- It's the time of year where public roads around the globe
become a racetrack for the rich and famous.
It's got an obscene lineup of million dollar cars
driven so recklessly you'd swear
all of them were Nissan Altimas.
It's the most interesting
and stimulating way to see different countries
around the globe,
and blast straight through 'em!
And, the coolest part?
Johnny Knoxville did it.
How did it start?
And after everything that's gone down,
how is it still a thing?
Let's find out.
This is everything you need to know to get
up to speed on the Gumball 3000.
(upbeat techno music)
Hello, my name's Rylie, and I'm a friend of the channel,
and I'm also the artist that made the Donut Media mural.
It's finally done after so many sleepless nights,
snacks,
Red Bulls,
ups and downs, highs and lows.
Now it's finally here and I'm so excited
you guys get to see it
and have your own version of it as a sticker.
- It's not gonna be available for very long,
so if you want it,
I suggest you go to donut media.com right now
and get you one.
(techno beat)
Now, you may have heard
of this chaotic mess of multi-million dollar
exotic cars driven by some of the richest people on earth.
They rip through tiny European streets,
fat American highways,
and even around the Nurburgring,
cheered on by international car enthusiasts,
all for the glory of an engraved name on a cup.
So cool.
(chuckles)
But how did the Gumball 3000 start?
What are they trying to prove?
To understand, we're have to go back to a time
that wasn't great for cars.
All right.
During the oil crisis,
we mention it a lot in the seventies,
the federal government mandated a 55 mile
per hour speed limit nationwide to save gas
during the oil embargo.
Car enthusiasts,
including CAR and DRIVER's founder Brock Yates,
didn't think this was a good idea.
They said, you know what?
This ain't fair. Okay?
And as a form of protest against the
"lunacy of government bureaucracy",
Yates founded a thing called the Cannonball Run.
Now you've probably heard of it,
but if you haven't,
the entire point of the Cannonball is to drive
from New York to Los Angeles
as fast as you possibly can.
California here we come!
All right.
The record is currently 25 hours, 39 minutes.
It was set during quarantine,
and I bet three of those hours
were spent in LA traffic.
(laugh track) Thank you, LA traffic.
We're known for traffic.
Thank you.
- [James] Thank you.
(audience cheers)
LA traffic.
Thank you.
Just like everything fun,
the Cannonball Run was super dangerous and illegal.
All right.
Yates canceled the official event in 1979,
but that wouldn't stop racing deviants
from taking the Cannonball as a blueprint
for their own races.
All right, now let's jump ahead to the nineties.
Skip the eighties altogether.
All right.
A young hot boy model named Maximillion Cooper
decided to take his earnings from the catwalk
and learn how to street race.
I mean, that's how most of us get into it.
We're hot boy models,
we make a buncha cheddar,
and then we end up street racing.
Tale as old as time.
Now Cooper had enough contacts and friends
in both racing and fashion that he was like,
- [James] "Hmm, wouldn't it be fun if I took the glamor
and money of the fashion industry
and melded it with the street racing scene?
High fashion and high revving exotics,
a wild after party every night.
Yes. Yes.
I think that would be marvelous." (laughs evilly)
I don't know where he's from.
In 1999, Maximillion organized a fun rally
through some Europe's most iconic cities
and called it the Gumball 3000,
because the route would be 3000 miles long
and it was inspired by the Cannonball Run.
It's kind of playful, all right?
It's fun.
It's cheeky.
The first official Gumball 3000
had pretty much two requirements:
bring an interesting car,
and pay an entry fee of $8,700.
Now, that isn't exactly cheap.
But with that fee, you get hotel accommodations,
you get meals,
and access to every single party the rally had to offer.
And believe me when I say
these were parties that you'd want to go to.
Okay. Cause they're fun.
They passed apps,
they had little puffs with shrimps in 'em, all right.
They got Thai, Thai, Thai inspired tacos.
They had maybe a little bowl with stew.
Like a, one spoon of like of goulash.
Little stew bowl.
Don't get me started on desserts.
So many shrimps were consumed.
Original Gumballers included Kate Moss,
Jamiroquai, Kylie Minogue,
and one of my personal heroes,
Johnny Knoxville.
Adjusting for inflation,
their modern equivalents are
Bella Hadid, Drake,
Camila Cabello, and Johnny Knoxville,
because Johnny Knoxville's timeless and he'll never die.
He can't, they've tried.
And because I like him so much,
he's gonna come back up in the story later.
So stick around.
And while we're at it,
go ahead and hit that like button.
Now, as I mentioned before,
Maximillion used the rough length of the Cannonball Run
as a template for his rally.
But European miles are completely different
from American ones.
They call them kilomiles over there
and they're made up by the queen, all right?
3000 miles in the US is easy to envision, right?
You start New York,
you drive west until you see the ocean.
Easy, just like the pilgrims did.
But how do you spend 3000 miles traveling around Europe?
Because Europe is way tighter and twistier,
and the exact size of two Wisconsins.
