Ulysse Nardin and the somewhat different rally: "Freak x Gumball 3000"
Swiss manufacturer Ulysse Nardin and the somewhat different Gumball 3000 rally are presenting their second joint edition in the third year of their partnership: the “Freak x Gumball 3000 Edition 2.”
Gumball 3000
In 1999, Maximimillion Cooper founded the 3,000-mile rally, where speed and spectacle are secondary. Gumball 3000 is not about the destination. It’s about the journey, the challenges on the road, and the stories that unfold along the way.
Over the years, the rally has attracted a mix of visionaries: the community ranges from artists to visionaries to athletes.
In 2026, Gumball 3000 returns to North America with a daring route from Miami to Mexico City, the “Road to the World Cup,” crossing borders, traversing landscapes and cultures, seven days and 3,000 miles long.
The rally brings together 100 carefully selected cars and is supported by tourism organizations, host cities, and global partners, with the aim of creating a rolling, large-scale festival of music, car culture, and live events.
Freak X Gumball 3000 – Edition 2
When it was launched in 2001, the Freak redefined the rules of watchmaking. It was more than just a new watch; it reset the codes of watchmaking. But the Freak doesn’t just look different. It also works differently from conventional watches: with no hands, no dial, and no crown, the movement itself becomes the time display.
As the first watch with silicon components, the “Freak” also stands for technological innovation, with 35 associated patents to date.
Since 2019, the Freak X has been translating this DNA in a slightly less avant-garde way, but still stands out despite the addition of a crown for winding and time correction. This is ensured by typical “Freak” elements such as the hour disc, which rotates once every 12 hours to display the hours, and a flying carousel, which completes one revolution per hour to display the minutes.
The “Freak X Gumball 3000 – Edition 2” relies on the UN-230 manufacture caliber with a 72-hour power reserve for precise operation and adorns its functional design in black and orange. It thus picks up on the unmistakable codes of the Gumball 3000.
The centerpiece of the design is the hour disc made of Carbonium, a high-performance material derived from recycled ultra-light carbon fibers from the aerospace industry. The interweaving of black carbon fibers with bright orange epoxy resin gives the material a three-dimensional structure, ensuring that no two hour discs are identical.
For the first time, the minute wheel is highlighted by an orange Super-LumiNova ring, complemented by indices and bridges with white Super-LumiNova details. This not only improves readability, but also emphasizes the graphic and technical appearance of the timepiece.
The black DLC-coated 43-millimeter titanium case, combined with an openworked rubber strap with orange inserts and stitching, completes the “Freak X Gumball 3000 – Edition 2,” limited to 150 pieces.
(RRP €41,000)
