SEMA Highlights, Day 3

Surprisingly, very few people (of the million billion people coursing through the Las Vegas Convention Center) dressed up for Halloween. Not even the hootchies, although a few might have been wearing orange and black glitter hot pants that day. A tremendous number of those sign-holding, chirping slutbags were Asian, much to my surprise and the delight of the men at SEMA, who rushed to get photos of them and their pals draped in glittering, checkerboard-accented hot pants onesies.

Happily, not all the women present were hired to be there: female PR and media people represented and racer Danica Patrick made an appearance, no doubt deflecting unwanted offers by the hundreds and answering a lot of stupid questions. By all accounts she was friendly and approachable. Kat Von D of LA Ink was also there, I guess because she's hot. I may be wrong, she may be a hot rodder or drag racer in private, you just never know.

The show was doubly crowded on the 2nd day, making it a bit easier to pass on activities — seeing a line snaking down a hall of at least 100 people tends to sway those decisions. So I only saw Beau while he gave a live radio interview, totally missed Mad Mike (both from "Pimp My Ride") and never got my personal interview with Chip Foose. Not too upset, however, because I'm not on a tight deadline and will call them after SEMA and get the goods.

What to say about the cars? Well, not much new. Lots of retro-restorations that were amazing, plenty of awesome muscle (truck, car and everything else)and the usual display of street junk. (Uh, hello? Mini-trucks and flashing, huge rims are WAY out.)

But expecting hot car debuts (like the upcoming Corvette "Blue Devil", which flashed itself at Laguna Seca and will be totally exposed at Detroit)at a show called Specialized Equipment Marketing Association (SEMA) and Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX)is silly. Here, it's about parts and gadgets. Here, parts is not parts.

Parts is chromed, precisely-engineered, loud, quiet, bright green/yellow/orange, demonic black-on-black, sticky, smooth, fast, low, street-legal and ready for the track. Paint is a huge story, less for the trends in colors and more for the nature of the paint itself. Soon, all automotive paint will be, by federal regulation, water-based. This change is coming soon and paint and auto manufacturers are frantically trying to figure out what it means in the long term.

Another major MAJOR concern is tires. From Pinelli and Gianelli to Dunlop, Continental and Bridgestone, tire makers went to the world of racing for solutions to the problems high-horsepower, high performance production cars face in terms of slippage, grippage and longevity.

Car electronics are massively big business, of course, and the race to be number one in inboard/portable GPS appears to have handily been won by the Panasonic Strada device. Unlike Garmin (too many knobs and steps in the simple processes), TomTom (low reliability), and Microsoft Sync (Seriously? A stylus? In the car? While I'm driving?), Panasonic's model is all touch, very simple, a nice big screen, and it connects bluetooth, OnStar, etc.

I was cordially invited to be a VIP guest at the Gran Turismo 5 Awards and an intimate concert with my next husband, Chris Cornell. At the Wynn, as a special guest of PlayStation. Unfortunately, my flight home was Thursday afternoon. I will treasure the laser-etched invitation as long as I live.

One thought that lasted all the way back to Denver this afternoon: It is nearly impossible anymore to tell the difference between regular girls and strippers. Not just in Vegas, either, where you just assume they are all strippers and hookers. As far as I can tell, the strippers/hookers have nicer handbags than the tourists from Cleveland with the same bleached/highlight mane of carefully-arranged ringlets or shellacked waves, the same over-tan, the same gonguro makeup application, the same drug habit/eating disorder. Seriously. I saw, standing side-by-side for my convenient assessment, (a) a tall, painfully thin orange woman in expensive stilleto shoes, a miniskirt, a glitter belly shirt, long blonde hair that was straightened within an inch of its life and then carved into yellow ringlets, huge sunglasses, a $3,000 handbag and a purple fur hat. (b) a short, painfully thin orange woman in capri pants and a glitter belly shirt, cheap but staggeringly high-heeled shoes,with an exact copy of Posh Spice's haircut and a Coach bag. It looked like Striperella and her sidekick Suburbaslut.

