The idea was to move the Fast and Furious movie franchise off the big screen and put its cars and their owners and their friends on the ground for a day-long car show and drag racing competition at the Gila Bend Municipal Airport in the southern Arizona desert.
The event title was taken from a scene in the original The Fast and the Furious movie in which the main characters participate in a high-speed and loud-noise event, Race Wars, held in a desert location.
However, while the idea might have been brilliant, the execution was not. Even with people pre-registering for either racing, the car show or as spectators, promoters didn’t foresee just how many people would be drawn to the site, and not only from Arizona but from across state lines. Traffic was backed up for some five miles and many people were turned away as the site’s capacity was reached very quickly.
Millennials have grown up watching the film series, including the most recently released Furious7, and have become a very large if not quite so well known part of the car community.
And while those in attendance tended to be in their teens and 20s, their vehicles ranged from highly modified sport compacts and American muscle cars to European sports cars, sport bikes, supercars, classics, trucks and rat rods.
Photography by Hans Marquez
