To celebrate tomorrow's release of the film Fast & Furious, a convoy of 40 'pimped up' cars drove across London last night from the Ace Cafe in Wembley to the O2. By Paul Owen and Hamant Verma
To celebrate the release of the film Fast & Furious tomorrow, a convoy of 'pimped up' cars drove last night across London from the Ace Cafe in Wembley to the O2 – the former Millennium Dome – in the south-east of the capital. The Ace Cafe is home to many 'meets' of modified-car and motorbike enthusiasts, and the drivers had been keenly awaiting the new moviePhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.uk'T', a New Yorker who customises cars for professional footballers, perches on a Studebaker from the London Motor Museum. Fast & Furious is the fourth film in a series about street-car racers and criminalsPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukMatt Hosier shows off his Toyota Supra. The film appeals to Ace Cafe regulars because it glamorises their hobby of modifying cars to enable them to drive at high speeds and perform stunts. Hosier said: 'This has always been a passion for a lot of people. The original film just got ordinary people into this scene'Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukTony Scullion, 50, of Kent, with his modified Peugeot 206, complete with a painted image of a woman holding his decapitated head. 'I just thought I would do it for a laugh,' he said of the picture. 'I saw something like it at on a Hot Rod and thought I would bring it into our scene.' His car has a top speed of 150mph and can go from nought to 60 in 6.2 secondsPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukA classic car on the forecourt of the Ace CafePhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukColin Hale attaches plates to his Toyota Supra in preparation for the journey to the O2Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukNathan Bovingdon, 37, of Northampton, with his Pontiac Trans Am, whose original 4.9litre turbo engine he once accidentally blew up. He said: 'When I was a kid, I loved Smokey and the Bandit and Dukes of Hazzard. It’s my toy, a childhood dream. People of a certain generation love it'Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukJo Wise, 31, of Essex, with his modified Ford Fiesta. Asked why he ‘pimped’ a car so much that it struggled to get over speed bumps, he replied: 'I sort of regret it, but you just start to add things to it. Everyone wants to take pictures of it with their mobile phones at traffic lights, so I must have done something right'Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukA side view of Wise's carPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukRoy Walker's Cortina Mark One, with its air circulation motor pushing out of the bonnet. Walker, 46, of Northampton, found this car abandoned in a garden with a tree growing in the middle of it, and placed a massively oversized engine inside it. He said: 'If you mess with this car, it will bite your ass off'Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukDetail of Walker's CortinaPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukPaige Robbins and Mel Dowding, two of the few women at the Ace Cafe, despite the film featuring two female street racers as key charactersPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukMore cars arrive at the cafePhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukMark Wilsmore, the founder and managing director of the Ace Cafe. Asked why the Fast and Furious films connected with his customers, he said: 'It's just bang on the money, isn't it? In the 50s, kids were buying the fastest vehicles they could: motorbikes. This is just the equivalent today. They're just chasing the same emotions'Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukCars pack the forecourt of the Ace Cafe, waiting to set off on their journey across LondonPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukThe convoy of around 40 modified cars stacks up on a slip road off the North Circular Road, about to set offPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukThe convoy passes through central LondonPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukThe first cars arrive at the O2 to watch a special screening of the filmPhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukIn the background are the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and, to the right, the spires of the domePhotograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukThe drivers leave their vehicles for the short walk to the O2Photograph: Paul Owen/guardian.co.ukThe film marks Vin Diesel's return to the role of street car racer and hijacker Dominic TorettoPhotograph: Jaimie TruebloodAfter a boisterous reception to the start of the film, the rest of the relentlessly paced action movie was watched by the – presumably tired – drivers in a surprisingly quiet atmospherePhotograph: Universal Pictures
