First things first. Got to meet Dan J. face to face, and he is, as his posts would imply, a true southern gentleman. But then you already knew that Dave. He insisted on going against my expressed wishes on Tuesday evening, for which there will be appropriate retribution some day, but was very enjoyable company. His wife Lucia is a perfect compliment to him.

As for the show, just imagine the world's biggest toy chest, then quintuple it! It is spread through several HUGE halls and entails a LOT of walking.

Just a few highlights. Ford is making a large effort to woo hot rodders. They had two display areas, one modest size effort outdoors, and a much larger one indoors. Out in the lot they had an array of crate engines, one of which was mounted in an Alloway chassis. Inside they had the Doane Spencer roadster, Edsel Ford's '34 "Speedster", Eric Clapton's Brizio built full fendered '32 roadster, a slammed and Halibrand wheeled '57 'Bird, a modular motored '65 2+2, and George Poteet's '32 hiboy 5 window. I probably forgot a couple, but suffice to say, they were SCREAMING hot rod. Ford also had the 2005 Mustang GT show car on a rotating platform...........................the hired model is superfluous. One (or should I say 2) of the more intriguing Fords on display were modular V8 Focus ZX2's, one supercharged, one naturally aspirated. These are not the Kugel 5.0 swap cars, but mod motors. No glitz or glamour under the hood, I think they were going for the "factory" look. The Lightening boys have had to go back to the drawing board though because the Dodge Boys are rolling out their 500hp, Viper powered pickemup.

In the GM booth there wasn't much I felt was exciting, maybe I'm not their target audience. Got to see the new GTO that was discussed in an earlier thread. Let's just say they could have done better. Mechanically it's intriguing, but styling wise it's way average. They did have three vehicles that were modified by SoCal Speedshop tucked in the corner of their booth. A Bonneville modified Saturn, an S10 size GMC pickup, and a modern day version of the SoCal belly tank 'liner. All three done in the traditional SoCal paint scheme.

Got to see the Moon fuel injection parts that are modeled after the Stromberg 97 carbs...............very clean!! They also previewed an electronic shift "linkage" system that will eliminate the need for cables or mechanical linkage. Dan had to keep wiping his chin both days he was there as I made sure I pointed out every cool looking stack type injection system on the floor. He also kept eyeing several '32 three window coupes on display, I think there's a clue there.

While there is a lot of Muscle Car/Street Rod/Sports Car equipment there, the preponderance of "stuff" is "tuner" oriented, followed by truck/SUV. A person can only take so much carbon fiber/stainless fartcan/neon light/flourescent colored everything/spoiler wing/ground effect/mega stereo/yada yada. And there must be somewhere around 62 million variations on 22-26" custom hoops, half of which must be required by law to have the rotating center spokes designed to induce vertigo. As for paint trends, it looks like a strong lean toward "satin" finish, particularly in the pewter or titanium tones for the ricers. And those rat rod guys thought they had a lock on suede!

Even though the ricer stuff isn't my gig, it's fun to keep up on what's "hot". Just based on the (not inexpensive) amount of floor space, it is undeniably a very strong market.