Well, every year Gumball has a different route
because you don't want to bore millionaires.
Because when millionaires get bored,
they do crazy shit.
Basement shit.
Private island shit.
In 2001, the rally started in London.
(laughs) Each driver brought their own car
and were simply handed a mission pack.
The mission pack gave info on where the driver was headed
like Berlin, for example, along with hotel information.
And that's it.
That's all you get.
Get in your AMG GT3 and just fricking go dude.
Now this particular route went
from Berlin, to Poland,
to Lithuania, to Russia, to Finland,
where they take one of Europe's largest ferries
to Sweden, and then Denmark.
And then finally, finally end their drive
in Beaulieu, England, 856 miles away.
The grand total: over 3,200 miles covered
in just five days.
Along the way, the driver had to keep an eye out
for speed traps and goose neckers and other d-bag ralliers.
2001 was a major turning point for the rally
since 106 cars entered,
including Max Cooper in an original Shelby Cobra,
and Lord Montague of Beaulieu
in a 1929 Blower Bentley,
which was the oldest car in Gumball history.
Can you imagine driving a car built in 1929 for 3000 miles?
No, thanks!
Kim.com, who is apparently a real human man
with a real name,
was the winner that year
thanks to his Mercedes Brabus SV 12 mega car,
but the most legendary car of them all?
A 1989 Jaguar XJ6 piloted by Johnny Knoxville
and the Jackass boys.
Random Hero, rest in peace.
Knoxville later said that
of all the stunts that he did during the run of Jackass,
the closest he ever came to dying was
during the Gumball 3000.
And fortunately, MTV got it all on camera.
And they released the Jackass Gumball 3000 Rally Special.
They became MTV's highest rated show that year.
I watched it endlessly.
I've seen it so many times.
And especially included a bunch of legendary moments,
a Latvian border patrol stop,
which held everybody up for six hours.
A speed trap at the border of Denmark,
where authorities pulled 15 cars over at once,
and a Gumballer's story about flipping his Ferrari,
ripping off part of his ear,
and leaving the wrecked exotic upside down in a field.
This is what crazy rich people do for fun.
Cool dude.
You know what I do for fun?
I drink orange wine in the park with my friends.
After three years of tearing up the English countryside
and pissing off typically stoic Germans,
the Gumball 3000 ran their first rally
in the United States in 2002.
This was incidentally also the year
that Mischief 3000 came out.
Now, if you're not familiar,
Mischief Productions put out a famous DVD series
known for its street racing videos.
And even though the internet was technically around
in 2002,
YouTube wasn't a thing yet, and you had to buy DVDs.
Plus, if you're on the internet in 2002
and your mom needed to use the phone,
you have to get off.
Once you got the DVD,
you had to put it in a DVD player,
and then sometimes they were just
too scratched to even play.
It was stupid.
Sucked.
Now I watch Dune on my phone.
- It's a such a sadness
that you think you've seen a film
on your (bleep) telephone.
- Remember how I said there were really only
two qualifications for the Gumball?
I lied to you.
I'm really sorry.
Right to your face.
There's another rule. (chuckles)
If you choose to participate in the rally,
you sign a contract agreeing that you will never,
under any circumstances,
release footage that wasn't
explicitly approved by the organizers.
Any and all Gumball 3000 footage has to be approved.
Make us look cool and hot and buff and rich, okay?
But you see,
the Mischief crew didn't sign that contract.
They didn't even officially enter.
They just fooled the organizers
and ran the rally like they were included.
I'm sure a PA got fired for that.
And that is how they got such insane footage.
The DVD includes a New Jersey cop
giving tips to drivers to avoid tickets,
a wrecked 18 wheeler spilling Reynolds Wrap
all over the interstate,
a Texas speed trap that was so disorganized
that it turned into a 40 mile backup
with overwhelmed police eventually deciding
to just let everyone go.
Probably cause they didn't want to hear,
"Do you know who my father is?"
- [James] Texas cops were also taped receiving
high speed ride alongs from Team Roof.
And there was in-car footage
of a roof tune portion 996 Turbo R
reaching speeds of 208 miles per hour on the street.
That is a speed that contributed
to their win for hottest wheels of the closing ceremony.
What an honor!
And yeah, that ceremony took place
at the Playboy Mansion,
the coolest place on earth.
Every boy's dream is to go to the Playboy Mansion,
you got boobies there.
(whistling)
They have a grotto, which I think is a cave pool.
And yes, there were so many passed apps.
All of this is to say
that race organizers found out about the DVD,
and sued the absolute poop
outta Mischief Productions,
though they eventually settled outta court,
which means money.
There's tons of stories like these.
A grand yore and excess
that would make Kim.com's
golden toilet blush.
Again, Kim.com, apparently a real human man
with a real name.
But there's some wholesome stories too.
In 2004, a skateboarder, Rob Dyrdek,
participated in the Gumball with his co-driver
Chris "Big Black" Boykin,
documentarian Ruben Fleischer
filmed the drive and found their dynamic so charming
that he later brought the footage to MTV
and the show Robin Big was born.
