Gumball Rally 3000 Stops in Toronto

Posted by pikesan on May 11, 2010 in Featured, Shows & Events | 0 comments

Pictures and words by: Doug Nykanen

Gumball Rally Toronto-Niagara Falls May 6-7 2010

The Gumball Rally started as a movie from 1976. It had a hodgepodge of characters racing across America in a variety of exotic cars. Fast forward to 1999 when Maximillion Cooper founded the Gumball3000. A Rally that ran 3000 miles across a variety of countries on a different route each year. Yea, across countries! Here’s the type of cars you’ll find:

A couple of days ago I heard the Gumball was passing through Toronto. The 2010 Rally started in London England, then on to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Boston, Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto with the final destination at Times Square in New York City. Never one to miss an automotive event I headed down to a very congested event in downtown Toronto.

By the time I got there it was getting dark, so the pictures were not great especially without a high powered flash and someone to clear people out of the way, there were thousands of people. The event was pretty low key, most drivers were already partying it up but some, like the Sheiks, had just arrived. There were also some participants dressed as clowns who were wrapping Xzibit’s right hand drive Cayenne with caution tape.

Many of the cars in the Rally I had only seen in new cars shows. Then there were cars like the Morgan I never knew existed!The one car I was hoping to see, the Bugatti Veyron was not to be found that night.

It was cool seeing all of these exotic cars on the street but I needed more. I read on a local forum that the cars would be in Niagara Falls Friday morning. After passing the most radar traps I’ve ever seen on the road, I arrived shortly after 10 am. Some participants were just leaving on their way to N.Y.C but most were still to arrive. Seeing and hearing these beasts arrive and depart was a quite amazing.

The cars on the tour ran the gamut of exotica: Bugatti, Lamborgini, Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Morgan, Mercedes/Mclaren there were a number of American cars, Corvette, new Camaros/Challengers/Mustangs, a Baja Buggy and a classic Hemi Superbee. Surprisingly no GT40’s or Vipers.

There was plenty going on, a reported 400 people were in Niagara Falls in a very spacious parking lot so plenty of access to all these great cars. The competitors for the most part were very friendly with the crowd. It was hard to pick out the celebrities among the crowd as they weren’t necessarily A-listers whose faces appear daily in the papers. Pretty much just regular people driving $100,000 + cars, lol.
The one celeb I had hoped to see was Xzibit, better known among car fanatics for Pimp My Ride than his music. I just missed him, he pulled out shortly after I arrived.

We got a bit of a treat with one of the drivers showing his drifting/donut skills but unfortunately he got too close to the crowd. He was taken away in a police cruiser then released later in the afternoon to continue on after pleading guilty to dangerous driving.

The one thing that was surprising was the lack of info on the event. There is a website, www.gumball3000.com, Facebook and Myspace pages but unfortunately they are all running several days late on an event that only last 7 days. Maybe they need a better publicist for the 2011 Rally! I’ll free up my calendar and look for a suitable exotic to drive, one can dream can’t they ?