Photo: Team Galag
Photo: Team Galag
Photo: Team Galag
Photo: Team Galag
Photo: Team Galag
Photo: Team Galag
We’ve got some bad news. Batman’s Tumbler will not be racing in the European leg of the 2014 Gumball 3000, the rally in which rich enthusiasts and celebrities pilot expensive cars across multiple continents.
The Tumbler, billed by the rally as “probably the most insane car we’ve ever had on the Gumball,” is a street-legal replica of the vehicle from the Christopher Nolan / Christian Bale Batman trilogy. Under the comic book exterior is a 6.2-liter V8 producing 400 horsepower. Without it, you’ll have to settle for boring old Ferraris, Porsches, and Rolls-Royces.
Saudia Arabia’s Team Galag were set to drive the Tumbler along the 2014 route from Miami, through New York, London, Paris, and to the finish in Ibiza on June 11. The car, with a 6.2-liter V8 producing 400 horsepower, weighs in at 5,000 pounds. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s been beset by mechanical issues, and is dropping out of the rally.
Galag didn’t provide details, but they blame Florida-based Parker Brothers Concepts, which built the car, for this missed opportunity. On their Facebook page, Galag said, “Parker Brothers Concepts have been given a year to fix the issues that were faced last year but chose not to do any work until it was too late to make any difference. We have been misled many times and were told that progress was being made and chose to put our trust in their word…They are also refusing to hand over the license plates in order to be able to drive the Tumbler legally on the road.”
We’ve reached out to Parker Brothers for a comment and will update this post when we hear back. (It’s not the Monopoly-producing Parker Brothers, by the way, which is too bad. We’d love to see a giant thimble or top hat loaded with a V-12 roaring into Ibizia.)
British driver and designer (and husband of rapper Eve) Maximilian Cooper created the Gumball 3000 in 1999 as a long-distance road race for him and his celebrity friends. Cooper says he got the name from Andy Warhol’s description of the public chewing and spitting out popular culture like gum, although we can’t find evidence of the quote outside of Gumball press releases. Nor do we see what it has to do with awesome cars.
The annual rally, held this year from June 4 to June 11, is the event that sells the Gumball 300 “lifestyle brand” of “entertainment, apparel, music and licensing divisions.” The price tag for participation is £40,000 ($67,194) per vehicle, including two drivers. Each additional person in the car costs another £20,000 ($33,597). That price includes hotel rooms at each of the layover points along the race, plus glamorous post-drive parties stuffed with famous people.
“Racing,” the requirements emphasize, is not permitted, but friendly competition to see who gets to the next hotel first is typical. Participating cars are required to have the Gumball 3000 logo stickered across their paneling, NASCAR style, and drivers “shall endeavour to keep them clean and visible at all times.” For the vehicles, the only requirement is that they be insured and street-legal in the host countries.
We’re always in favor of a ridiculous street-legal one-off automobile, especially when it pulls from comic books. For now, the dark knight will put off rising until next year’s rally.
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