Maximillion Cooper is the ringmaster of a 21st-century Wacky Races for a high-powered bunch of people who come together in a spirit of adventure
On June 4 this year the annual Gumball 3000 rally will rumble out of Miami, beginning a 3,000-mile route from Miami to Mexico City, taking in Florida’s Amelia Island, New Orleans, Austin, and Monterrey.
Running concurrent to the FIFA World Cup, the high-revving, tire-squealing, and donutting motorcade, part automotive concours, part luxe endurance, but mostly grand-flex event, will comprise multi-millions of dollars’ worth of vehicular exotica, piloted by superwealthy petrolheads, celebrity participants, professional drivers, and a whole lot of V12 cylinder hedonists. The rally will finish in Mexico City, coinciding with the opening World Cup match – Mexicovs South Africa – at Estadio Azteca on June 11.
‘I decided to throw a huge party. With cars. A six-day road trip event. Crazy, completely chaotic schedule, amazing hotels, parties each night’
An ozone-defying, 21st-century Wacky Races of an event (very much a rally and definitely not an actual race, stress the organizers), Gumball’s starting grid is a high-octane mix of supercars, hypercars, film-star machines, priceless classics, customs, one-offs, 4x4s, and muscles – and maybe the odd police saloon in hot pursuit. A Bugatti beside a Mini. A Ferrari alongside a fire truck. A Dodge SRT Hellcat next to a jacked-up G Wagon. Perhaps a Lamborghini-based Batmobile and somehowstreet-legal F1 car. (Yes, all this happened.)
And at each overnight stop along the route, a huge party for the drivers with live music, world-class DJs, and performers, a bed in a swanky hotel – and a guaranteed 1,000-brake horsepower hangover in the morning.
Across Gumball’s myriad start lines, street locations, freeway straights, inner-city hairpins, checkpoints, and finish lines, roads will be closed, town centers shut down, military escorts enabled, and watching crowd numbers (the Gumball tifosi) are expected to exceed one million. Last year, when Gumball visited SoutheastAsia – stopping off in Saigon, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, the cars pulled crowds of around one million people at each stage. In terms of live, eyes-on spectators, Gumball is more popular than a whole season of Formula 1.
And the toll for participation in this annual road rave, now in its 27th iteration? Exact figures are not available – this is very much a price on request thing – but an entry-level ticket is in the $100,000 ballpark. As much as $300,000 if you want to fly hypercars in from overseas, include support vehicles, or even drive a different car from your climatically controlled, subterranean collection at every stage.
In charge of this steroidal intercontinental Scalextric set and the gonzo logistics of its traffic-stopping circus is one Maximillion Fife Alexander Somers Cooper, St. Martins fashion graduate turned law graduate, avid motor racer, scenester, and widescreen visionary who serves as Gumball’s originator and ringmaster.
The idea for Gumball 3000, Cooper recalls from his office at Gumball HQ in light-industrial West London, began as a kind of elaborate car accident.
Back when he was still a rookie motor racer (and a contemporary of F1 star David Coulthard) and a successful model (campaigns for Ralph Lauren, Armani etc.), Max came to the conclusion that his career wasn’t going to be behind the wheel but perhaps managing/owning drivers from the pit lane. “I’d noticed that team owners were wealthy and successful, but also that the business side of the sport was boring, unimaginative, and very corporate. So, at 26 years old, I decided to buy a Formula 1 team. Why not?”
This was 1997 – peak “Cool Britannia”. London was having an era-defining moment, its new-gen entrepreneurs wearing Union Jack livery and cocky go-faster stripes; the cool kids in the blue-tinted aviator shades were running things – nightclubs, record labels, fashion startups, events, and entertainment. Discovering that Tyrrell, former F1 constructors’ champions and once the home of racing legends including Jody Scheckter, Jean Alesi, and Jackie Stewart, was suddenly available, he sprang into action.
Could he raise the money? In the modern era, the valuation of a Formula 1 team’s brand and pedigree is sky-high – the Mercedes team is currently valued at approximately $6 billion – but back in the 1990s, more reasonable deals could be done.
Max made some calls and found enough investors – financiers, sponsors, influencers, sexy rock’n’roll people – to fund his dream for an outfit that would bring together the worlds of fashion and fenders and would compete in the old-school spirit of James Hunt and the old Hesketh team. Half Bentley Boys, half Beastie Boys. With racing suits designed by Diesel.
He got to the $40 million total but was pipped at the finish line by British American Tobacco (BAT) who outbid him at the last minute. Now what?
“As a thank you to everyone who had supported me in the bid, I decided to throw a huge party,” Max says. “With cars. A six-day road trip event. Crazy, completely chaotic schedule, amazing hotels, parties each night.”
