SEMA Car Show - Custom Cars that Rocked Las Vegas Troy Ladd from Hollywood Hot Rods showed strong up in the massive Ford display at SEMA. Ford has the best booth in the central hall overlooking the rest of Hot Rod Alley every year and always has great, new and old. That must be why they featured the vintage 427 SOHC motor in this Brookville bodied 32 Roadster Pickup. Fooled you too! That's not a cammer motor, that's Ford racing's 5.0L "Coyote" motor dressed up and cleaned up to look like my favorite vintage powerplant. Troy's a wizard at having the cleanest engines showing only minimal signs of the high-tech equipment on board. It's no show piece either! Look for more pictures of this Raybestos roadster at the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. Straying as far away from the hot rod above as we can, dig this custom Lexus. What's old is new and there's no mistaking the hot rod or kustom car influence on this suede painted Lexus. Also note the ground scrapping airride assisted stance and the door handles shaved for the back doors, but not the...

First Gen Camaro Parts from SEMA 2010 Some of the displays at SEMA are overwhelming. Too many colors on banners flying everywhere and every part in the catalog cluttering up the booth make it hard to find anything, let alone the cool new parts for your first gen Camaro. Then I found Marquez Design. I noticed the billet gas caps above shown elegantly in the mostly black booth filled with just the right number of slick looking original designs for late-60's to early-70's muscle cars and trucks. With the LS and LSX crate motor's reliability and stout performance filling the engine bays of go-fast-turn-hard g-machines and pro-touring rides that never were real RS or SS Camaros, the LS badge fits perfectly. I asked founder and cheif designer Pascual Marquez about how he got started and he walked me over to the center billet Camaro taillight above. Back in 2003, Marquez was an admin guy that likes cars. Bored with his job and filled with desire, he created Marquez Design and put out his first Camaro taillight. That's all it took. As orders poured in, part designs and product lines were added,...

New Performance Parts from SEMA 2010 If you're too distracted by the lovely Genevieve Chappell to see the new high performance brake pads she's holding, you're probably in the right place for SEMA coverage for 2010 from MyRideisMe.com. Cruising the massive SEMA convention halls for new performance parts and the hottest new rides, I stopped in at EBC to say hi to Genevieve and learned about "Bluestuff" brake pads. Bluestuff is the name of EBC's newest whoa-enhancing product, the "Worlds first race pad that can be used on the street." Always curious, I asked why? Andy Freeman, their marketing director, CEO and chief technical writer filled me in... Turns out, racing brake pads are designed to stop a car in short bursts from high speeds, like from 130 to 80 MPH, negotiate the turn, then you're back on the loud pedal waiting as long as you can to hit the brakes again. Repeat as needed. For a track only car, no problem, but do you want to change brake pads before you go home? If you're a "track day" competitor and you're flogging your daily driver, that's just not...

1969 Mustang - The Ultimate Street, Drift, Track Car Our friends at Speedhunters.com just released the first photo of the finished 1969 Mustang RTR-X!  It is debuting or just debuted at SEMA 2010 an hour or so ago.  Much info has been shared about the design process that Team Need For Speed at EA Games on Speedhunters.com. Check out Build Progress and pictures. The quick rundown of this ride can be found in the Drifting + Pro-Touring story here.  Thank you Vaughn Gittin Jr (2010 Formula Drift Champion) and Andy Blackmore (Speedhunters.com graphic artist) for dreaming up this...

2010 SEMA Car Show - Las Vegas, Nevada It's that time of year again. SEMA. If you're reading this, you already know SEMA's the place where every car-ANYTHING meets once per year to show off what's new, what's hot and what new rides will set the trends for 2011. For fellow gear heads, could that get any better? Well yea! It's in Las Vegas, Nevada! The SEMA website says, "the SEMA Show attracts more than 100,000 industry leaders from more than 100 countries for unlimited profit opportunities in the automotive, truck and SUV, and RV markets." If you dig cars of any kind: old school hot rods, chrome and billet street rods, twin turbo tuners, 100 point restored muscle cars or trucks lifted to the sky or slammed on the ground... SEMA is your car show! The only trouble is, it's not open to the public. That's why you'll have to come back to MyRideisMe.com for our coverage. Here one of our faves from SEMA 2009. What will the Ring Brother show at SEMA 2010? MyRideisMe.com will try to cover all of SEMA, but it's almost too big to show it...

From SEMA Car Show to the Race Track SEMA is starting and I can hardly wait for all the fun! Since most of you can’t make it to Vegas for the biggest aftermarket automotive event of the year, you can rely on catching all the coverage here at MyRideisMe.com! Not only will you see some of the baddest cars, new products and tools from the showroom floor… at the end of the week we'll serve up an extra treat of street racing – the Optima Batteries Street Car Invitational. The spirit of the OPTIMA Invitational is unite the performance automotive aftermarket industry while exhibiting the true potential of the vehicles showcased at SEMA, proving they are built for speed and performance, not just for looking good on the show floor. Last year, there were 51 cars competing for the title of "Ultimate Street Car" out at the Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, NV. Everything from a 1927 Tucci Roadster, 1966 Cobra, 1969 Camaro, and even a modern Bentley were seen on the course! This year will be no different. All 50 racing entries must be street legal cars. Some...