A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the desert planet of Tatooine was where a legacy began.

Not so long ago in a galaxy far, far closer, Tatooine was where legends of another flavor were made.

Star Wars and rally raid have some surprising things in common. The Dakar Rally began just a year after the original film premiered, while George Lucas usually went to North Africa to film desert scenes. The region was also prime territory for the discipline to race through.

Tunisia was the main filming location to represent Tatooine, and the country hosted Dakar stages in 1989 and 2003. In both years, the Dakar went through the city of Tozeur, which was used for Tatooine’s spaceports of Mos Espa and Mos Eisley. The set for the Lars homestead where Luke Skywalker grew up is located to the south in Nefta and Chott el Djerid. The sets still stand today, though the Dakar didn’t particularly interact with them in either edition.

That didn’t mean other rally raids did the same. Given the iconic setting, Tozeur and Nefta are popular places for off-road tourism and other rallies.

The Rallye de Tunisie, Tunisia’s premier rally raid from 1981 until its demise in 2016, occasionally had stages that concluded just outside the film set in Tozeur. SandRaiders Tunisia also goes through the wretched hive of scum and villainy.

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The now-defunct Tunisia Desert Challenge, organized by the creators of the Morocco Desert Challenge, had a loop of Tozeur as one of its final stages. Fenix Rally goes through Tozeur as well, taking advantage of the dunes nearby before heading through the town. Both races even called their stages in this area “Star Wars”.

After the Dakar Rally moved to South America, the Uyauni Salt Flats in Bolivia hosted stages from 2014 to 2018. This stretched overlapped with the salt flats, the largest in the world, being featured in The Last Jedi as Crait.

The sequel trilogy saw the use of the Empty Quarter to film Jakku. Rally fans, of course, recognize the massive desert as one of the host sites for the Dakar Rally’s current home in Saudi Arabia. However, Jakku was specifically filmed on the Emirati side near Abu Dhabi, where the W2RC’s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge takes place.

Last month’s Jordan Baja was held in its usual location at Wadi Rum, a sweeping valley in southern Jordan. Wadi Rum’s red setting makes it a popular choice for filmmakers, and Star Wars is no exception. In fact, it has the honor of being two different locations in the SW universe: Wadi Rum was Jedha in Rogue One and the planet of Pasaana in The Rise of Skywalker.

Featured image credit: Actiongraphers