Hagerty contest seeks America's sweetest lemon for Concours d'LeMons

Our friends at Hagerty Insurance will be taking online submissions for a contest seeking America's best off-the-wall car. The “Sweetest LeMon” gets a free trip to the 2011 Concours d'LeMons.

In contrast to the prestigious events and careful selections for the Monterey Classic Car Week, the third-annual LeMons event spotlights quirky and unusual cars chosen on a whim.

The award-winning oddball and its driver will lead the opening-day tour at LeMons boasting the “America's Sweetest LeMon” title on Aug. 20 in northern California.

“The classic-car community is about fun and each person's passion, so we feel these cars and their owners deserve to be celebrated,” CEO McKeel Hagerty said. “The Concours d'LeMons is a chance for us to celebrate the often-overlooked cars that have their own cultlike following.”

If you own an unusual vehicle worth celebrating, submit a photo and a brief justification as to why it deserves to be named America's Sweetest LeMon. Send submissions to sweetestlemon@hagerty.com by Sunday, July 24.

Photos and stories for the top 10 candidates will be posted for public voting July 26-31 at www.hagerty.com/sweetestlemon.

The Monterey Week is packed with car shows, vintage racing and car auctions. Autoweek will be there providing streaming photo galleries and live coverage of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, historic racing at Laguna Seca, the Monterey car auctions and much more. Go to autoweek.com/monterey for complete coverage and live updates.

By Michelle Koueiter