The 6 Most Unconventional Gumball 3000 Vehicles Ever Seen

Ferrari 550 LM

Gumball founder Maximillion Cooper campaigned this crazy Dukes of Hazzard-liveried Ferrari on the 2005 rally. A road-legal version of the Le Mans winning racer, the LM is a whole 315kg lighter than the standard road car, weighing just 1400kg. With a re-tuned V12 putting out 537bhp, the LM can achieve a 0-62 time of 3.9 seconds and will go on to a top speed of 190mph. Only 100 were produced.

Citroën 2CV

Sticking with the Dukes of Hazzard theme, two maniacs decided to take a General Lee-liveried Citroën 2CV on the 2004 rally. The route was adventurous to say the least. Starting in Paris, the rally ran through Biarritz, Madrid, Marbella, Marrakesh and Morocco, before returning to Barcelona. 3000 miles in a 602cc, 29bhp tin box must have been horrific, especially through such a varied landscape. Unsurprisingly the drivers won the iconic ‘Spirit of the Gumball’ award.

Ironically, team Masters of Speed had the slowest vehicle on the 2014 rally, with their Brabus Mercedes G63 AMG 6x6 700 being limited to a top speed of just 99mph (160kph). But to focus on top speed is to miss the point. As team leader Ron states in the video above, “the only difference between the men and boys is the price of the toys”. Good thing the six-wheel-drive 700bhp Brabus monster costs £400,000.

Saudi Arabia’s Team Galag commissioned a street-legal replica of the vehicle from Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Built for the 2014 rally, the Tumbler used a 6.2-litre, 400bhp V8 to power the 2267kg machine. It looked absolutely insane, and lets face it, a little bit dangerous on the public road. Unfortunately, due to reliability problems the Tumbler had to pull out of the European stage of the rally.

Jon Olsson faces a unique challenge when it comes to commissioning his crazy builds. His one-off creations need to be completely mad for marketing purposes (see above), but they still need to retain an element of all-weather usability. A compromise his Audi RS6 DTM completely nailed.

The idea was to create a DTM-inspired RS6 with great reliability. To achieve this Olsson worked with Swedish based tuners Stertman Motorsport. The guys at Stertman went to town on the engine, upgrading the car to STM Stage 3+. This included fitting 18 karat gold anodised TTE9XX turbo chargers, Intrax suspension, a Motiv big brake kit and a Milltek Sport exhaust. The end result was an incredible 950bhp on ‘pump gas’.

On the aesthetic front, the car was equally special. The exterior received hand-formed aerodynamic addenda utilising the same carbon as used by Pagani, and to finish things off, a custom carbon 56Nord ski box was added for extra practicality - he is a pro-skier after all.

Unfortunately, shortly after the 2015 rally, the car was stolen in an armed robbery and burned to the ground. We still mourn the loss of this magnificent machine…

The Audi RS6 DTM might be a practical Gumball machine, but there’s nothing like taking a Le Mans-inspired car on the rally. The R2K started out life as an Ultima GTR and was slowly transformed into an LMP1-style supercar. Facts and figures are scarce, but the car in known to feature a full-carbon body, a beautiful set of ADV.1 wheels plus the engine and transmission from a Lamborghini Gallardo. No expense was spared on this project, but that didn’t stop Jon giving it a good thrashing on the 2014 rally.