Gumball 3000 – Think Top Gear but epic

Gumball 3000 – Ferrari’s and a vast array of other beautiful speedy cars whizzing along the open roads,  a public road track car rally of epic proportions, like one 3000 mile catwalk, a drive of such lavishness, style, expense, and grandeur it seismically transcends all traditional displays of fashion. Differential from traditional fashion parades, Gumball pitches all of the top league of expensive, designer cars against each other in a competition to decide the ultimate car and define the fastest rally road driver out of the world’s top class speed junkies: Gumball is an exercise of taking fashion up a notch, breaking the mould of a showcase of elite, quality fashion talent and taking it to a marathon scale, with the added dimensions of speed and distance. Gumball has become the largest scale showcase of fashion in action, fashionable cars, across the 3000 miles, crossing numerous countries – and this 2016 – a whole continent, stretching the journey time into a weeklong Event with festivities at every check point: a relay race of teams made up of the rich and famous in their bid to be crowned winner of this attention grabbing, multi-destination car and fashion festival.

In the 2014 Gumball 3000 we saw the triumph of Canadian-Israeli Josh Cartu and his team ‘Team Wolfpack’, a group of major league celebrity drivers, possessing their own mexotic cars, took poll position and championed the “Best Team Award” in this, the rally of dazzlingly iconic proportions. Just moments after winning ‘best team award’, Josh Cartu donated $60,000 to the Tony Hawk Foundation in effort to build skate parks for troubled youth across America: a healthy endorsement into the Skateboarding industry, as an extreme sport of skill and finesse, and an original style of fashion birthed out of the sport culture. Cartu is a test Driver for Ferrari so this rallying event is the perfect opportunity for a racer of his calibre to take to the wheel and showcase his talents wielding such powerful vehicles. And, just when Gumball 3000 couldn’t get any more glamorous, the 2014 race where Wolfpack stole the show took route from Miami to Ibiza, quite possibly the worlds sexiest and, with the injection of colossal car manufacturers party budgets, the most magnificently glamorous party destinations on Earth: starting in Miami to Atlanta, to New York, flown to Scotland, Edinburgh, to London, to Paris, to Barcelona, to and ending Ibiza the Island of party classics.

2015 saw Gumball traverse Stockholm to Las Vegas and, this 2016 The Gumball is destined, again, to roll through London: expect even bigger crowds on this year’s May Bank Holiday Monday. Spectators can enjoy an array of public activities throughout the day culminating in the arrival and of the Gumball cars slowly parading through Regent Street in the evening gradually setting May Sun. It will be a congregation of the Apex vehicle connoisseurs in communion for all spectators to see and experience – when else will these gorgeous cars be used and seen but in the world’s most epic real life Wacky Racers? Gumball 3000 is truly an event set up for the sake of burning some rubber, gaining some mileage, and making known the world’s most amazingly decorous car collections ever. It’s as if the Gumball 3000 was made for the sole purpose of providing an excuse to drive precious cars really fast on speed restricted roads! Isn’t that what dreams are made of?

Gumball 3000 is a display of fiscal prowess of some of the wealthiest people and companies in the world, and it is a chance to integrate with these social elite, like haute couture meeting high street back in the AW14 LFW event when Chanel took their shows to the supermarket in gym-ready attire. We are living in a multifaceted world where we desire to enable ourselves to be more practical and active, hence why we are beginning to engineer our wardrobes to a more versatile and facile, and slick attire and why we buy time saving devices and vehicles such as cars. You need only identify with the trend of modernism turning fashion towards the efficacy of the space-suit-style all-in-one aesthetic of the growing Jumpsuit trend to understand Gumball 3000. Gumball 3000 is merely a practice of appreciation of advancing technologies, showcasing the very top of the metaphorical food chain that is high speed travel engineering and minimal yet strikingly effective design that defines automotive style as the polished-practical commodity, striving to be more efficient and more easy wearing in each epic car evolution.

