May 08, 2005
Feature
The wacky racers return
The man behind the Gumball 3000 rally has dug himself out of debt and is about to hit Hollywood, Tiananmen Square and the high street. Anita Chaudhuri meets the Dick Dastardly of motor racing
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When Maximillion Cooper, the implausibly christened inventor of Gumball 3000, first organised his now infamous car rally for the glitterati in 1999, he had no idea that he would one day have a global phenomenon on his hands. Back then, it was a semi-illegal road race for serious party animals, set up with the remains of his student loan. Now it has an annual turnover of £25m, Tom Cruise is rumoured to be playing a leading role in a movie version of the race, and a range of designer clothing has just been launched. Not bad for an ex-table-tennis champion, ex-Armani model, ex-Central St Martins student, ex-racing driver and ex-law student. At 32, Cooper has more exes on his CV than Angelina Jolie.
We meet for a drink at Sketch, London’s temple to retro-glam — a fitting venue for a man who, in three hours, never once removes his aviator shades. This causes a party of Japanese girls to peer at him hopefully and enhances an already distracting likeness to Dick Dastardly. “People love Gumball because it’s a great leveller,” he says. “Anyone can join in.” Anyone, that is, who can afford the £10,000 entrance fee and owns, say, a Lamborghini.
Gumball makes the Wacky Races look like a Monday-morning commute. Drivers — who include the likes of Kate Moss, Kylie, Har Mar Superstar and Donna Karan — follow an ambitious itinerary, covering 3,000 miles in a week, punctuated by champagne-fuelled parties. Tales of multiple speeding tickets and topless driving are rife. This year’s event will see Quentin Tarantino and Daryl Hannah driving a Land Rover from Trafalgar Square to Monaco via Prague, Budapest and Rome. Joining them will be Bez from Happy Mondays, in a Scooby-Doo van, and Jodie Kidd, Gumball’s resident Penelope Pitstop. On the American Gumball alone, she managed to get three speeding tickets and one court appearance, and ran over her own Hermès Birkin handbag.
“I wondered why motor racing wasn’t attracting cool, creative people,” says Cooper, “and I realised that sponsors might pay me to get my friends to turn up to events. I wanted to have my own private Formula One team, with a rock/fashion vibe.” It has to be said, this is a man who decides to do a great many things. He decided that he wanted to be a BMX champion, and ended up, aged 12, performing wheelies in California under contract for Vans. Then he decided to be a model, and was hired to do a commercial for Mountain Dew, an American soft drink. He used the money to pursue a career in motor racing, but the funds soon ran out.
Inspired by the movie The Cannonball Run, Cooper came up with the idea of Gumball as a way to raise money for his own team. “Nobody realised I was a student. I had the three tenants in my student house answering the phone, saying, ‘Maximillion Cooper Racing.’”
The first Gumball wasn’t exactly a roaring success. It attracted widespread disapproval for encouraging speeding on public roads and having a Z-list celeb count that included Chris Eubank and Dannii Minogue. Worse, when it was over, Cooper had raised no funds; in fact, he faced huge debts. On top of a £15,000 student loan, he owed a further £150,000. “There were all these chateau-owners in France who I owed money to, and I couldn’t pay it. It was pretty hairy.”
Cooper pinned his hopes for financial rescue on Gumball 2, but his plans were straight out of an episode of The Man from UNCLE. He hired two Russian transporter planes — at a cost of £170,000 — so that all the cars could be flown from Stansted to Spain. “On the day of the event, I still didn’t have the money to pay the Russians. I lied and told them I’d be bringing the money in banknotes to the airport. Then my car broke down and I had to skateboard there. They made me sign over my prized vintage red Lotus as security. I lost the car.” By the end of the race, he owed £250,000 and was sleeping on the floor of his office. A deal with MTV came in the nick of time.
Now Cooper finds himself on the brink of world domination. First up, there is a $100m Hollywood blockbuster, which he is co-producing with Adrien Brody. “I wrote the script,” he announces. Really? How did he learn to write Hollywood screenplays? “Oh, well, I wrote the synopsis, anyway.” No matter: Tarantino is in the frame to direct. Then there is a soon-to-be-launched range of designer clothes, G3K. “It’s going to be as big as Stussy or Maharishi, street casual.” When did he find the time to do that? “Well, I did go to St Martins. I hated fashion, though. I knew it wasn’t for me. With G3K, I have three designers.” Then there are his plans for a Gumball megastore. “It’ll sell everything,” he says. “We’ll have a cinema showing car movies, and Lamborghinis with interiors designed by Gucci ...”
