As the editor of Motor Boating & Sailing, I met Don Aronow (pictured above) many times in the 1980s. I wrote about him; I tested his boats. A three-time U.S. powerboat racing champion and the founder of Cigarette, Formula, Donzi, Magnum, Squadron XII, USA Racing and a larger-than-life figure, Aronow was known as the King of Thunderboat Row, a short stretch of 188thStreet in North Miami where most of his companies were located.
Aronow was known for his boats, and for his friends, including future President George H.W. Bush, the Shah of Iran, and Malcolm Forbes, among many others. He also was a notorious womanizer and the owner of a horse ranch in northern Florida, living by a Miami credo of the times: fast boats, fast horses, and fast women.
On Feb. 3, 1987, I got a call at my office in New York just a few minutes after Aronow was assassinated on 188thStreet. A blue Lincoln drove down the street just before closing time at the boat factories, and the driver waved to Arnow, who was leaving work, driving in the opposite direction. As Aronow rolled down the window of his Mercedes convertible to talk, the driver of the Lincoln shot him to death. (Bobby Young, a career criminal, admitted to shooting Aronow 12 years later, but there’s much more to that story.)
I subsequently went to Aronow’s funeral in Miami Beach, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people standing outside with video cameras, taking pictures of the mourners. DEA, FBI, Miami-Dade, whatever. It reminded me of the scene in The Godfather where FBI agents walk down the driveway of the Corleone mansion on Lake Tahoe during a wedding, writing down the license plate numbers.
Aronow’s life and death were complicated. Along with his famous friends, he had a lot of infamous enemies. He’d made a lot of deals; he’d broken a lot of deals. He worked with the DEA, and many people thought he worked against the DEA. Certainly that was true of some other residents of 188thStreet. It was said that he had alienated the Columbia drug cartel, which was not a healthy thing to do.
Now John Travolta plays the part of Aronow in a new movie called Speed Kills. The reviews are devastating, including this one from UPROXX. There’s a great movie to be made about Aronow and his era in South Florida; think Miami Vice on steroids. But this doesn’t seem to be it. Take a look:
https://uproxx.com/movies/speed-kills-travolta-review-speedboats/
