9 Astonishing Gumball 3000 Facts And Stats

Money talks

The most valuable grid is thought to have been on the 2006 rally, which featured: 13 McLaren-Mercedes SLRs, three Bugatti Veyrons, a Ferrari Enzo, F50, 275 GTC and 250 California, plus a selection of (marginally) more common Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Aston Martins and Rolls Royces. Total value? By Gumball founder Maximillion Cooper’s own estimate, well over $100 million…

Globetrotters

In total, the Gumball 3000 has visited 38 different countries. In other words, around 20 per cent of the world’s nations.

Heavy lifting

One famous feature to have cropped up a few times on rallies over the years has been the use of Antonov An-124 transport planes. These 175 tonne, 68 metre-long monsters are the biggest military transports in the world, so as you’d expect, chartering one isn’t cheap.

The price varies from year to year due to the ever changing price of aviation fuel, but Maximillion told us that the price for the 2006 rally was $1 million per plane. Oh, and they hired three of them, carrying 40 cars each…

Dat mileage tho

If you’re looking at the highest combined mileage on an event, you want to look to the 2004 rally. With 220 cars (including support vehicles) it had the most vehicles present for any Gumball, and when you consider they clocked 3000 miles each, you get a combined result of 660,000 miles.

Slow and steady wins the...rally?

The prize for slowest car almost certainly goes to the 29bhp Dukes of Hazzard-style Citroen 2CV seen on the 2004 rally. Although Cooper concedes it could well be a tie between that and an ice cream van that once entered, since “neither could do more than 55mph!”

No garage queens here

Going from the ridiculous to the sublime, we have the McLaren F1 LM. It’s almost certainly the most valuable car to have entered: last year one of these cars - of which only five were made - sold for a staggering $13.75 million.

Oldtimer

So, we’ve told you the slowest car and the most valuable, but what about the oldest? That’ll be a 1929 Bentley 4½ ‘Blower’, entered by the late Lord Montagu of Beaulieu in 2001. He was also the oldest driver to take part that year, at 76 years of age.

Rally veteran

Other than Cooper, only one man has entered all 17 rallies: designer and explorer Karta Healy. He’s the guy third in from the right, standing next to Cooper, and interestingly, he’s also the son of the founder of Kettle Chips.

Assuming he completed every mile of every rally (he hasn’t quite been able to do this thanks to missing a chunk of the 2005 event after a particularly horrific motorbike accident), that’d give him 51,000 rally miles under his belt.

Getting emotional

Amazingly, only one Gumball team has so far had the inspired/stupid idea to cover their car in a bunch of emojis: us. Yep, that’s right, TeamCT is entering the 2016 Gumball 3000 using Adnan’s very own Nissan GT-R, now renamed as the EmojiTR.

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