If you don't know Robin Big,
it eventually led to ridiculousness,
and that is now all that MTV plays.
And that is why my TikTok feed is full
of Rob Dyrdek telling me how to be an entrepreneur.
Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end.
The 2006 rally is known to many as
the last great Gumball before it was overrun
by inexperienced rich boys.
And yes,
I'm actually telling you that the early
participants were the good ones.
Because this new crop of ralliers had unlimited cash
and they seemed to enjoy collecting speeding tickets
and totaled cars,
today, it's not that uncommon to have a,
a rallier trash their first choice car,
then buy another one on the way to
make sure that they can finish in time.
Any kind of interesting strategy quickly took a backseat
to cold,
hard
cash.
On top of being the last golden year of Gumball,
2006 is also heralded as the most valuable grid
in the history of the rally.
Cars included Mercedes-Benz SLR McLarens,
which was a, a tour practically built to withstand
the challenges of the Gumball.
Plus, you can go 208 miles per hour.
There were a few Bugatti Veyrons,
which is my dream daily driver.
I would drive it every day.
I would never wash it.
Cause I would just love to park it
at Trader Joe's and just covered in bird poop.
At the time of this rally, 2006,
the Veyron was
the fastest production car in the world,
and it could reach speeds of 250 miles per hour.
Now we can't mention a valuable grid without
including some Ferraris.
In this case, it was, was an Enzo.
The Enzo was blessed by the Italian manufacturer
with a top speed of 221 miles per hour.
Along with these over engineered monsters,
the event also included an unusually high number
of classic varieties,
including F50s,
275 GTC,
and a 250 California.
When all was raced and done,
the total value of the 2006 Gumball grid
was estimated to be over $100 million.
Yeah, baby.
But for the first seven years of the Gumball,
it was a miracle that nobody was seriously injured.
And then, the absolute inevitable happened.
On May 2nd, 2007,
two participants of the Gumball were driving
their Techart portion 997 Turbo through
the Republic of Macedonia en route to the Albanian border.
A Volkswagen Golf piloted by two elderly locals
attempted to make a left.
When they turned in front of the Gumballers Porsche,
vehicles met head on,
and while the Gumballers made it out okay,
the folks in the Gulf did not.
Despite the ralliers and medical professionals'
best efforts,
both people in the Volkswagen passed away
from their injuries, which sucks.
You know, cause why?
I gotta say this.
I mean, this was totally avoidable.
I mean this all kind of sounds cool and glamorous,
but at the end of the day,
it's really selfish,
and like not worth it.
Like these guys are so rich,
they can afford like,
trailers,
and real race cars,
and track fees.
Like they can go be real race car drivers that they want.
But instead they're just like,
killing people in the Republic of Macedonia.
Just get your priorities straight.
Don't kill old people.
And as you can imagine,
once the media picked up on the story,
shit hit the fan for the Gumball.
Though the organizers canceled the remainder of the race,
the public was rightfully pretty furious.
Campaigns on the internet referred to the event
as "the Dumball 3000" and "the Scumball 3000",
and other fun, really clever rhymes
that poked fun on these rich people responsible
for deaths of regular law-abiding folk.
Now despite the horrible press,
the Gumball continued on in 2008
in a little place called North Korea.
(laughs) Yeah.
The organizers behind the Gumball were apparently like,
"Hey we got a bunch of flack
from the international news media
about reckless driving after two people died,
you know what?
We'll win them back.
Let's go to North Korea.
We'll just go to a place where
the international media isn't allowed."
To get to North Korea,
the participants and their vehicles were loaded
onto three transport cargo planes
and flown to Nanjing, China.
Then, the ralliers were flown by Air Koryo,
a company known as the world's worst airline.
They were then flown to Pyongyang,
where the Gumballers watched the North Korean version
of the Olympics.
That night, they all went to a party.
They toasted their fearless leader, Maximillion Cooper,
as well as Kim Jong-Il.
I don't know.
Around 2013,
all the negative press around the Gumball
led to an obvious conclusion.
Not!
The Gumball 3000 Foundation was established.
You think I was gonna say that it ended?
No! It'll never end.
Instead, 14 years after its first rally,
the organizers decided it was time to give back
to the people by donating to charities,
like the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund,
Child Bereavement UK,
and the Tony Hawk foundation.
That one's rad.
Other than that decision,
the Gumball has pretty much offered
same (bleep) year after year.
In its 23 years of running,
nearly 5,000 people have attended or participated.
The entry fee has skyrocketed.
It's now like $120,000 per car,
which is just a little bit,
I'm no math guy,
but that's a little bit more expensive than 8,700 bucks.
The next Gumball 3000 will take place
in May, 2022 from Toronto
all the way to Havana, Cuba.
And I plan on entering
because I'm super rich
and I don't give a shit about anybody.
And as for Maximillion Cooper,
our fearless leader,
he married Eve.
So, he's a rough rider now.
Thank you guys so much for watching this video,
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