours of Le Mans, the oldest active endurance racing event in the world.
“The premise of the event is you spend no more than $500 on an old car, including any performance modifications, then add safety equipment and race it for hours against similarly budget-constrained vehicles,” said Emily Myint, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering who is part of Team Lemons.
Myint and teammates Claire Callaway, Henry Prendergast, Ilina Goyal, Kate Doherty, Max Kuhlman and Owen Krum acquired the vehicle for $300 and outfitted it with core safety systems, including a roll cage, a fire suppression system and a kill switch that can shut off power in case of emergencies. They also added a telemetry system, so the pit crew can monitor real-time performance data like steering input, oil pressure and more without distracting the driver.
“One of my favorite parts of the build has been manufacturing the roll cage,” Goyal said. “Each tube had to be cut, bent, notched and fitted to follow the exact curves of the car and then welded in place from inside the car. That last part meant Emily and I spent a lot of hours laying weld beads overhead and sideways and upside down, sometimes blind and just hoping the angle was right. The competition rightfully mandates professional-quality welds on the cage, so it’s forced us to really step up our skills.”
Winning the race depends on more than just performance: One of the highlights of the 24 Hours of Lemons race is its “Halloween meets Gasoline” prize, which recognizes standout car theme, team concept, costumes and build. The Rice team drew inspiration from George Orwell’s “1984,” a 1949 novel that imagines a dystopian future society under totalitarian rule.
“The theming is more important than finishing first,” Prendergast said. “Actually, very few cars finish at all; but if you look good, that is what the judges want to see.”
The Silvia is appropriately decked out in surveillance-state styling, including a mock “telescreen” ⎯ a rendering of what Orwell’s novel describes as ubiquitous devices for nonstop monitoring and indoctrination. The vehicle is also equipped with speakers that announce bleak propaganda-style messages from time to time: “With the total adoption of Newspeak, thoughtcrime will become completely impossible,” and “He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future,” and “We are safe here because Big Brother protects us.”
“It hopefully keeps people wary and makes them pay attention to our car,” Prendergast added.
The team will compete May 2-3 in Jennings, Oklahoma, with four drivers taking turns at the steering wheel. The students have had to learn to drive stick shift and adapt to the quirks of an older vehicle.
“Without any of the abstraction or software you get on modern vehicles, even those with manual transmissions, the driving is a lot more direct,” Kuhlman said. “Driving the Datsun has helped me develop a much better intuition for how the mechanics of the car actually work, because every input I give is directly reflected in the car’s behavior.”
“This project was very self-driven,” Prendergast said, noting the idea to use the race as the context for the yearlong engineering capstone design project originated within the team. “It made sense to take this on because there were a lot of engineering challenges associated with getting the car in race shape.”
Those challenges, from fabrication constraints to safety requirements, are central to the kind of engineering learning experience the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) is committed to offer. The capstone project is a rite of passage for engineering students, who learn by designing, building, testing and refining hands-on projects under real-world conditions.
The project was sponsored by the Martiel A. Luther Endowment for the Practice of Engineering and the Biomechanical Research Institute, an engineering consulting firm in Houston. The team’s lead instructor was David Trevas, a lecturer in mechanical engineering.
While it remains to be seen how many laps the Rice Lemons’ car will complete, one thing is certain: Big Brother will be watching.
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Video is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-PhRCWqMvM (Video by Rice University OEDK team Lemons Racecar)
Photos: https://rice.box.com/s/rt3x991sh6xg3milvjuyqf5qme4yul96