Hey Everyone at CarReview.com – It’s Thomas, founder of Microcarmag.com, here with my Day 1 report from the 2009 SEMA Show in Las Vegas.

Day 1 started with such fury as we witnessed the unveiling of some killer rides and heard announcements from some of the major automakers in our industry! The very first unveiling had Peter Klut from Dream Car Garage, a SPEED Channel show following the work of Peter’s crew at Legendary Motorcar, showing us an awesome 1970 Super Cuda that combined classic design with carbon fiber and Chip Foose green paint at the BASF paint booth.  Klut’s special guest at the unveiling was none other than the famous designer Chip Foose!  This unveiling was just the tip of the iceberg for our Day 1.

Honda, celebrating 50 years in North America, was the next to provide us with more great news as it announced that they would be extending race support to SCCA drivers with specially tuned 1.5 liter Honda Fit engines, parts support, and quick response with replacement parts. Also on the list of announcements from Honda was the extension of the Mugen accessory line to the Accord and Fit.

The next exciting unveiling found Hyundai showing off five fully modded Genesis coupes, one from Rys Millen sporting a rear engine V8 that looked ready to rip the Vegas strip! The others came from performance engineers such as Hennessey Performance Engineering, GReddy, and Street Concepts (which came complete with artwork by Courtney Mason).

Not to be outdone, Kia announced its entry into American motorsports. Kia will partner with Kinetic Group to enter two Kia Forte Koup race cars into the Grand-AM KONI Sports Car Challenge.  We can’t wait to see how the Forte performs in racing.

Ford Motor Company continued to impress. Not only were they able to announce some killer new products that included a race-ready Super Snake Mustang, but they also impressed me with a demo drive of the Ford Fiesta!  The Fiesta that I got to drive had an automatic transmission and was imported from Germany. From what I was told by a Ford agent, the US release will hopefully sport a 120 hp engine.

We closed out a busy Day 1 with a nice announcement – Grote said that they will be selling the thinnest LED strips available to date.  Less than 0.5 mm thick, they have been able to make a very bright LED that allows for multiple applications. Grote has had a huge following in the big rig trucking industry and with the release of this new LED product, they hope to do the same in the aftermarket industry.

So ends the first day of SEMA…  A very busy day… more to come!!!

View our entire collection of SEMA photos in the photo gallery

Visit Microcarmag.com for more small car goodness

More interesting tidbits and a lot more exciting stuff to follow in the next few days. Click on the thumbnail  below to view the fullsize image.

Ken Block Monster Subaru

Scion xB DJ 2.0 by Five Axis

Tacoma All-Terrain Gamer

JGRMX Concept Bike by Toyota

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