Thread: Just a touch of SEMA...........

Tweet

Well, the SEMA show is being disassembled for another year. Had the pleasure of walking the show with Uncle Bob; he sure walks slow now that he is older. We both met Ken Thurm for lunch; it was neat to talk to someone we have been only communicating with via computer. Ken's eye for cars is as good in person as it is in his CHR travels.

Kenny Davis was also there; he is busy as usual. Kenny did not have a car at this year's show but he does have several in work.

Speaking of cars, this years show was a bit light of quality cars, especially rods. There were two notable exceptions; the Lane Deuce panel truck for Mr. Poteet and the Dan Webb streamliner (whatever) car. I will post pics later. Both these cars were better than first rate.

The attendance was down; you could actually stop and take a picture of cars (or whatever) whereas in previous years the crowd made getting down aisles a chore.

The booth bimbo quality suffered severely. There were no quality women signing posters. I wouldnt say that the show was flat, but Dow Chemical was not represented like in previous years.

The GM booth was disappointing as was the Ford booth. Vans and flex fuel junk isnt appropriate. The Chrysler booth was nice...lots of Hemis. Of course, when they all go belly up, maybe I can buy one of their booth cars cheap. The Jay Leno swoopy car (whatever the heck it is) that was in the GM booth had some electrical malady causing it to emit a bunch of electrical smoke and smell. Kinda nice to know that GM has the same smoke test we little guys experience.

Outside of the hall, there were darned few cool cars or trucks....I heard that they started charging $300 for the opportunity to display your car there.

There was an obvious absence of several big name players such as Holley, BF Goodrich, American Racing. Did not see the Goodyear booth either. Rumor has it that American Racing is taking 15 weeks to deliver an ordered set of wheels.

In summary: fewer people, fewer nice cars, fewer scantily clad booth bimbos.....still worth going to!!

Mike in Tucson

Those of us that were there generally share Mike's impressions. To put it in perspective though, even in a down year the local Chamber figures there were some 130,000 SEMA visitors/vendors who dropped around $2 billion dollars here.