Wynn and Lonny #1 Mexicali 1000 and #2 Road Race of Champions

The Wynn and Lonny Racing Books were published by Grosset and Dunlap during the middle 1970s.  This series is the last series created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Wynn Redford and Lonny Morris are both interested in racing.  The boys are 18 in the first book and 19 in the rest of the books.  Lonny's primary role is mechanic, while Wynn is the driver.  Sometimes Lonny also drives.  Two girls, Nancy-Rae Eubanks and Inky Larsson, are close friends of the boys.  The girls also drive race cars and frequently assist the boys. There is no romance between any of the young people.

In Wynn and Lonny #1, The Mexicali 1000, Wynn and Lonny plan to attend a racing-driver school in California.  Bud Eubanks asks them to find his daughter, Nancy-Rae, who is somewhere in California.  The boys encounter various adventures as they drive cross-country to California.  Once there, they learn that they were swindled.  There is no racing-driver school!  The boys must earn money so that they can rebuild their Beetle Bomb and race in the Mexicali 1000.

On page 140, the young people eat Vienna sausages and crackers during the trip. This interested me, since we ate Vienna sausages and crackers on car trips when I was young.

Wynn and Lonny end up staying in a roach-infested hotel.  They even hear the roaches moving around during the night.  Yuck.

The first half of the book is rough and hard to read.  There is way too much technical information about racing, race cars, and engines.  This is as expected, but it was too much for me.  The second half of the book reads like a regular series book adventure.

I did not enjoy the first half of the book, while I did enjoy the second half.

In Wynn and Lonny #2, Road Race of Champions, Wynn and Lonny build a Formula Vee racer and compete on the Formula Vee circuit.  The boys encounter numerous setbacks as opponents sabotage their racer during the competitions.

Nancy-Rae and Inky are such great characters. The girls go out to investigate on their own after Beetle Bomb is stolen.  They uncover a clue that leads to the recovery of the car.  Way to go, girls!

This book also contains a lot of technical information about racing, but it is not excessive like in the first book.  I didn't mind the information, and I greatly enjoyed this book.