Inspiration came from the 1976 David Carradine movie Cannonball and its Cannonball Run sequel starring Burt Reynolds. “Also, Le Mans and the Indy 500, the street art of New York graffiti artist Futura 2000, some Andy Warhol-ish pop-trashiness.” Max hoped that this one-off, pan-European adventure – the inaugural Gumball 3000 rally – would keep his financiers engaged should he want to buy another F1 team.
He pulled in favors. Called on his contacts. Asked for checks. Kate Moss, Guy Ritchie, Billy Zane, Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Kylie Minogue, and Beverly Hills 90210 star Jason Priestley all signed up.
“A total of 55 cars, each driver paying £3,000. Mostly people I knew personally. It was low key. No crowds. The start was the Bluebird Garage on the King’s Road in Chelsea, Sir Terence Conran waving the starting flag – and off they went to Paris.” Then Monaco, on to Italy to the San Marino Grand Prix, a turnaround in Rimini then back through Northern Europe via Germany to Park Lane, London.
People loved it. By the time corks started popping at the finish line party – Park Lane’s The Met Bar – Max realized he was down £100,000. But everyone was asking him the same question: “When is the next one?”
Center stage at the HQ’s cocktail lounge – think skater boy meets Bond baddie lair – a maximum man cave of graffiti art, toys, kitsch, and high-value automobilia – is Max Cooper’s beloved 1969 Lotus Type 47 in classic Gulf racing livery, with a bespoke leather interior by Asprey (complete with secret champagne cooler over the gearbox). This is a possession that means even more to him than the Charlie’s Angels pinball machine, the original Banksy artwork, and Steve McQueen’s converted BSA B40 motocross bike… And around the time of the second Gumball in 2000, he very nearly lost it.
For this particular wild ride, the Gumballers would drive from the start at Marble Arch, London, stopping at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and then the Cannes Film Festival… but first to Stansted airport, where the cars would be loaded onto special double-decker racks aboard three massive Antonov An-124s – the largest military transport aircrafts in service at the time – rented to Max by some Russians. This flight of fancy proved catastrophically expensive, and he was in the hole even deeper this time – close to half a million. The Russians wanted their money and took the Lotus until he could afford to pay them.
Which he did, after securing lucrative Gumball license deals with Hasbro, YouTube, and MTV. Before long, he was back in favor with the Russians, organizing a Gumball rally from London to St. Petersburg, this time with F1 champion Damon Hill participating. Other exploits found him shutting down the length of Regent Street for the Gumball’s London finish in 2016 (with David “Knight Rider” Hasselhoff as the race MC, and Lewis Hamilton doing a couple of stages, naturally) which cost the organizers a rumored $3 million, the city councilors billing an extra $700,000 to replace the famous crescent’s Union Flag bunting afterwards. In 2008 Gumball went to North Korea, flying 150 supercars into Pyongyang where participants visited the Mayday Stadium for the Arirang Mass Games.
‘We’ve had a total of 30 Forbes-listed billionaires take part. That’s a 10th of the richest people in the world’
Down the years, as super/hypercar culture has grown and the rich have gotten richer, Cooper has watched the Gumball alumni widen to a multination of 0.1-percenters; Adrien Brody, Quentin Tarantino, Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg, Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay, Jackass star Johnny Knoxville, Daryl Hannah, Jodie Kidd, DJs deadmau5 and Afrojack. Max met his second wife, Philly-born rapper Eve, at the grid during Gumball 2010. (The founder’s five children, including daughters Lotus Cooper and Mini Cooper, now in their 20s, are perhaps predestined to be future Gumballers.) “We’ve had a total of 30 Forbes-listed billionaires take part. That’s a 10thof the richest people in the world. It’s a high-powered bunch of people but they all come together in the spirit of adventure and escape.”
Cooper continues to expand the brand beyond the rallies with a new video game release (Gumball 3000: World Tour) and, in Miami, London, and Dubai, a series of Gumball Houses, not unlike the lounge at his company HQ – retail, merchandise, art, coffee, cocktails. Automobilia. Eventually, he plans to open a residential gallery property to house his personal collection of over 500 contemporary art works, including pieces by Frank Stella, Jonathan Yeo, and his painter father, Johnnie Cooper.
Recently, curious as to the value of his still-growing corporation/madcap organization, he called in a professional to assess Gumball’s eight companies, including investment funds that specialize in classic cars and art, film, concert, and events divisions, a registered charity that benefits underprivileged kids, and a Gumball Foundation that runs programs investing in the arts, education, and recreational projects. What was the assessors’ final figure? Put it this way, Cooper may have to change his name to Maxibillion sometime very soon.
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