While the film The Road Warrior is a stone-cold classic and essential viewing for both gearheads and fans of dystopian science fiction flicks, George Miller’s recent entry into the franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road has sparked a renewed interest in the world of Mad Max and introduced a new generation to the glory of desert-bound, V8-powered post-apocalyptic mayhem.

This beast was the first to greet us upon arrival at the Wasteland World car show. This Ford F150 and trailer belong to the organizers of the event, and the trailer hauls all of the supplies and merch for the event.

That renewed interest helped give birth to Wasteland Weekend: A four-day post-apocalyptic party held every September in California’s Mojave desert that’s been growing steadily every year since the inaugural event in 2010.

With more than 2,000 Mad Max fanatics in attendance at last year’s event, the organizers of Wasteland Weekend decided to add an off-shoot car show event to the Wasteland calendar in order to provide builders with a venue to show off their rides and perhaps inspire newcomers to get involved as well.

We headed to the first annual Wasteland World Car Show in Torrance, California, this past weekend to check it out.

Wasteland Weekend

Although the event is centered around a celebration of Mad Max, Wasteland Weekend takes influence from various sources, from video games like Fallout to the movie Book of Eli. But truth be told, it’s clear that Fury Road served as a catalyst to get things rolling.

“We’ve actually been prepping for Fury Road’s release and its effect on our event since 2010,” says the event’s director and co-founder Jared Butler.

Old school Beetles made a strong showing at the Wasteland World car show. This particular example caught our eye – not sure if it was the bird on top of the Gatling gun or just the fact that it’s named Roxaane.

“For our first gathering, George Miller and his crew sent us a sneak peek video from their pre-production in Australia, featuring the first glimpse of the Gigahorse, the monster car driven by the film’s villain Immortan Joe. Since then, we’ve been waiting and hoping that Fury Road would bring something new to energize the world of post-apocalyptic pop culture. It delivered way beyond our expectations.”

The event can also draw some parallels with the annual Burning Man event, which is also held in the desert and follows some similar tropes. But with Mad Max’s emphasis on killer badland-trekking muscle cars and DIY monster trucks, Wasteland Weekend has much more of a gearhead vibe to it.

“The amount of skill and creativity out there when it comes to repurposing discarded objects and rusted metal is just incredible,” says Adam Chilson, Wasteland Weekend’s art director and build supervisor. “And we’re proud that we’ve helped create a venue for people to showcase it all.” In keeping with the automotive themes in Fury Road, one of the clearest displays of all of this repurposed rust is in the vehicles that are brought out to the event.

2015’s Wasteland Weekend featured well over 100 customized, fan-built Mad Max-style cars and motorcycles, driven out from all over the continent, some owners convoying thousands of miles to show off their creations in the temporary desert city.

“You don’t need to bring a themed car to enjoy Wasteland Weekend,” points out Butler, “but everyone who comes without one seems to add building a Mad Max car to their bucket list by the time the weekend is done.”

Wasteland World Car Show

With the massive attendance at last year’s Wasteland Weekend, it became clear that the event needed to expand in order to provide a showcase for all the hard work and cool stuff that the Wastelanders were building.

At some point in time, this one appears to have been a mid-90s Nissan Altima. It has since been transformed into this far more interesting specimen before you, though the suspiciously dubious nature of that center hood scoop might be a turnoff to some. Either way, any potentially points lost there are quickly regained with the hood-mounted horn system, full-sized pickup truck side mirrors, and the beefy push bar up front.

Thus, this year the organizers decided to put together a one-day car show in Los Angeles centered specifically around the vehicles that have been built for the desert event – while perhaps inspiring some onlookers to get involved in the process.

And since Wasteland Weekend is still four months away, there’s time for the newly converted to build something for the event.

“There’s nothing like the feeling of riding in a car you’ve worked all year to build and seeing 100 or more Mad Max cars rolling around you, in the wide open desert, with no civilization in sight,” says Chilson.

Jared Butler adds “It’s not just the visuals. It’s the sound. We only do slow cruises at safe speeds, but still, the roar of the V8 engines, the war cries of the Wastelanders, that’s when you really feel like you’re inside a movie.”

Free to the public, the Wasteland World car show attracted dozens of apocalypse-ready vehicles, from a collection of vintage VW Bugs to F150 4x4s with vintage NASCAR big-blocks. Various vendors were on hand to offer wares of the Wasteland, and of course there were plenty of individuals in full Wasteland regalia in attendance to bolster the Mad Max vibe.

Known as Hyde, this 1977 Ford 150 Ranger 4×4 harpoon truck is said to be powered by a ’69 429ci stock car motor and certainly looks the business from this vantage point. Check out that sweet exhaust system! We would have loved to get a look under the hood, but with the bird catcher and structural reinforcement appearing to prevent removing the hood, it doesn’t look like getting under there would be an easy task. Makes you wonder how easy roadside repairs would be in this post-apocalyptic world. Pragmatic gripes aside, this thing is pretty awesome.

Be sure to check out the gallery below for more shots from the Wasteland World Car Show. If you’re interested in joining the Wastelanders at this year’s Wasteland Weekend event, the festivities take place from September 22nd through the 25th, with California City, CA serving as “ground zero” for the event. More details can be found here.