WE'RE LIVE AT THE 40TH ANNUAL SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) SHOW IN LAS VEGAS --- THE TRANSACTIONS TAKING PLACE AT THIS ANNUAL FOUR-DAY BEER-BLAST, CRAPS TABLE FESTIVAL AND HOOKER SUPER BOWL, ALL OF IT POWERED BY CIRQUE D'SOLIEL'S "O", WILL WIND UP BECOMING THE $34 BILLION WORLDWIDE MARKET IN AUTO AND TRUCK ACCESSORIES. AND IT SEEMS A LOT OF THE BUYERS BRING MOST OF THAT $34 BILLION IN BIG WADS OF CASH HELD-TOGETHER BY DIFFERENT COLOR RUBBER BANDS, DEPENDING ON THE DENOMINATION. MORE ON WHO THESE FOLKS ARE LATER...
Coming up tomorrow, LIVE FROM SEMA (and we're rooming at the HQ Hotel, the Las Vegas Hilton) --- Why is Barry Meguiar (not the folk singer who did "Eve Of Destruction", but the guy who owns the car wax company) the worst interviewer in the automotive media --- And why is he on TV, anyway? We'll have the facts!
Is everyone at SEMA getting younger --- or is the truth --- no, don't say it! Yes, perhaps I am getting older!
Why are so many SEMA members so damn fat they have to use little motorized three-wheelers to get around? I know that in the midwest, home to many SEMA members, lunch consists of a hot and rare roast beef sandwich followed by a Rob Roy and a side car --- But come on, folks! Don't you want to enjoy some of that money you're all making selling worthless products like the 'Tornado' to a confused and uneducated public?
Why the cities of Baker and Barstow, California, would disappear like victims of a nuclear attack, if some folks in Carson City and Sacramento ever did the right thing and built a high-speed rail link between Las Vegas and LA ... Where else but Baker can you buy a GM alternator for $350 ... We'll have THOSE facts, too, including ... The Director of the Petersen Automotive Museum breaking down on the way to SEMA towing a trailer with the infamous So Cal Speed Shop belly tanker inside it --- He had to spend the night in Baker (with me) --- and lived to tell about it!
Why there was virtually NOTHING super-interesting or earth-shattering at the Show, in spite of over 2,200 exhibitors, more than 75,000 attendees and almost 2,000 media from around the world! And why for the next year the ass-kissing automotive 'media' will be tell you how GREAT the show was and what idiots YOU are for not being there! (There are NATHAN's hot dogs and Carvel ice cream at the Las Vegas Convention Center, neither of which are easy to find in southern California, which made the four-hour drive from my house to Vegas worth it, if only just for that) ...
What is the GIGANTIC ELEPHANT in the middle of every display at SEMA, every hotel room in Las Vegas the past four days and in the hearts of every SEMA attendee? (Can soneone say ... "Gas prices..."?) ...
ESPN 2, at a SEMA press conference, announces a bunch of new automotive programming to support their taking-over of NASCAR coverage in 2007 --- Not normally big news, but since I might be a regular on one of the shows, we'll say only nice things about ESPN (at least for now)...
The Las Vegas monorail is finally working and is fast, clean public transportation for gang members and wandering drunks, and works efficiently and expensively. The Monorail to Nowhere takes its cue from the train system in Los Angeles which lets passengers going to the airport off --- A mile from LAX. Vegas' monorail travels incessantly up and down "The Strip", yet goes neither to McCarran Field (the local aeropuerto) or the fun and much more normal part of Las Vegas known as 'downtown'.
Plenty more to come and OVER 200 DIGITAL PHOTOS which we'll put into a gallery for you with captions, many of them correct ...
SO --- TUNE IN AND BE HERE!!!! All this and more, much, much more, as ONLY The Car Nut can tell it, throughout this weekend at THE CAR NUT BLOG!
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