Cleetus McFarland is a car enthusiast with a blessing—his very own race track. That means he can run crazy events that no motorsports body would ever approve. Enter the Altima 600 – a circle track race cum destruction derby for the most dangerous Nissans ever to grace public roads.
Hilariously, the event was effectively open to all comers with a stock Nissan Altima, no experience required. The only stipulations were that you brought a stock car and showed up with a helmet. The field was made up of experienced amateur racers, YouTubers, and a gaggle of others, some of whom had little to no track experience whatsoever.
It’s one thing to race a bunch of haggard Nissan Altimas on track. It’s another thing to race seventy-six of them at the same time with random people who just showed up on the day. Oh, and did we mention all this is on a 3/8th-mile circle track? It’s the kind of badass, backwoods racing you’ll only see at the Freedom Factory.
Some of the Altimas in action were properly race-prepped prior to combat, with racing seats, harnesses, and simple roll cages. However, the race rules were incredibly permissive on the safety front. You could run stock seats and seatbelts with nothing but a race helmet if you were so brave. Beyond safety mods, cars had to remain entirely stock— DOT-rated tires, standard suspension, standard drivetrain.
As you might imagine, the field of 76 cars wound a third of the way around the track when all bunched up at the start. Despite the congestion, the start was surprisingly mature. You might have expected an instant pileup, but no major crashes occurred on lap 1. Still, by the end of it, the leaders were already catching the back of the pack. The joys of small tracks!
With so many competitors, the fleet was rich and varied. Each team gave their car a unique visual flair. The field ranges from largely complete examples with clean vinyl graphics, to beat-up rust buckets with lights and bumpers missing and homebrew rattle-can paint jobs. One particularly striking entry sported a couch on the roof.
Keeping track of the race positions was immediately impossible beyond just watching the timing board, but that’s not really what this was all about. The spectacle for the audience was top-notch, regardless. Think back to the last time you drove to the airport, and a nutcase Altima driver blasted past you at 100 miles an hour with the bumper hanging off. Multiply that nutcase seventy-fold and that’s a reasonable description of the action above.
Early in the race, Cleetus himself made grand progress by whipping around on the highline above most of the traffic. That might have remained a successful strategy, save for the quirky rules for this event. The race ran on green and red lights only—no cautions. In the event of a crash, the race would stop so the drivers could be extracted. Racing would then resume—with the stranded cars left in place.
Before long, the high line was littered with Altima corpses, and the track grew increasingly tighter for the remaining competitors. It’s the kind of thing no sanctioning authority would ever allow. At the Freedom Factory, though… drama reigned.
A fuel leak for the Speedycop entry was enough to send safety crews running to flip it over and stem the flow. Surviving Altimas flung lost bumpers and trim high into the air. A pileup turned one corner into the zipper merge from hell. And yet, the race reportedly ended without injury, a blessing amidst the hilarious danger.
I won’t spoil the results, but there was actual racing beyond the carnage. Cleetus spent much of the race duking it out with the #88 JH Diesel, with plenty of rubbing and racing as the two diced for the top spot. Bumper taps were just the appetizer as the duo routinely knocked each other sideways during their duel.
Many of us dream of one day owning a race track and hooning a fleet of nonsense vehicles with our friends. Cleetus McFarland has an uncanny ability to make such nonsense dreams a reality. The world had never before seen 76 Altimas doing battle on the track, and the world may never see it again. But for one glorious weekend, it happened, and we have all been lucky enough to witness the carnage.
Image credits: Cleetus McFarland via YouTube screenshot
The private race track link in the article is not the race track where this event took place. Do you have a link for the actual venue, please?
freedomfactoryusa.com
Normally when you see Altimas driving like that it’s because a repo truck is in hot pursuit. Hell, they could do that as a future event. The Altimas win if they can make it 30 laps without getting snagged by a repo truck. If you spin out, you’d better get moving again before they catch you.
Totally unfair. It could also be Child Protective Services or a bail bondsman.
I’d like to see a mass of Altimas like this in a “one quart challenge” race.
Drain the oil from all of them. Add exactly one quart of oil to each.
Race to the death. (Of the engines, that is.)
And put ’em all on space-saver spare tires!
Looks a lot more fun than serious racing.
My hometown dirt track has held what’s known as the Fireball Enduro for decades.
It’s amateur hour banger racing. Roll cages not required, but extra purse money if you do. Same rules, dead cars left on the track. They’ll put 120+ cars on a 1/2 mile track.
Fireball Enduro Weekend Information – Cornwall Motor Speedway
The couch on the roof was a throw back to the recent sick week car Cleetus ran. It was an El Camino and they picked up a couch on the drive tot eh next track portion of one day…..it would have been far more epic if they had flipped it over and secured it with 2X4’s into a massive wing and then added trash can fart pipe or something.
