Teams

AAARRGH KRUU

Garage Headquarters: Seal Beach, CA

Driver: Cary "Chewy" Chiu

Mechanics: Greg "Grog" Grifka, Troy "Tree" Johnson, Paul "Mad Mother" Minton, "Skully"

Nuts and Bolts:

Avast, ye landlubbers! Ye best be hiding yer treasure and yer maiden aunts when the sun rises over Saint Louis on October 28, for out of the western sky are comin' the scurviest and most terrifyin' buccaneers ever to set boots on Forest Park. No snivellin' pirates of the Caribbean these. The blustery blokes making their way to Red Bull Soapbox Race come from a land so harsh, so wicked, that just hearin' the name of the place makes women swoon and grown men cower in fear. That's right, Mates: They hail from the O.C.

"We are the remnants of an ancient crew called the Orange Beards," says Chewy Chiu, captain of the poxy band. "Centuries of pillaging and marauding became tiresome, thus we decided to better ourselves by taking speech therapy classes and yoga." While simultaneously adjusting his eye-patch and shooing his parrot off the mizzen mast, Cap'n Chiu blusters that his crew quickly found such transcendental torture to be worse than walking the plank, so they reverted to their old ways. Now they're the feared land-pirates of Orange County, California, and their safe harbor is the welding department of Orange Coast College. There, they can obscure their outlaw features under the guise of protective helmets. And besides, the school mascot is a pirate.