For the Record: 28:50 - A journey toward self-discovery and the Cannonball Run Record

by Ed Bolian

  The muscle car era was a Great Awakening of car culture in America. You could walk into any showroom in America and buy a practical car with the biggest engine they offered at a reasonable price. No one cared about fuel economy, emissions, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, global warming, carbon footprints, safety, foreign oil, or motor vehicle regulations. Concerns about oil dependence and embargos were still a few years away. What a glorious time it was.

  The early 70’s ushered in a fuel crisis and a massive criticism of high performance motoring. Laws were passed that imposed safety, restricted engine capacity, mandated lower fuel consumption, and shackled down horsepower. It was the death blow to the muscle car. Worse than that, it also was the genesis of the 55 mile per hour national speed limit. This was like finding a world full of drug addicts who had enjoyed full legalization and an unlimited supply of anything they could ask for and then turning off the faucet and watching everyone squirm. Someone should have played the entrapment angle.

  Brock Yates was a long-term staff writer for Car & Driver Magazine. He had an idea - what if we tried to see how fast we could drive from coast to coast? How would the world react if a group banded together to demonstrate just how preposterous a 55 mph national speed limit was? Eisenhower had built these roads to land military aircraft on. With cars that could go triple the legal speed, shouldn’t we be allowed to use them? The idea was born and immediately gathered steam in the small underground world of cross country outlaw road racing, which at the time was his personal rolodex of racing contacts and connections.

  The name Cannonball came from the legendary Erwin George “Cannon Ball” Baker who was known for doing hundreds of point to point motorcycle and car drives totalling more than half a million miles in his lifetime. His best known trek was from New York City to Los Angeles in 1933 in a Graham-Paige Model 57 Blue Streak 8 in fifty three and half hours. That record stood for almost forty years.

  The route was born - balls out NY 2 LA. The name evolved into The Cannonball Baker Sea to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. The irony dripped from the erudite journalistic bravado of Yates who was both proud of and terrified by his new passion project. He knew it was an idea that tugged at the heartstrings of any car enthusiast and served as a rare continuation of the great American frontiersman spirit. The “Go West” idea had pervaded the United States psyche for two hundred years. Now it had a new context.

  Yates chronicled the history of each running of the Cannonball in 1971, 1972, 1975, and finally in 1979 in his book - “Cannonball! The World's Greatest Outlaw Road Race,” published in 2001. The antics of the race were also amplified and depicted in the 1980’s films by Hal Needham starring Burt Reynolds, Dom Deluise, and the Rat Pack.

  The best Cannonball story/ruse has to be the 1979 strategy of Yates and Needham. It was in the actual race but also later used in the 1981 film. They outfitted an ambulance and carried along a woman who was purported to be a senator’s wife. When they were pulled over for running lights ablaze at 130 mph past several hospitals the law enforcement officers asked what they were up to. Somehow without rehearsal, the man in the back explained how the woman had a unique condition which had to be treated by the staff of the UCLA medical center. She had to be transported there by ambulance because the pressurization of an airplane cabin would have caused her body to erupt into cysts. The cops asked them to slow it down a bit but let them continue without arrest or citation. Absolute gold.

  Of course when discussing Cannonball it is impossible to overlook the opening of each film featuring two gorgeous women piloting a Lamborghini Countach toying with the police and spraypainting X’s over the shiny new double nickel speed limit signs. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said once that despite struggling to use words to define pornography, “I know it when I see it.” I assume this was the mental image he was struggling to describe.

  The epitome of Cannonball cool also belongs to Yates’ own participation in 1971 when he solicited Dan Gurney as a co-driver and was able to negotiate a loan of a Sunoco Blue Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona for the trip. They did the drive in 35 hours 54 minutes, winning the inaugural competitive event and setting the stage for the years to come. Gurney commented to the dismay of readers everywhere that “At no time did we exceed 175 mph.” The Yates/Gurney time would be bested by a single minute in the 1975 winning run by Jack May and Rick Cline in a white Ferrari Dino 246 GTS. It is a painfully beautiful car still owned and routinely shown by “Cannonball Jack” to this day.

