The 2008 SEMA show is right around the corner. This year's event is set for Nov. 4-7 in Las Vegas, NV. It's the largest automotive show in the nation and the diesel aftermarket segment has grown exponentially over the past few years and now is visible throughout the entire show (which spans as much square footage as that half of North Dakota that nobody's been in since Fargo came out).
No, the show is not open to consumers, but we bet you know a friend who has a brother who works for a shop that hooks you up. Whether you plan to attend or will just read about it afterwards, here's what the tech-savvy should look for:
1) Concept Vehicles This is our favorite reason for attending the SEMA show. Last year's show brought out a Toyota Tundra diesel dually (that nearly made it into the automaker's plans for production before the fuel prices skyrocketed), a Duramax-powered Chevy Suburban (something we wish they'd actually produce) and a hydrogen/diesel hybrid Ford Super Duty. It's a peek into the future through someone else's budget.
2) Show Trucks We don't really like show trucks, but there is one exception-when they're actually sitting at shows. Like the Fabtech-built Super Duty, the S&B Filters' Power Stroke and Rize's LMM Duramax. Trucks you love to look at but would never see pulling a loaded stock trailer through a small Texas town.
3) Purpose-Built Trucks These are show trucks when SEMA rolls around, but for the other 360 days of the year, they're out getting hard miles put on them. Like Monster Energy Drink's Duramax chase truck, which carries parts and tools to broken down off-road racing trucks and FASS' super-fast white Cummins. If you missed that one last year, don't make that mistake again.
4) Cool Displays Speaking of FASS, if you catch them at a big show like this, you can check out their working product display that shows a stock lift pump pushing bubbly fuel through clear lines compared to a FASS pump's non-aerated fuel. Pro Parts also had a nice display showing how its line of Spek gauges work in conjunction with its water injection system. PPE has a complete Duramax engine on a rolling display cart tricked out with dual CP3s and other PPE components for you to examine. Cool stuff.
5) New-to-Market Products This is the brand-new stuff that gets unveiled at SEMA, Like Diablosport's Trinity programmer and aFe's exhaust systems. It's like a surprise party at every booth.
6) Cutaways Want to see the guts of a Garrett ball-bearing turbo, the exhaust housing on an ATS Aurora 5000, the inner profile of a Hushpower muffler or the discs inside a BD Diesel transmission? Only for shows like this will they take a sawzall to the expensive stuff.
7) Outside Display Also known as the parking lot, this outdoor area is where various vendors from the automotive industry who have booths inside SEMA can park and display their demo trucks. There is some pretty wild stuff out there. This year, we'll even have our own Diesel Tech long bed Mega Cab project truck out there in the Vegas sun.
8) People Where else can you meet just about everyone in the diesel aftermarket industry under one roof? You'd have to stay the whole week to do it, but you could shake hands with reps from AEM to Zylstra.
9) Hands-On Seeing product in catalogs is one thing, but pushing buttons, pulling pins, opening drawers and feeling finishes is a great sales booster for manufacturers to use when you have a crowd.
10) The SEMA Experience To say that the SEMA show is huge would be an understatement. It takes up the entire Las Vegas Convention Center and all of the grounds surrounding it. There are 2,000 exhibitors in 10,000 booths. The show literally takes over the city for a week. But how many people can actually say they saw a Hot Wheels car sitting next to a life-size replica or that they almost tripped over an S-10 that was so slammed it used Velcro for a parking brake? Only about 150,000 people and we saw most of them trip over that truck.