Cord Shiflet, right, and one of his Fool's Roll teams.
Cord Shiflet
The rules for Fool’s Roll seem straightforward: Buy a car that costs $3,000 or less. Drive it, Cannonball Run style, from Austin, Texas to Las Vegas, Nevada in costume. Sell the car in Vegas and bet all the money on one spin of the roulette wheel. Don’t get a speeding ticket or you’re disqualified. Best time wins $10,000.
That description doesn’t come close to describing all the hi-jinks and twists that happen along the way.
Austin-based realtor Cord Shiflet came up with the idea for Fool’s Roll nearly 15 years ago. He was on a text chain with several friends trying to plan a trip to Vegas, but the flights were too pricey at the time. As he tried to come up with alternate ideas, Shiflet was inspired by a “piece of crap” Porsche 911 he had purchased as a joke. He bought the car to surprise his wife with a recreation of the scene in Sixteen Candles (his wife’s favorite movie) when heartthrob Jake Ryan picks up Molly Ringwald’s character Samantha in his red Porsche. Shiflet fired off a text to his crew to see if they’d be willing to buy “junk cars” and drive to Vegas.
I’m in, they all said. That’s when the rules for Fool’s Roll started to come together.
“Then I thought, what would be a fun time to do a ridiculous bit like this?” Shiflet says. “It had to be April Fools’ Day."
A team dressed as characters from The Hangover movie
Cord Shiflet
Ten teams participated in that first year. They mapped out a straight route to Vegas, which is about 15 hours. However, Shiflet didn’t have a straight route in mind.
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“I didn’t want people just going pedal to the metal the whole way,” Shiflet says. “Someone would get hurt, and we don’t want that.”
At the first kickoff party on the night before the race, Shiflet announced a a new rule that threw a wrench in everyone’s game plan: every team had to stop at the Mexico border to get their passports stamped. Subsequent years included twists like a requirement to stop at any roller skating rink along the route and skate 40 laps (still dressed in costume, of course). Teams had to stop at a dirt racetrack for 50 laps one year and a bowling alley during another Fool’s Roll.
Fool's Roll, Top Gun style
Cord Shiflet
“We’ve had scavenger hunts along the way and they had to find something or get their picture taken next to some type of a monument,” Shiflet recalls. “We’ve come up with things each year to throw the course off and to weigh the time differently.”
While the majority of the teams are in it for the fun and enjoy the journey, not everyone is laid back. Like a Cannonball Run, hard-core teams wear racing catheters or adult diapers, Shiflet says.
“They do the math to figure out how to get the best gas mileage,” he says. “I mean, they nerd out over it.”
The Austinite says he has spent the last 13 years re-crafting and fine-tuning the rules because competitors try to find workarounds. Some of them find a better way to cheat or a bigger way to win, he says. All in fun, though; cheaters are discovered or reveal themselves in the end. One team of successful attorneys created an elaborate ruse a couple of years ago that involved a private jet and an Oscar-worthy acting job. Eventually, they owned up; no names will be revealed to protect the guilty.
Shiflet, second from right, and his "Revenge of the Nerds" team.
Cord Shiflet
Participants have come from around the country (including Alaska and Hawaii) to join Fool’s Roll. Often, teams find Shiflet randomly and sign up on the spot. That’s no surprise, as Shiflet has a large following on social media. He is generous and very active in the community, helping others through his nonprofit foundation Cordonate, founded with his wife Annie to support various charitable causes and disaster relief efforts.
For instance, every Christmas, Shiflet ensures that hundreds (nearly 300 in 2025) foster kids get a party and gifts. When devastating floods ravaged central Texas last July, Shiflet gathered a crew and traveled two hours to spend days in the wreckage to help.
He works hard, and when he’s ready to play it takes the form of Fool’s Roll. His spirit of generosity has inspired giving from others, like the team that donated a vehicle to a local volunteer fire station. Another bought out a whole store’s worth of Hot Wheels cars and brought them to the children’s ward of a hospital in Vegas.
“What I love is this thing brings together people who share just a common love of having fun and doing bucket list life experiences,” Shiflet says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, you’re poor, you’re male, you’re female. If you like to have fun, you’re going to leave with a whole new set of friends and a lifetime of memories.”
And for the winner, $10,000.
Ready to sign up for 2027? More info here.
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