SEMA 2021 - SOMETHING FAMILIAR
WORDS/PHOTOS - ERNIE VENTENILLA
After a year hiatus, the SEMA show returned to the Las Vegas Convention Center. This year nobody really knew what to expect with some of the big-name companies not coming and with a mask mandate detracting a lot of people.
I could tell you one thing though; I was excited to go back!
When I got to the show, you could tell it was smaller compared to previous years. The feature cars section had less cars than normal, but there were still some quality cars out there.
My first stop was at the Pit+Paddock booth where Editor-In-Chief and WA native Samuel Du was hosting Cars and Coffee, they even had a barista making coffee for everyone. The cars on display were not your average cars. There was an immaculate white Ferrari F40, Dai Yoshihara’s Mercedes Benz 190E with a F22C engine swap, the Rywire Motorsports EvS2k, Riley Stair’s 1,000HP LSX Pontiac Trans Am, and Evasive’s Voltex R35. Their booth set up and execution was on point.
After the fantastic tasting coffee, I made my way towards Central Hall, where all the action was. I had barely made it through the entrance of the Convention Center when I saw sitting center stage, a rare Nissan Skyline R33 GTR 400R. This was definitely one of the highlights of the show.
If you have never been to SEMA or the Las Vegas Convention Center, it’s broken into different halls. There is North, South, Central, and the latest addition, West Hall. Each hall houses different aspects of the our industry, and my focus (as well as many others) was Central Hall. It’s the Racing and Performance hall or what some people would call Church. This is where a lot of the cool stuff is. I made my way over to the HKS Booth and they had brought out the newly designed BRZ that was clean and simple with all the HKS goodies. A few days later, they surprised everyone with the HKS R32 that Dai Yoshihara drove at Buttonwillow for Super Lap Battle.
Exedy brought out an Evo 10 sporting a full Exedy livery sitting on some Konig Hypergrams.
Fortune Auto had a beautiful R Magic wide-body Mazda FD3S in their booth. The Sunburst Yellow with bronze Volk Racing CE28Ns was the perfect combination.
The fully built Spoon Sports CTR FK8 at the Hondata booth was cool to see. I really liked the slight change to the classic Spoon livery!
Turn 14’s booth had Evasive Motorsport’s Tesla Model 3 that competed in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. If this is a glimpse of what future racing could look like, I am all for it!
I ventured into South Hall where the wheel and tire manufacturers usually display their products. This year, the hall was half filled and big companies like Pirelli and Continental who usually have big displays were not present. There was one car that caught my eye and that was this Midnight Purple R34 GTR VSPEC in the Cub Group booth.
I wanted to see the new West Hall since it was completed this past summer. I saw that SEMA had placed all the audio, paint, and detailing exhibitors in this hall when normally they would’ve been in the North hall. To replace those exhibitors, the North Hall featured The Chip Foose Experience, mobile electronics, SEMA’s Battle of the Builders and Score International Off-Road Racing. Walking around the new hall, I noticed a couple of car manufactures and even some exhibitors that were new to SEMA this year. One car that was a big highlight was in the Nissan booth and it was Sung Kang’s Datsun 240z.
I also noticed that there were a lot of influencer cars at the show, mainly belonging to various YouTubers. One of the YouTubers, TJ Hunt brought several of his cars. He brought his drift 350z which was at the Valvoline booth, his Sheepy Racing twin turbo Lamborghini Huracan in the Meguiars booth, and lastly, his twin turbo Corvette C8 with a newly design Street Hunters kit in the Magnaflow booth. Not a bad line up of cars.
Other influencers included Alex Choi’s Super Trefeo kitted Huracan, Dustin Williams’s R33 and R35 GTR, Stradman’s Bugatti Veyron, and Throtl’s modern remake of the Fast and Furious Eclipse.
A few of the major car manufacturers made it out like Honda, Toyota, Ford, Hummer, Chevrolet and Nissan, which they all displayed some of their newer vehicles.
Honda Civic Si
The Ford Bronco
Hummer EV
Chevrolet Corvette C8 Z06
The Nissan Z. I am excited to see what the community does with this platform once it starts reaching the masses!
Overall, I felt that this year’s SEMA Show was a great experience despite the pandemic. It felt good that there was space to actually walk around and not have to shuffle past crowds of people. I was actually able to sit, relax, and eat. If you’ve been to past SEMA Shows, then you know that this is a luxury we normally do not experience. The biggest downside was that there were less companies to showcase their products. The pandemic affected a lot of businesses, but I am confident that our industry will bounce back. I am already seeing advertisements for SEMA 2022 and I’m excited to see what’s to come.