  The best time from coast-to-coast to come out of the Cannonball runnings was held by Dave Heinz and Dave Yarbrough of 32 hours 51 mins. Heinz was a Jaguar Dealer and they drove a Jaguar XJS. The Cannonball cool factor permeated the dealership business for years after the race. Yarborough still runs a Lexus store in Charleston. The XJS they used recently resurfaced for sale, being bought for restoration by a character to come later in this story.

  The Australian Jaguar Importer actually outfitted eleven XJS’s with unique wheels, Cibie Driving Lights, a “Prince” trip computer, blacked out chrome trim, and other interesting modifications. They were sold as “Cannonball Editions.” This was not the only “Cannonball” special edition car. In 1985 (the year I was born) Brock Yates partnered with Bob Snodgrass and Brumos Audi in Florida to make a run of twelve customized Quattro 4000 sport sedans. They had a similar suite of modifications plus euro spec lights, a larger fuel tank, and improved suspension. Cannonball was becoming a cultural phenomenon.

  When Yates was pressured into stopping the organization of Cannonball both by the movie producers and by his employer, there were clearly still people wanting to continue doing it. An event called the US Express was born and run in 1981, 1982, and 1983. The best time out of this event was held by David Diem and Doug Turner of 32 hours 7 minutes. They drove a Ferrari 308 GTS, still owned to this day by David.

  Over the years, various small scale copycat events continued to pop up, but the American appetite for such things was quickly waning. Cars were less capable, police patrolling was much greater, and the roads were becoming more crowded with more people owning and driving cars. Urban sprawl was quickly eating up the vast open areas of undeveloped regions of the country and the population was increasing fast. Bear in mind there were 50% more people living in the United States in the year 2013 than there were in 1971 when the first Cannonball was run.

  In the epilogue to his book, Yates said very directly how he did not believe that the records from that era could be challenged today. The records had not advanced since 1979 in his mind, not acknowledging the spinoff style events. Even those had remained untouched since 1983. He cited all of the obvious reasons - more people, more cops, more cars, better anti-speeding technology, harsher penalties for speeding, and a completely different social mindset which he thought would prove much more hostile to the idea.

  That was what I wanted to talk to him about as an eighteen year old high school student. I wanted to understand what the lifestyle of an automotive journalist was like but more importantly I wanted to know about Cannonball. Less than a year prior I had been dreaming of the exact same idea he had pioneered without any prior knowledge of its existence.

  Why couldn’t someone [I] do it? What would stop me? How much harder is it now? What would be involved with a modern attempt?

  Yates was surprisingly forthcoming to a kid who had just gotten his home phone number by bluffing the receptionist at the magazine. He still loved the idea of Cannonball. It sounded like your grandfather recounting a night he spent with Marilyn Monroe. It was the pinnacle of his life, his proudest achievement, the tallest feather in his well adorned cap. He had all of the stories fresh in his mind since writing the book just a few years prior. They were like his fraternity stories from college. Those “you wouldn’t believe what we got away with” type tales. He was the most confident sounding man I had ever heard speak. It was Tarantino wrapping production on the final scene of Pulp Fiction. It was Michelangelo cleaning his brushes while the last str
okes of the Sistine Chapel dried. It was Jordan pushing off of Byron Russell for the winning shot in game six of the ‘98 finals. These were the glory days projects that can turn your resume into a single line item, perhaps just a single word.

  Everything was cordial. He was extremely kind. He wished me the best in school and I told him one day I was going to break the Cannonball records. Brock Yates laughed politely and signed off saying, “Good luck kid.”

