Top 10 SEMA Wild & Weird

In the lexicon of the car nut, SEMA is a noun. What it means is the biggest show of the year. Are you going to SEMA this year? Did you see that crazy [insert vehicle here] at SEMA? The talk never stops. This biggest car show on earth wasn't always this way. Back when SEMA was a collection of speed equipment manufacturers, the big show was smaller and had a different name. The original Speed Equipment Manufacturers Association has today grown to the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association. The new SEMA encompasses everything that goes onto or into a car or truck after it rolls off the assembly line. The bewildering number of vehicles multiplied by the different ways people like to customize, restore, or increase their velocity potential equals the enormity of SEMA. The 2007 SEMA show literally had something for more than everybody.

Factory Installed Performance

Dealer installed factory hop-up parts are nothing new. In the musclecar heyday, dealers offered dyno-tuning, and were even able to produce special performance packages with a little ordering creativity. Factory installed performance and performance parts are once more becoming available as manufacturers make factory engineering available to the everyman without concern over voiding any warranty. From cold air intakes and exhausts to exterior factory appearance goods, performance from the factory is back at a dealer near you.

Rolling Art

The art car is no longer the sole provenance of Berkeley hippies or art school students armed with a glue gun and a bunch of plastic gee gaws. The thread that runs between those who relish customizing their cars and those who create art for the masses is growing stronger. Case in point is this 2007 Scion tC. Agitprop art hooligan Ron English is behind the electroluminescent yin-yang and hologram images that animate this car. The art show rolls on custom Boyd Coddington wheels. While not an uncommon occurrence at SEMA, passersby were clearly confused.

Better Mousetrap

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door." As mousetraps go, there seemed to be a great deal of better ones at SEMA. What here appears to be a run of the mill sun visor is nothing of the kind. It folds up into something about the size of a mature Georgia peanut, and also doubles as a solar cooking unit for warming up the occasional hot dog at sunny day sporting events. We made up the last part, but this is evidently the better mousetrap of sun visors. Door beating may or may not come later.

More Muscle

With the musclecar craze showing no signs of slowing, it only seems natural that the unsung heroes of American musclecar history start showing up at SEMA. This 1972 Torino was designed and built by Steve Strope and Purevision Design. The Ford heavy packs a 514 cubic inch V8 with a four-speed backed by a Gear Vendors overdrive unit. All this to spin the 20-inch wide Bonspeed wheels under the long sportroof. The Ford Torino was later made famous by television's Starsky and Hutch, but not until 1976 and beyond.