Sydney rejected Ken Block event
Ken Block is too much of a hoon for Australia.
The rallycross star released the ninth instalment in his Gymkhana viral videos overnight, but despite notching up over 250 million views on YouTube the American was not welcome in Australia.
Block, who heads the Hoonigan clothing brand and performs a number of tyredestroying stunts in his videos, including drifting, donuts and jumps, wanted to film Gymkhana Nine on the streets of Sydney as part of a promotion with the Australian-set Forza Horizons 3 video game.
However, despite coming up with the concept for the video and choosing locations including the Sydney CBD, the Opera House and Cockatoo Island, Block and his Hoonigan team were reportedly blocked by the local authorities. Australia has some of the toughest ‘‘anti-hoon’’ laws in the world and infamously Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton had his car impounded during his visit to the Australian Grand Prix for doing burnouts in 2010.
Hoonigan spokesman Matt Tuccillo said that the only option to film in Sydney was if all the driving was done on private property.
‘‘We got fairly far along in the process and had a full script ready to go with the locations we had scouted,’’ Tuccillo said. ‘‘Permitting became an issue due to the nature of what we do and eventually we were forced to abort the plans at the last minute.’’
The potential global exposure by featuring in the popular video series now appears lost to Australia forever.
‘‘I’ll never say never, but unless we were doing the entire project on private property, I don’t see [filming Gymkhana in Australia] working out based on the current legislature,’’ Tuccillo said.
Previous Gymkhana videos have been filmed in Los Angeles, Dubai and San Francisco. The latter involved closing down Oakland Bay Bridge and other famous landmarks in the city but has attracted over 86 million views online.
With Sydney off the agenda Gymkhana Nine was filmed in a largely abandoned industrial setting in New York state.
The video features him driving his racing machine - a custombuilt 447kW Ford Focus RS RX machine.