This needs to be done as a monthly event to cull the herd.
*biweekly.
just like their payments
I could see the Spark 500 or the Aveo 2000 to get rid of those little crap boxes too.
the fact that so many showed up on all four original tires definitely made me think this race was not realistic though. 😉
The company I work for has two Sparks. They are actually fun little cars. And pretty reliable/low cost of ownership.
which is why they will end up the next gen Altima I am sure. I suppose the other race that would make sense here is the Chrysler … um … 200. those are the Altima alternative it seems like right now.
If they make this a regular series we all might see our insurance premiums drop after enough of those death rockets get taken off the road.
I think they are doing it again in October. They also have the danger ranger 9000 which is more interesting because the rangers rollover often.
I haven’t seen safety rules that relaxed since NASCAR in 2001
I’m disappointed to see an utter lack of temporary spare tires with 0% tread left on them.
THAT should have been a rule requirement. What a missed opportunity.
One temporary spare on the front left of every car, mandatory, would fit this event perfectly, and probably keep the ruckus more controllable, too.
If you’re not going to make safety cages mandatory, you have to keep the speeds down somehow. I think overpacking the track and relying on traffic isn’t quite enough. It certainly doesn’t work for Altima drivers on the freeways of Detroit.
Cleetus (AKA Garrett Mitchell) will likely go down as one of the automotive greats.
The real beauty of this is that for a brief moment, there were no Altimas driving on public roads
Yeah, it’s FL. Pretty sure every other car down here is an Altima locked onto your rear bumper like a Sidewinder missile.
The real question is, how much did the FIA fine them for swearing?
Oh Lord, Cletus is lucky the local cops didn’t find out about this event. Everyone would have been arrested on general principals.
I think his other races use up all the old Panther cop cars, so he likely has them in his pockets.
Were they allowed to overload them with paving stones or landscaping bricks like every Altima pulling out of one of the big box home improvement stores?
As I read this, I am sitting in a sandwich shop that shares a strip-mall with a big hardware store. And an overloaded Altima just drove by.
This is how you determine who has the most Altima Energy. They now lead Nissan and all Nissan drivers into the future of rentals and reckless driving.
Either they went back to their normal commute the next day or Copart for sale
I am angry.
Time to start looking at stock tracks in my area. Pretty sure Southside Speedway got closed up.
Next event is Oct 11th.
Bradenton Florida
Bradenton is peak Altima country.
Hell yeah!
But what is YeeHaw Junction?
It’s a place 40 minutes from Vero Beach. I’ve been there. It’s peak concentrated Florida.
Oh, I’m going to be there for that.
I believe there is a classic Japanese proverb that loosely translates to “If a man who dangerously drives an Altima is placed in a sea of Altimas, he becomes merely an average driver while the world burns around him.”
Yes. That was said by Nissan VP Kenji Matsushita when the first Altima rolled off the line.
How many were on paper tags?
The only racing series you can recreate with $700
In an America as divided as it is, we can all look up to a true feat of American heroism, Taking 76 weapons of 30-over-in-the-middle-lane destruction off the streets, making our countries roads an ever safer place.
What do you call 76 Altimas in a fight to the death at a racecourse in Florida?
A good start!.
FINALLY, SOMEONE ENACTING MY VENGEANCE ON MY MORTAL ENEMY ON THE RACE TRACK: https://www.jalopnik.com/which-car-would-you-enter-in-the-24-hours-of-lemons-out-1698756653/
I hate these cars. I hate them with every fiber of my being after being personally wronged by one. May they all get hella butt destroyed.
When my Civic got totaled and we were walking into Enterprise, we passed an Altima and a Charger. I pointed the Altima out to Monique and said “oh look, a cockroach.” She kept muttering “please don’t give Nick the Altima” under her breath the whole time. Altimas are also my mortal enemy.
If only each one had a trombone, then it would have been “the big parade”.
+1 Wells Fargo wagon
God imagine the sound of so many CVTs at wide open throttle in one place
That’s so many infinite gear ratios!
Add in an Infinity and you would have infinity plus 1
Right now a certain meme account is off in a corner softly weeping…
In their honor:
“This race was made possible by the Jatco Xtronic CVT. This proves the Jatco Xtronic CVT can thrive in the most grueling crucible of them all, motorsport. Imagine how much better your car would be with the race-proven Jatco Xtronic CVT!”
gotta wonder how many were though. there were at least a few manuals and the early Alts were Automatics. it is kind of why so many survive while every other Nissan is dead by 80K Jatco induced death.