From the outside, it looks like another '70s muscle car. On the inside, it's a gearhead fantasy come true.
Every chunk of this 1972 Ford Torino's innards has been swapped for fresh parts. An extra gas tank has been fused onto its body. Controllers for laser jammers, radar detectors, GPS sensors and video cameras now occupy areas once reserved for 8-track players and beige-tinted shades.
The vehicle has been hauled 2,700 miles on a tractor-trailer, from Gibsonville, North Carolina, to San Francisco. And on Wednesday, it'll begin a five-day, helter-skelter dash to reach Miami before hundreds of other cars cross a transcontinental finish line.
The Torino is taking part in the Gumball 3000 rally, a rolling party and road race that brings together millionaire dilettantes, minor luminaries, speed freaks, celebrity-seekers and former centerfolds. Not to mention overgrown kids with a fetish for wheels, like 37-year-old Kevin Mikelonis, who's spent $20,000 to customize his '72 Ford hot rod.
"It's a chance to completely let loose from reality for a week," he said. "This has all the things I like -- fast cars, fine dining and beautiful women."
Gumball 3000 is a series of five daylong drives, each 500 to 900 miles -- San Fran to Sin City in the first installment, N'awlins to Mee-ya-mi in the last. Corporate-sponsored parties and swank hotels await the racers at the end of the road each night. Driving teams pony up a $12,000-per-car fee for the privilege of participating in the event.
Mikelonis, who runs a home-theater installation shop in his hometown of Gibsonville, has a simple plan for the races: Don't stop. And don't get pulled over.
For that, he needs certain equipment: a four-speed overdrive transmission to help him travel fast at low RPMs, a second 22-gallon fuel tank so he can go more than 500 miles without pulling over for gas, a 1,000-channel police scanner so he can hear what the local fuzz are saying about him and his fellow drivers (highway patrolmen are often lined up on the road, waiting for the Gumballers), and radar and laser jammers to block the police's primary means of gauging his speed.
These detectors are all hidden behind the Torino's grill to keep them secret in states where they're illegal. Their controls sit innocuously where the driver's armrest would be. Next to them is a 5-inch, flat-panel LCD screen to project images from the camera mounted on the rear bumper. And next to that is a Dell laptop running a GPS-based navigation program.
"The challenge is keeping my brain engaged," Mikelonis said. "There are so many things you've got to do -- not get caught, make it to the next venue, meet a ton of different people -- that you forget the basics."
Twice during last year's rally, he locked the keys in his trunk, and had to take out the back seat into order to reach them.
Alex Roy, 31, a travel executive from Manhattan, will have a lot on his mind, too. Like what disguises he and his partner should wear. And what decals to put on his 2000 BMW M5.
Roy doesn't think he's got a chance of winning the Gumball -- nor is he very interested in trying. He's aiming for the rally's "spirit" award instead; Roy wants to be the most over-the-top Gumballer on the road.
So he's gathered a collection of vintage 1950s European racing jumpsuits -- the beige ones, with the chocolate-leather patches. He's got red fez hats to go with the all-white formal wear. And, of course, lab coats and nurses' outfits, complete with stethoscopes.
Circular Gumball 3000 stickers will adorn his car, as they do all of the event's vehicles. But Roy will further accessorize with a rotating array of European blue police lights, white Doctors-Without-Borders logos, Interpol decals and rectangular labels marked Verfolgung -- German for "pursuit."
Gumball 3000 began in 1999, after English playboy Maximillion Cooper suggested to his socialite friends that they run a cross-Europe race. Fifty-five cars took part, including a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Titanic villain Billy Zane, and a Lotus Esprit V-8 with 90210 pretty boy Jason Priestley behind the wheel.
That number swelled to 75 the next year. According to Scotland's Sunday Herald, "Two cars were written off and six engines blew up. Two city traders were arrested and fined a record $20,000 for doing 200 mph in heavy traffic in a 50-mph zone."
By 2002, the rally had shifted to America. Johnny Knoxville from Jackass raced. Hugh Hefner hosted the finish party at the Playboy mansion.
Since its inception, the Gumball has been stylized after the 1970s and '80s cross-country racing movies. One team even rode around in an ambulance, like Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise in the most famous of those films, 1981's Cannonball Run.
But the inspiration for the Gumball doesn't think too highly of the modern-day affair.
"It's a sleazy knockoff by a bunch of wannabes," said Brock Yates, the Car and Driver editor who led all five of the original Cannonball Runs, from 1971 to 1979 (best time: 32 hours, 51 minutes, coast-to-coast). Yates also wrote the Reynolds-and-DeLuise screenplay. "It's kind of a glitterati, third-rate celebrity deal -- the gold chain crowd in their Ferraris."
Alex Roy, who's watched Yates' movie over and over, laughed when he heard the rebuke from the Gumball godfather.
"If there were still a real Cannonball Run, I'd do that instead," he replied. "Now I've only got two choices: drive around a track, or do this."
Not that he'll mind rubbing elbows with the celebrities and the swells. Or object if a few of the rally's Playboy bunnies want to ride in his car.
