The Gumball Rally
The best trans-continental illegal road race movie ever.
It’s a very snowy day here in London, and the opportunities for using any kind of sportscar (especially an old Italian one with almost non-existant rust protection) are extremely limited. Being stuck indoors, thoughts have turned to car movies and in particular the genre of the trans-continental road race movie which was popular in the seventies and early eighties.
The most famous of these is the series of three Cannonball Run movies, based on the actual Cannonball Baker Sea to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy road races that took place in the mid-seventies. The races were in part inspired by an earlier movie, Two Lane Blacktop, about a race along the old Route 66 between a Pontiac GTO and a heavily tuned 1955 Chevy Bel Air, so in some ways this is a case of art imitating life imitating art.
The Cannonball Run movies were effectively officially sanctioned movies for the races, with the screenplay for the first one written by the organiser of the races, Brock Yates. There were also two “unofficial” movies, one titled simply Cannonball and starring David Carradine, predominately featuring US muscle cars and a lot of crashes. The second is my favourite of the genre: The Gumball Rally.
The plot is the same as all the others, with Peter Fonda organising the race by inviting selected drivers from all over the world to compete in a race from New York to Long Beach California, using a telephone call containing one word: Gumball.
The film contains an interesting range of exotic metal, including a Mercedes 300SL roadster, a Porsche 911 Targa and a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, but the principal protagonists are an AC 427 Cobra driven by Fonda, and a Ferrari 365GTS/4 Daytona Spyder driven by Raul Julia playing the role of Franco, a Ferrari F1 driver and compulsive womaniser. Franco gets the most memorable line in the movie when he climbs into the Daytona before the start of the race. He grabs the rear view mirror and issues the statement,”First rule of Italian driving: what is behind you is not important.” and then pulls the mirror off and tosses it away! The antagonist for the race is an inept policeman named “Rosco” who is out to stop the race and get Fonda and Franco in particular.
There are a number of excellent driving sequences, including the start of the race as the cars race through deserted New York Streets with the sounds of the engines echoing off the skyscraper walls, and later the Cobra and Daytona escaping the LA traffic by racing down the concrete sides of the L.A. river.
For me, the most memorable sequence is when Rosco attempts to entrap Franco speeding along at well over 100mph by employing a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. Seeing the helicopter behind, instead of slowing down, Franco speeds up and leaves the Jet Ranger for dead with the helicopter pilot estimating the Daytona to be travelling at over 180mph. Yes, there is a large element of movie license in this scene but I did check and the JetRanger has a top speed of 139mph, somewhat less than a Daytona’s 174mph for the Berlinetta version (a Spyder with the roof down is lilkely to be at least 20mph slower). One would assume that a Daytona travelling flat out would run out of petrol rather quicker than the helicopter, though!
If you fancy a Christmas motoring movie treat, the film is available on Amazon in both region 1 and region 2 versions.
The Daytona used in the film (SN16467 and the 71st of 121 factory Daytonas) went on to be featured in the movie A Star is Born, where it was heavily crashed. The remains were then acquired by Luigi Chinetti, who sent the car to be rebodied by Michellotti in a new convertible style than is unfortunately rather reminiscent of the TVR Tasmin. The car is currently for sale and the advert can be found here.