  Chapter 3

  Finding My Flaw

  My childhood best friend was named Kevin Messer. His dad was a long-time muscle car guy and Kevin was ballsy enough to carry on a conversation with me about the things I was interested in. He was my partner in crime for the illegitimate test driving, car business dreaming, and repeatedly getting my first car stuck in the mud. It was a 1995 Land Rover Discovery with 150k miles. Appropriately green, it was an awesome truck with a crankshaft knock that would make an old farm tractor blush. We would sneak out and do donuts in his father’s 1960’s Corvettes and Camaros and dream about the days when we would have exotic cars of our own. Before we realized how weird the visual would be, we had a bet to see who the first person would be to be able to buy a Ferrari. The loser had to ride shotgun for a day wearing a dress. Fortunately I never made him pay up on that. Two dudes rolling around shoulder to shoulder in a Ferrari wearing proper attire is sexually questionable enough.

  We dreamt of the record. We talked about how we might do it, we watched the movies over and over again, and we idolized the folklore of it all. Neither of us had any idea what we would end up doing with our lives but the conversations with him were actually where the exotic car rental concept came from as well.

  Kevin was not one to behave himself. He never did great in school, got a lot of tickets, dated the wrong kinds of girls, and was the kind of guy your parents questioned you hanging around with. I, on the other hand, was the kind of kid your parents didn’t realize was probably the wrong kind of person to associate with until it was too late. Kevin and I would download street racing clips on early file sharing sites like Kazaa and Limewire of Ferraris doing burnouts and Europeans getting arrested for bringing their cars to the US for driving events and getting pulled over at preposterous speeds.

  An event called the Gumball 3000 was founded by a mysterious man named Maximillion Cooper in 1999. It continues today as an annual ~3,000 mile road rally for exotic car enthusiasts. It is not a race but anytime you get a bunch of supercars and their owners’ super-egos together, adhering to the speed limit seem to fall just below humility at the bottom of their hierarchy of existential concerns.

  It was widely assumed that this was some continuation of Cannonball. Participants would claim to “win” stages or the event altogether but the organizers seemed to make it clear that it was not a race and that the only competition was to embody the Spirit of Gumball using decorated cars and generally adding to the endless party atmosphere. It was tough to reconcile the folklore of Cannonball with entitled international celebrities testing the limits of sleep deprivation and blood alcohol levels but it was the closest thing that seemed to exist.

  Similar events popped up - the Bullrun, Player’s Run, Cannonball Run Europe Events, and others. As a senior trip after finishing high school I entered an event called the AKA Rally. It was the same idea, driving generally 3,000 miles across the country from New York to Los Angeles, stopping each night for a party. While I aspired to do Gumball, the finances never made it possible. This event had a lower entry fee which meant there would be more modified Japanese cars and fewer Ferraris and Lamborghinis. I registered and drove a modified 2000 Audi S4 I had been able to acquire due to the number of scholarships I had gotten exceeding the necessary in-state budget at Georgia Tech. The car was great - 350 upgraded hp with twin turbos for great torque, upgraded suspension, nice six speed gearbox, all wheel drive, and very comfortable to boot. It was a great car to eat up the highway on a long road trip. I bought my first Valentine 1 Radar Detector, the Zach Morris cell phone version of a Garmin GPS that weighed more than the laptop I am typing this on now, and a Radio Shack CB Radio.

  I had seen the videos and heard the stories from Gumball. It looked like a blast but there was a clear demarcation between those who were treating it as a millionaire’s holiday and those who were trying to compete, either with each other or just against the clock. I found the later hugely compelling. There were three names that stood out of the participants who seemed to take the point-to-point speed aspect seriously. They were Rob Kenworthy, Alex Roy, and Richard Rawlings.

  Rob Kenworthy participated in several Gumball events and other rallies. He was British and took great advantage of not having US tickets impact his driving privileges back home. There were clips of him weaving through traffic in a modified Porsche 996 GT2 at nearly 200 mph. It was fantastic but he was seeming to just drive fast for the thrill of it, not bothered by where he actually finished.

  Alex Roy was a different story. His objective was clear - he wanted to finish first on every single leg of the event, going to great lengths to do so. Where the other participants were clearly taking advantage of their selections from the cornucopia of exotic car offerings in the marketplace by driving Murcielagos, 360s, 911 Turbos, and even ultra-rare cars like Koenigseggs; he drove an understated Avus Blue E39 BMW M5. In fact, he outfitted it as an international police vehicle each year with a different country’s law enforcement livery all over it.