But that really has nothing to do with cars. Except that I bet the stripper has either some precision German engineering or an exotic sportscar parked at her condo, while the Cleveland girl probably drives a Jeep Liberty or a pink Mini Cooper.

I embrace my pale skin, my unruly hair, my healthy appetite. I never want to be mistaken for a stripper. Or even a SEMA girl, who probably are strippers by trade. Admittedly, I consciously wore "business casual" clothes and sensible shoes, not to mention my hair in a so-last-year headband. It worked, no one even suspected I wasn't a PR lady or demo hootchie.

Which reminds me: there is a long-standing thing between PR people and media people, where each believes the other will waste their time. I've heard representatives of both sides bemoan their responsibilities in having to deal with the other — I don't get it. Everyone is just doing their job, we help each other, and besides, all the PR people I've met have been fabulous.

Now that me and my blistered feet have left Las Vegas, there are people I want to thank, again, for their gracious help during my stay:

Everyone at Dunlop/Goodyear
Keith from GG Quad
The fine folks at Las Vegas Speedway
Taxi driver Geno
Everyone at Sony and Playstation


P.S. I promised video and I shall deliver

SEMA Highlights, Day 2

What a way to start off the day at SEMA!

Transported to the opulent Wynn Hotel by private courier, I entered the marble, glass, rare wood and snooty bellhop resort I worried more about my cheap shoes and bad haircut than I usually do. There was a Russian trophy wife hanging around the lobby whose belt and bag together were probably worth more than I'll see in two years.

Whisked into a plush elevator and into a private suite, I began to worry I'd hit a velvet rope and this interview would be over. Instead, the fashionista/PR types graciously invited me into the suite, which overlooked the Western U.S. All of it, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, my subject was Kazunori Yamauchi, Japanese automotive designer and superstar Gran Turismo creator and designer. We are here to discuss, through the assistance of a translator, Gran Turismo 5. Besides updating the graphic quality to epic, breathtaking levels, the game features 50 different cars and allows for up to 16 racers at a time. What all the interwebs are talking about, however, is the inclusion of the Nissan GT-R in all its rare glory.

Nissan, like most automakers, fully cooperated with the programmers and designers of GT5 to make their representative high performance cars look and drive as much like the real thing as possible. Toward this end, the GT5 team took a Nissan GT-R on the Nurburgring at top speed, clocking in at exactly 7:08. Disbelieving types at Nissan repeated the test and came in at exactly 7:08. We needed no translator to read the excitement in Kazunori's face when he relayed this experience.

The designer went on to describe the downloadable preview of GT5, available only in Japan. The Nissan GT-R was listed under the cars as "Coming Soon", until the car debuted in Tokyo. That moment, engineers revealed the car in the game and players that otherwise might not ever get in spitting distance of the GT-R were racing it in GT5.

I don't have the game, it's still preview and I am a lowly journalist. However, I do have video. Ask nicely and I might provide it here.

Stay Tuned for Day 3!

SEMA Highlights, Day One

Tuesday:

Registration was quick and easy at 7:00am and the media room that Continental Tires provided us a welcome and useful space indeed. Grubby auto journos vie for one of the courtesy computers lined up for our deadline use.

The massive Las Vegas Convention Center held treats and surprises at every turn; impressively tuned supercars, airbrushed mini-trucks, chrome, electronic wizardry, and hootchies in hot pants a'plenty.

From press conference to scheduled interview to PR presentations, I ran around SEMA like a headless chicken on crack. The array of gadgetry, mechanical wonders and artistic creations made the price of sore feet and a stiff neck well worth the, well...you know.

That evening brought a lovely dinner at Smith & Wollensky, courtesy the fine people of Sony. We talked about the California wildfires, the weather in Colorado and I even found a Consumer Reports writer who went to the same stupid college where I wasted a semester in 1987: Ft. Lewis College in Durango, CO.

I wish there were cars here I could get tremendously excited about, but it's all been done before. Talking with the other auto journalists reveals that I'm not the only one searching for a story.