A coast-to-coast race of exotic cars began in San Francisco last week with a flood of calls to police from frightened commuters caught in the middle of the rally. By the time the first competitors reached the finish line on Tuesday night in Miami, they had racked up over 500 traffic citations.Steve Hymon reports.
Drivers in the race said at least one participant had accumulated $10,000 in fines and bail postings before reaching New Orleans. Another entrant had been cited for going nearly four times the speed limit - 210 mph - in his 655-horsepower Koenigsegg in Texas, said racer Brian Kelley of Chicago.
"If you have trouble hearing me, it's because there's a police helicopter hovering over us," said Kelley (28), as he sped through Alabama in his Audi S4. Kelley was pulled over two blocks from the starting line in San Francisco for going 55 mph in a 25 mph zone.
The Gumball Rally is billed as a leisurely six-day drive across America. Organisers have repeatedly insisted that the annual event is not a race. But they've also said it can't be helped if some participants find speed limits too confining for their Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys and other dream machines.
The event has been around in one form or another since the 1960s and was made famous in two films that have become cult favorites of car enthusiasts, The Gumball Rally in 1976 and The Cannonball Run in 1981.
The race was revived in 1999 by a wealthy Briton named Maximillian Cooper, who has said he wanted to put together a soirée for 50 of his friends. This year, 148 racers are competing. For the most part, the rally attracts wealthy Europeans willing to pay the entry fee of $16,500, plus another $15,000 to $20,000 to have their cars ferried by plane to the US - provided that Cooper accepts their application to enter the event.
The rally began in San Francisco when the competitors squealed out of the Fairmont Hotel at about 8 p.m. Within minutes, dozens of 911 calls from worried motorists came into California Highway Patrol dispatchers.
"We had reports of BMWs and Porsches going 100 mph on the Oakland Bay Bridge," said Sergeant Wayne Ziese of the California Highway Patrol. "It's dangerous stuff. The speed limit is 50 mph on the bridge, and they were going twice that."
Other cars were seen weaving in and out of traffic on Interstate 80 and using the shoulder to get around traffic. The CHP cited five drivers and impounded five cars: three BMWs, a Mercedes and a Porsche. The CHP also had a report that a Ferrari had spun out in the snow trying to cross Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada.
Ziese said the CHP did not know about the race until the cars hit the streets. Organisers attempted to keep the route secret until the race began. Police in several other states reported they were caught off guard.
In Las Vegas, several motorists called the Nevada Highway Patrol to report two Lamborghinis racing two Porsches on a local highway. The Arizona Highway Patrol issued 25 to 35 tickets to people in the rally, with several citations being handed out soon after the cars crossed Hoover Dam into the state.
Far from slowing them down, the tickets are a badge of honour for some racers, who have taped them to their car windows.
Bo Bridges, 28, a photographer from Hermosa Beach, California, is driving the slowest vehicle in the field, a Volkswagen Eurovan sponsored by the beverage company Yoo-hoo. He described the race as a 3,000-mile high-speed party.
"Most of these guys are from Europe," Bridges said. "They get tagged at 150 mph, they go to jail and get their mug shots, then post bail. They don't care. They're laughing about it in the hotel that night."
Between San Francisco and Pensacola, Florida, Bridges was pulled over four times and got one ticket for going "about 120" mph in the Nevada desert. He voiced concern that the van begins shaking violently at speeds over 90.
Bridges said he began the race with five co-drivers, but had lost them all by Florida. A husband-and-wife team were left behind in Reno after they got into a protracted argument. Another "annoying" co-driver was involuntarily dropped off at a checkpoint in the New Mexico desert. The last two teammates were apparently victims of having too much of everything on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
That hasn't stopped other drivers. "Here's how it goes every night," Bridges said. "They go to the bars until they close, then they clean out the mini-bars, and then they find the nudie bars. Whatever's open, they find it."
Kelley, the Chicagoan driving the Audi, said two women were pulled over in Texas for speeding in a Ferrari 575 Maranello. When state troopers approached the car, they found the women were topless.
The officers, according to Kelley's account, then called for backup and posed for photos with the competitors before allowing them to leave.
Officials with the Texas Highway Patrol could not confirm the story but did say that driving topless in Texas is not illegal. "It's not like we've had an outbreak of nude driving," said a spokeswoman.
Another tale making the rounds involves the driver of the Koenigsegg, a custom-made Swedish car that retails for $400,000. The driver apparently blew the car's oil gasket, and the only replacement part he could find was at a nearby dealer . . . in a new car. So, the man bought the car and took only the gasket.
Many car enthusiasts around the world tried to follow the Gumball Rally over the Internet, but accounts were hard to find - apparently because participants had better things to do at night than sit in front of computers and file dispatches.
- Los Angeles Times
Founded in 1999 by British entrepeneur Maximillian Cooper, the Gumball 3000 traces its roots to the Burt Reynolds movie, The Cannonball Run.
Conceived as an elite six-day car race across Europe, Cooper saw it as more of "a private party for 50 of his closest friends", the rich and not-so-famous members of a latter-day "brat-pack".
The event now attracts the world's bon vivants in what is more of an extreme sport than classic car jaunt.This is no London-Brighton run. There are no points or standings, unless you count speeding tickets and crashed cars. "Racing", in this case, means driving real, real fast for a while, then partying for a longer while. Participants range from supermodels and actors to eccentric millionaires and car freaks.
The first race set the trend for things to come. A total of 55 cars took part in the six days over 3,000 miles in a no-holds-barred tour across Europe.
Among the entrants were Jason Priestley, of Beverley Hills 90210 in a Lotus Esprit V8; ex-World Boxing Champion Chris Eubank in his 55mph "Peterbilt Truck", Dannii Minogue in her Porsche Boxster, while Charles Morgan tested a "prototype" Aero 8 in front of McLaren F1s, one-off Ferraris, Playmates in a Cadillac, a Hummer, and in true Gumball fashion even a self-styled ambulance and British police car.This year, for just under , the demi-celebrities and rich-kids of Europe and the US spent six days crossing the US. The price is for two persons and one car and covers hotel accommodation, but no bail money.
- Michael McAleer