The Concours d'LeMons, Monterey's annual misfit car show, honors some of the oddest automobiles in America

The Concours d’LeMons has become, against some odds, an integral part of Pebble Beach weekend. Billed as "an ugly oil stain on Pebble Beach Car Week," it provides a necessary antidote to the wealth and pomposity elsewhere, featuring cars that no one wants but their owners — and even their owners don’t want them that much. It's a live-action cartoon, but it's also another, and possibly more authentic, side of the car industry.

Walking around LeMons is, at first, as much fun as you can have staring at cars. Look, there’s a Gremlin! Oh my God, an Edsel station wagon! A — whatever that thing is? (The winner/loser: the 1973 Acoma Mini Comtesse.)  But it also has a strangely enervating effect. We make so much crap. These things are death traps. Lemons has a way of making you believe that the car business is either run by well-meaning morons, or greedy idiots, or both. Can someone go back in time and prevent the combustion engine from being invented?