  Every time I would see a video or gallery of photos online documenting Gumball I was quick to pour through them. Just like the car statistic magazine racer that I was, I wanted to be an expert on this event I lacked the means to engage in. I was flipping through some photos from a European Gumball and saw a picture of Alex Roy sitting at a desk. He was decked out in some foreign nation’s police uniform with the stickers on the M5 set to match. He was updating his navigation systems from a silver Apple computer similarly covered in vinyl decals. Upside down in the frame was a phone number in stickers on the outside of the computer. It had to be his cell phone number. What else would you put on a computer when you travel out of the country? I put it into my phone and saved it. I would not use it for years but I knew it would come in handy one day.

  He also took an interesting approach to vehicle preparation. Most of the cars were hitting ridiculously high speeds without much in the way of police countermeasures. Alex did it differently. He had various radar detectors, police scanners, lights, radios, navigation systems, etc. It was clearly giving him an advantage in a race within a rally that not many people cared about.

  Richard Rawlings was a third outspoken and thereby prolific participant in the event. He drove a variety of cars including a modified Chevrolet Avalanche and a Ferrari 550 Maranello owned by his friend, Dennis Collins. Like Alex, he had radar detectors, fuel range extending upgrades, and a CB radio antenna swinging off of the car. He clearly wanted to come in first and frequently did.

  This was not true Cannonball but it was the closest thing to it I could find. I wanted to be as close as I could to whatever modern interpretation existed. As I was preparing my car for the AKA Rally in 2004, I purchased my suite of electronics to emulate their preparation. Some representatives from the MTV True Life production team contacted me and told me they wanted to follow three different teams in their participation in this event. They asked if they could film me, some backstory about me graduating from high school, and us driving. It was a lot of fun and the episode aired as “MTV True Life: I’m Rallying to LA” in October of 2004.

  The trip was a blast. My co-driver was a good friend from high school and AAU basketball teammate - Lee Burrell. He learned to drive a stick in order to join me on the trip. He was the perfect co-driver. I knew him well enough to enjoy his company but the relationship was casual enough that we could still get upset with each other and be honest. Like the Gumball, this was not a race but a rally. That being said, there were four teams that treated it as a competition. Lee and I were constantly trying to get to
every destination first, as were a two girl team out of New Jersey and a guy named Tom Greulich from St Louis. Another great competitor and co-participant was Nick Reid. He drove a Subaru WRX STi very well and was the life of every party.

  The girls were an interesting pair. Alicia was a marine biologist from the Smithsonian and Kelly was covered in Tattoos and the owner of the brand new BMW E46 M3 that they drove proficiently. They had the advantage of actually having been to most of the cities where we were going as opposed to Lee and I who had traveled very little.

  Tom drove a Honda S2000. His choice of vehicle for the rally didn’t matter because Tom’s parents had a Jaguar XJ220 which was one of the most insane hypercars to ever exist by 2004. I suppose that didn’t matter either because they never drove it and I have come to adopt the position that if you don’t have the testicular fortitude to actually drive an exotic car you own, you might as well not bother to purchase it in the first place, particularly if the car is of dubious investment potential like an XJ220 had been since its release ten or so years prior.

  Tom and I developed a pleasant friendship through the trip. He drove fast but responsibly. He enjoyed himself but invested in making friendships along the way. We kept in touch for several years after the drive, talking cars and life. Great guy.

  In the subsequent publicity of the rally and the MTV show I met a guy named Chris Staschiak. He had done Gumball a couple of times with Roy and Rawlings, and was a real car guy. He drove a 1973 Corvette, dressed as an L88 with bass boat glitter green paint. He aspired to one day own a Ferrari or a Porsche 911 Turbo. Chris and I would talk regularly but actually didn’t meet in person for three years. Chris was the only person other than Kevin who I knew that had ever cared about the Cannonball Record. He loved talking about the strategy of it, the best car for the job, and how we might do it one day. You could never really tell how serious he was about going through with the idea though.