Coincidentally, Josh Cartu himself has taken to Space clad in the streamlined and engineered gear – a space suit – last winter: On January 25th, 2015, Cartu travelled to Novgorod Russia where he journeyed to the edge of space (22km above the earth) in a Russian Mig29. As an evident thrill seeker Cartu performed several high G manoeuvres, experienced a zero gravity, and filmed the curvature of the earth: Soon we will be in a world were space travel is common and dressing in space suit spandex is the norm!

The Gumball uses is own monopoly and you would be silly not to take a chance to be as idle or as active reveller as you wish in this madness of the extreme municipal display of the elite car trends. And now, it is an opportunity for spectators to witness and share the excitement that comes with such a splash, and feel a part of such a grand escapade.

The Gumball 3000 was started in 1999 by British entrepreneur, skateboarder and race car driver Maximillion Cooper, and now Gumball 3000 has its own Fashion Range, the post-race fashion paraphernalia with of course the caps and the hoodies to boot, like a varsity of its own proportions.

Car Racing has become a huge display of fashion iconography, with Formula 1 Drivers sporting Rolex’s and spoilers sporting the ASOS clothing logo. Back in 2014 Cara de Levigne was a snapshotted feature in a McLaren pink racing jumpsuit in the F1 Monaco Grand Prix Finale. The nature of Sponsorship in extreme sports is important – like having ‘Youtube’ printed on the side of all the Gumball cars like a watermark, it is an association that sticks – In January 2016, Cartu was interviewed by Forbes Magazine in a QA session outlining his understanding of how racing sponsorship and branding work – an insider’s knowledge into the industry.

It’s like going to the Horse Races, though there it is hats, in Goodwood it is Revival Attire, the Grand Prix is a global tour of the absolute elite, operating at its own frequency in its own league though still being sponsored by huge fashion names and faces. Like these established and time honoured Races that play host to a niche of fashion statements, the Gumball will become a red carpet fashion event in its own right soon. The Gumball is a pick n’ mix of taste with its core identity being chewy and malleable stretch to encompass all trends of individual style whilst still in its own represented clothing line establishing a qualifier as a deluxe yet relaxed extreme sports brand attire, its dominating garments in true top-dog gangsta fashion with the classic hoody and snapback combo, a look that can go from sunrise to moonrise and look fresh but comfortable.

It is a known fact that sex sells, in the fashion and the car industry, and it is a match made in heaven to pair a sexy woman with a sexy car. It is almost a given then that Guess Designer clothing act as sponsors and enacted a featured photo shoot of their signature denim jumpsuits mimicking that of a mechanic look. Fashion, fit women and sexy cars all sell the same ideal of the ultimate lifestyle, the glamorous and the chic – it has been a long time coming, a gradual process, but it is becoming prevalent that car racing is becoming a fashion statement.

To make this event a true indulgence of quality engineering in lavishly designed, elegantly moulded metal shells would be to capture the procession of the race in equally alluring and seductive cinematography, showing off the cars, polished to sheen, with bursts of colour, and true works of art of precision excellence.  There will be a storm of Social Media and sexy selfie game on Instagram displaying the ultimate luxury lifestyle events within this decadent festival.

Many a Ferrari and Lambouhini have taken to the grid in Gumball’s 17 years, and cars of the likes of The McLaren F1 GTR, Batman’s Tumbler, £200 eBay specials and ice cream vans – not to mention pretty much every supercar worth its salt – have all done their 3000 miles to become Gumball graduates and now it is time to see what the years of 2016 will bring to the Belfast starting line. Besides possessing several limited edition Ferraris, Cartu himself owns other luxury cars including BMWs, a Rolls Royce Phantom, and a custom BAC Mono race car, to name just a few. We will have to just wait and see which mega cars feature in this line up on the 30^th April!

The Gumball 3000 is a great event with such a simple, Wacky Racers style point to it. It is there for the fun of it and has raised millions for charity since its inception in 1999. In its time the Gumball 3000 has seemed controversial but wasn’t that the intention? It was understood that a few Pigeons may get harmed in the making, right?

Checks out what Events are taking place at your local Gumball 3000 city destination:

https://www.gumball3000.com/2016dublintobucharest