DETROIT, MI - More than 400 junkyard cars started, or stalled, their engines Saturday morning for the first Detroit Gambler 500.

The rustbucket rally isn't a race but an adventure of competitions and off-road trail driving in jalopies worth no more than $500. The rally began in Troy at organizer and creative Detroit-area entrepreneur Tom Nardone's headquarters.

"Be Weird," Nardone urged fellow drivers, many of whom dressed in the motifs of their vehicles.

Motorists decked out their cars with basketball hoops and unicorn heads. They chopped off the trunks and wielded a hodgepodge of parts to create something they hope will take them the full 500-mile route.

Making their way into Detroit, Frankenstein-esque cars, trucks, SUVs, an old ice cream truck and a defunct Pontiac fire ambulance smoked and sputtered their way over to the Packard Plant and through the Heidelberg Project before stopping at Eastern Market for lunch.

The drivers received their coordinates just Saturday morning and the ragtag parade will make its way north toward West Branch off I-75 south of Huron National Forest, moving through a series of trails and dirt roads to their destination, a wilderness campsite.

With no more than a list of GPS waypoints and notes at each location like "Drive by if you want to survive; Stay if you want to play" and "Level expert s****, approach from the South," many of the cars are bound to break down.

If the brave drivers make it back to Metro Detroit, the finish line is a pizza party at a Sterling Heights auto salvage yard where, "you can drop your car and title, get money and hitch a ride back to the start."