His vision for the future is to be the next Richard Branson. “I met him once, socially, and he said to me, ‘You know, Max, it took me 25 years to build up Virgin to where it is today, but it’s only taken you six or seven years to get there with Gumball.’ And you know, he’s right.” He is also keen to go global. “I’ve already made Gumball contacts all over the world. I had dinner with Mrs Putin at the Kremlin, to arrange Gumball Russia, and I had dinner with the mayor of Dubrovnik for this year’s rally. I’ve also been talking to China. We’re planning on being the first event in Tiananmen Square since the uprising. Everyone in China will get a day’s holiday if it goes ahead. And I’m thinking about North and South Korea.”
Does Cooper never experience pangs of self-doubt? He shakes his head. “No. People used to say to me my downfall in the past was not sticking at one thing. I did modelling, table tennis, football, fashion, law. Had I focused on just one, I might have made it. But this has been Gumball’s success factor, putting all those ingredients together. Now I know I could put the name to anything.”
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Gumball 3000: Six Days in May is available to buy on DVD from tomorrow; www.gumball3000.com
RACING DEMONS
1999 Jason Priestley is let off a fine for doing 150mph on the M20, after autographing a photo for a policeman’s daughter. Chris Eubank gets his supertruck stuck in a tunnel on Paris’s Périphérique and has to reverse it out. During rush hour.
2000 After starting in London, the cars are flown to Spain. Hard man Goldie has to be baby-sat through the flight because he is scared of flying. On the boat from Hamburg to Harwich, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson is married to the white rasta Skinny Power, whom she met on the rally, by the captain.
2001 The Jackass star Johnny Knoxville borrows a Jag to drive to St Petersburg — it belongs to the wife of a friend, who only realises it has gone when she sees it on MTV.
2002 The fi May 08, 2005
Feature
The wacky racers return
The man behind the Gumball 3000 rally has dug himself out of debt and is about to hit Hollywood, Tiananmen Square and the high street. Anita Chaudhuri meets the Dick Dastardly of motor racing
NI_MPU('middle');When Maximillion Cooper, the implausibly christened inventor of Gumball 3000, first organised his now infamous car rally for the glitterati in 1999, he had no idea that he would one day have a global phenomenon on his hands. Back then, it was a semi-illegal road race for serious party animals, set up with the remains of his student loan. Now it has an annual turnover of £25m, Tom Cruise is rumoured to be playing a leading role in a movie version of the race, and a range of designer clothing has just been launched. Not bad for an ex-table-tennis champion, ex-Armani model, ex-Central St Martins student, ex-racing driver and ex-law student. At 32, Cooper has more exes on his CV than Angelina Jolie.
We meet for a drink at Sketch, London’s temple to retro-glam — a fitting venue for a man who, in three hours, never once removes his aviator shades. This causes a party of Japanese girls to peer at him hopefully and enhances an already distracting likeness to Dick Dastardly. “People love Gumball because it’s a great leveller,” he says. “Anyone can join in.” Anyone, that is, who can afford the £10,000 entrance fee and owns, say, a Lamborghini.
Gumball makes the Wacky Races look like a Monday-morning commute. Drivers — who include the likes of Kate Moss, Kylie, Har Mar Superstar and Donna Karan — follow an ambitious itinerary, covering 3,000 miles in a week, punctuated by champagne-fuelled parties. Tales of multiple speeding tickets and topless driving are rife. This year’s event will see Quentin Tarantino and Daryl Hannah driving a Land Rover from Trafalgar Square to Monaco via Prague, Budapest and Rome. Joining them will be Bez from Happy Mondays, in a Scooby-Doo van, and Jodie Kidd, Gumball’s resident Penelope Pitstop. On the American Gumball alone, she managed to get three speeding tickets and one court appearance, and ran over her own Hermès Birkin handbag.
“I wondered why motor racing wasn’t attracting cool, creative people,” says Cooper, “and I realised that sponsors might pay me to get my friends to turn up to events. I wanted to have my own private Formula One team, with a rock/fashion vibe.” It has to be said, this is a man who decides to do a great many things. He decided that he wanted to be a BMX champion, and ended up, aged 12, performing wheelies in California under contract for Vans. Then he decided to be a model, and was hired to do a commercial for Mountain Dew, an American soft drink. He used the money to pursue a career in motor racing, but the funds soon ran out.
Inspired by the movie The Cannonball Run, Cooper came up with the idea of Gumball as a way to raise money for his own team. “Nobody realised I was a student. I had the three tenants in my student house answering the phone, saying, ‘Maximillion Cooper Racing.’”
The first Gumball wasn’t exactly a roaring success. It attracted widespread disapproval for encouraging speeding on public roads and having a Z-list celeb count that included Chris Eubank and Dannii Minogue. Worse, when it was over, Cooper had raised no funds; in fact, he faced huge debts. On top of a £15,000 student loan, he owed a further £150,000. “There were all these chateau-owners in France who I owed money to, and I couldn’t pay it. It was pretty hairy.”
