SWEET THINGS INDEED; Lollipops or Gumballs, it's about the cars.(News)

Byline: ANDREW LUU

It's called the Lollipop Rally, and for good reason. If the famous Gumball Rally, where well-heeled enthusiasts hot-foot exotic cars 3000 miles across the United States with a blind eye to traffic laws, comes to mind, then Lollipop founder Randy Ayyar did his job. The Gumball itself is a knockoff of the 1972 Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash run by Brock Yates.

"The Gumball,'' says Ayyar, "costs around $12,400 to join, and that's way too expensive for most people. I wanted to create a similar event that everyone can afford.''

Think of Gumball lite. Instead of Ferraris and Porsches, the Lollipop (lollipoprallyusa.com) boasts tricked-out Honda Civics and Mitsubishi Eclipses and an audience that is very much 20-something. For a $110 fee, entrants got a three-day, 500-mile cruise from Michigan through Ohio and Indiana, and ending in Chicago. It was a run whose counterculture counter-programmed both the Woodward Dream Cruise and the various auto events along the Monterey Peninsula on the same weekend, and whose organizers didn't even know either established car event existed.

As is often the case with the bigger, more elaborate Gumball Rally, schedules changed. Thanks to millions of people being without power, the inaugural Lollipop Rally hit something of a roadblock. We arrived early at the start in Mount Clemens, Michigan, in a borrowed and culturally appropriate blue '04 Subaru WRX STi anticipating a 10 a.m. launch. However, roughly only half of the 42 entrants materialized; too few had managed to fill their cars before gas station paralysis hit the night before.

Even event organizer Ayyar, preoccupied by rally details, was stuck at home, his Mustang's fuel needle on empty. Those who made it to the start wondered if the rally would happen at all. Two hours past takeoff point, a call from Ayyar reached the checkpoint: He was in a long gas line, but planned to distribute fuel to others' thirsty cars.

And finally, nearly five hours past the original start time, a 22-car convoy peeled out. First stop was Flat Rock, Michigan, to fill up (this city had electricity), and then a dash straight to Chicago.