Too fast, too furious: Munich stages wrecks of illegal street races

MUNICH: As millions around the world head to cinemas to see street racing glorified in the latest film from the "Fast and Furious" saga, an exhibition in Germany is highlighting the sheer destruction and loss of life caused by illegal street races.

Munich, among the many countries worldwide where police have struggled to combat illegal street races, is now shedding light on the darker side of cars in the mobility centre of the city's large Deutsches Museum.

A central piece in the exhibition is the wreck of a Jeep in which a man was killed in an illegal race down Berlin's Ku'Damm boulevard in 2016.

The car-critical show is a significant one for Munich, which is the home of manufacturer BMW and perhaps the most car-friendly city in one of Europe's car-friendliest countries.

Munich's exhibition comes just a week after the cinema release of "Fast X", expected to be the last film in the "Fast and Furious" car-racing action franchise starring Vin Diesel.

The film had prompted warnings from California Highway Patrol, whose officers staged a crashed Lamborghini in Los Angeles as a warning to copycats inspired by the film.

From May 26 onwards, the Munich exhibition "Wahnsinn - Illegale Autorennen" ("Madness - Illegal Car Racing") will be on display alongside the museum's large show of railway cars, planes and other modes of transport.

"We don't just want to sing the praises of technology and mobility," said the director of the Deutsches Museum, Wolfgang Heckl, ahead of the exhibition's opening, explaining that the "dystopian effects" of cars should also be shown.

"The car as a weapon" is the title of the museum's announcement about the exhibition.

The show demonstrates that speeding is not only a contemporary phenomenon, even if it experienced a peak during the pandemic lockdowns, as the director of the German Museum of Technology, Joachim Breuninger, said.

The exhibition was created by the Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin in cooperation with the police and can now be seen here for almost a year until May 2024.