Survival of the Fittest

I recently read about an old race track in Georgia with a cool history:

A large part of Hall County has been underwater since 1957 when the gates at Buford Dam were closed and water from the Chattahoochee River backed up, creating what is now Lake Lanier. And, much of what remains that was covered by water is now resurfacing because of the drought.

One of the most visible is the grandstand of the old Hall County Race Track. You can see it, protruding out of the water along a walking trail at Laurel park. Just across the lake at the bottom of Old Cleveland Highway, you can find the foundation of a filling station, complete with grease pit.

With the low levels of water in the dried up lake, people are finding souvenirs from the early days of racing, a history which I've always found interesting:

During the Prohibition era of the 1920's and early 30's, the undercover business of whiskey, or "moonshine", running began to boom. More of a problem than secret manufacture of moonshine was the secret transportation of it. The common term for moonshine runners was "bootleggers". Bootleggers were "men who illegally ran whiskey from hidden stills to hundreds of markets across the Southeast. These men were the real Dukes of Hazzard, only there was nothing funny about their business. Driving at high speeds at night, often with the police in pursuit, was dangerous. The penalty for losing the race was jail or loss of livelihood." (1)

As bootlegging boomed, the drivers began to race among themselves to see who had the fastest cars. Bootleggers raced on Sunday afternoons and then use, the same car to haul moonshine Sunday night. Inevitably, people came to see the races, and racing moonshine cars became extremely popular in the backroads of the South. Bootlegging continued even after the end of the Prohibition era, because of the huge tax placed on whiskey upon repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933.

Today, with the modern drug prohibition, the bootleggers aren't in the south, but instead "south of the border." In Mexico, police made this interesting find:

Police in Mexico have come across a new weapon being used by the country's drug cartels - a James Bond-style vehicle complete with gadgets designed to deter arrest.

The car was abandoned by the gang members after a shoot-out.

The police and army sent to fight Mexico's drug cartels have seen most things - sophisticated rocket launchers, powerful assault rifles and gold-plated pistols.

But in the northern state of Tamaulipas even they were shocked to come across a Jeep Grande Cherokee kitted out with its own anti-police gadgets.

Inside was a smoke machine and a device to spray spikes onto the road behind - the purpose to make a getaway easier and stop the car from being followed.

If a variation of NASCAR comes out of this, it might look more like Battlebots.

UPDATE: And there may be an aquatic version.