Cooper pinned his hopes for financial rescue on Gumball 2, but his plans were straight out of an episode of The Man from UNCLE. He hired two Russian transporter planes — at a cost of £170,000 — so that all the cars could be flown from Stansted to Spain. “On the day of the event, I still didn’t have the money to pay the Russians. I lied and told them I’d be bringing the money in banknotes to the airport. Then my car broke down and I had to skateboard there. They made me sign over my prized vintage red Lotus as security. I lost the car.” By the end of the race, he owed £250,000 and was sleeping on the floor of his office. A deal with MTV came in the nick of time.
Now Cooper finds himself on the brink of world domination. First up, there is a $100m Hollywood blockbuster, which he is co-producing with Adrien Brody. “I wrote the script,” he announces. Really? How did he learn to write Hollywood screenplays? “Oh, well, I wrote the synopsis, anyway.” No matter: Tarantino is in the frame to direct. Then there is a soon-to-be-launched range of designer clothes, G3K. “It’s going to be as big as Stussy or Maharishi, street casual.” When did he find the time to do that? “Well, I did go to St Martins. I hated fashion, though. I knew it wasn’t for me. With G3K, I have three designers.” Then there are his plans for a Gumball megastore. “It’ll sell everything,” he says. “We’ll have a cinema showing car movies, and Lamborghinis with interiors designed by Gucci ...”
His vision for the future is to be the next Richard Branson. “I met him once, socially, and he said to me, ‘You know, Max, it took me 25 years to build up Virgin to where it is today, but it’s only taken you six or seven years to get there with Gumball.’ And you know, he’s right.” He is also keen to go global. “I’ve already made Gumball contacts all over the world. I had dinner with Mrs Putin at the Kremlin, to arrange Gumball Russia, and I had dinner with the mayor of Dubrovnik for this year’s rally. I’ve also been talking to China. We’re planning on being the first event in Tiananmen Square since the uprising. Everyone in China will get a day’s holiday if it goes ahead. And I’m thinking about North and South Korea.”
Does Cooper never experience pangs of self-doubt? He shakes his head. “No. People used to say to me my downfall in the past was not sticking at one thing. I did modelling, table tennis, football, fashion, law. Had I focused on just one, I might have made it. But this has been Gumball’s success factor, putting all those ingredients together. Now I know I could put the name to anything.”
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Gumball 3000: Six Days in May is available to buy on DVD from tomorrow; www.gumball3000.com
RACING DEMONS
1999 Jason Priestley is let off a fine for doing 150mph on the M20, after autographing a photo for a policeman’s daughter. Chris Eubank gets his supertruck stuck in a tunnel on Paris’s Périphérique and has to reverse it out. During rush hour.
2000 After starting in London, the cars are flown to Spain. Hard man Goldie has to be baby-sat through the flight because he is scared of flying. On the boat from Hamburg to Harwich, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson is married to the white rasta Skinny Power, whom she met on the rally, by the captain.
2001 The Jackass star Johnny Knoxville borrows a Jag to drive to St Petersburg — it belongs to the wife of a friend, who only realises it has gone when she sees it on MTV.
2002 The first US rally finishes at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion, in Los Angeles. Hefner gets stuck in the seat of a Ferrari during a photo shoot — and nobody helps him out. A senior Texas cop turns a blind eye to speeding after a ride in the car of a Dallas oil tycoon — at 206mph.
2003 The mayor of San Francisco waves the rally off, wearing a sharp suit, a trilby and two-tone brogues, with two 6ft blondes on his arm. Jodie Kidd trashes her Hermès bag when she leaves it on the roof of her Maserati after a petrol stop.
2004 Adrien Brody gets out of a Spanish speeding fine by playing the Oscar-winner card. The singer Kym Mazelle spends seven days in a jump suit and trainers after her luggage sets off in a different car — and she never catches up. Quentin Tarantino and Tim Roth wave the chequered flag at the Cannes film festival.
rst US rally finishes at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion, in Los Angeles. Hefner gets stuck in the seat of a Ferrari during a photo shoot — and nobody helps him out. A senior Texas cop turns a blind eye to speeding after a ride in the car of a Dallas oil tycoon — at 206mph.
2003 The mayor of San Francisco waves the rally off, wearing a sharp suit, a trilby and two-tone brogues, with two 6ft blondes on his arm. Jodie Kidd trashes her Hermès bag when she leaves it on the roof of her Maserati after a petrol stop.
2004 Adrien Brody gets out of a Spanish speeding fine by playing the Oscar-winner card. The singer Kym Mazelle spends seven days in a jump suit and trainers after her luggage sets off in a different car — and she never catches up. Quentin Tarantino and Tim Roth wave the chequered flag at the Cannes film festival.
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