It wouldn’t be SEMA without the gratuitous hotness showing off the latest products in the booths by some of Las Vegas’ very puurrrty girls. We managed to capture many of them in their most sultry poses and thanking the electronic genius for auto-focus and steady-shot. Otherwise our shaking hands would have produced a lot of barely-in-focus, fuzzy pictures. But I have a feeling that you would look at them anyway.

Below are a few of my favorites. I apologize for not getting their measurements, interests, and favorite past time. Our complete collection can be found in the photo gallery.

Click on any image for the full size version

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2009 SEMA show started off with a lot of energy and optimism for the new year that is almost at our door. New ideas, renewed enthusiasm, and the penchant for going bigger while being eco-conscious all in the same breath. Below are a few photos that our friends from Microcarmag.com sent us. The full set can be found in the CarReview photo gallery.

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

Read the rest of this entry »

page 1 page 2

Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’, if ya don’t stop drivin’ that hot rod Lincoln. Yeah, way back when, Lincolns were not cars to be trifled with. They had big enough plants and there was enough go fast goodies out there that you wouldn’t treat them the way … well, the way you’d look at a Lincoln today.

Sure, for the past however long, they’ve been very nice and luxurious Fords, but performance cars? Not so much. Lincoln is looking to change that with three customized rides rolling out at this years SEMA show.

Read the rest of this entry »

San Mateo, Calif., October 27, 2009 - MicroCarMag.com, your source to the microcar world, announced that during the week of the 2009 SEMA Show in Las Vegas they will be the content provider of coverage to CarReview.com.

During the week of November 3rd, MicroCarMag.com will provide the readers of CarReview.com with the most up-to-date coverage directly from the show floor. Coverage will contain daily video wrap-up, high quality photos of the latest products and industry happenings.

“We are excited to provide CarReview.com with content from the SEMA show floor,” stated Thomas Musante, founder of MicroCarMag.com. “We welcome the opportunity to reach a wider audience through this partnership.”

CarReview.com is an online community of automobile enthusiasts who take pride in maintaining and upgrading their vehicles. Visitors of the site regularly research cars and follow the latest industry and automotive technology news. CarReview.com is the perfect resource for finding the right car or truck to buy for you. Plus, it lets enthusiasts share how to make their cars go faster, handle better, and look “good“. Follow the latest news and reviews from CarReview at reviews.carreview.com or twitter.com/CarReview

MicroCarMag.com, founded in 2009, is your source to the microcar industry and can be found at Microcarmag.com and on twitter.com/microcarmag.

Lingenfelter Performance Engineering, a name that should really need no introduction to serious American hot rod enthusiasts out there, will be bringing a version of the latest Trans Am to this year’s upcoming SEMA show. It’s got all of the Trans Am goodies you remember:

Duck-tail spoiler, fender vents, twin-port front grille, raised white-letter tires, a 445 cubic inch V8, honeycomb wheels and that hideous screaming chicken hood decal.

Wait a second, the Trans Am was a Pontiac, and Pontiac is now, officially, sadly, dead, you say. Indeed you are right, but that’s didn’t stop Lingenfelter, now did it?

Read the rest of this entry »

American muscle is dead. SEMA 2009 is quite possibly the final sunset into which the American pony car will ride. While it may be hard to see daylight fading in SEMA’s glare of eight customized Camaros sponsored by GM, or the usual heard of V8 tuners ready to add more excess, if you step outside the corral, you will find that the American pony car’s muscle no longer fits its market or our times.

Build a Camaro SS add the RS package along with a couple of options and soon you’re in the $40K stratosphere; hardly a reflection of the original pony car ideal of taking an inexpensive sedan chassis, adding some sporty lines with a powerful engine and keeping the price point accessible. Even though we see the current Mustang GT does a reasonable job of holding on to this heritage, it’s still a top end model and priced accordingly. The Challenger SRT may be retro fabulous, but is ultimately a ridiculous machine. Sure, these are halo models intended to help shift secretary specials, but something has been lost in translation so that the fast and furious versions are now priced to be garage queens and the intended market will look elsewhere for practical rear drive performance with flair.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the Saddle?

With the Car Allowance Rebate System a.k.a ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program officially over and American auto sales needing another stimulus, the industry and consumers are looking forward to the custom tuned delights promised by the annual SEMA show. While SEMA 2009 promises the usual range of over the top tuner specials and reminders of upcoming products from the major brands, stalwart Mustang tuner/manufacturer Saleen hopes to make a splash with its new S281.

While little information is currently available on the S281, exciting teaser images have been released and they suggest that Saleen intends to stay in the game, despite the economy and uncertain direction after the departure of Steve Saleen in 2007.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gale Banks might not be a name that everyone on the street might know, but if you know about diesels, or more specifically high output high performance diesels, then you know about Gales Banks. As far as I know, Banks still holds multiple diesel records at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He has been squeezing more and more performance out of oil burning engines longer than most diesel fans have been alive. And now, it would seem, he has turned his attention towards the Volkswagen’s Jetta TDI. This could get very interesting in a lot of ways.

This is a bit of a departure for Banks. In addition to regular runs on The Salt, his main line of work is working aftermarket tricks on the biggest diesel pickups available in the U.S. and big rig semi-trucks.

Read the rest of this entry »

The German tuning firms continue to crank out the modified specials, although in the case of Avus Performance, the choice of rides is a little different. They’ve decided to have a crack at Nissan’s GT-R, a car much beloved by import tuner/Fast and Furious crowd. The end results somehow make the GT-R, a car that seems massive and hulking as it sits in stock configuration even more weighty and bulky.

Sure, a lot of that has to do with the matte black paint scheme, a shade which has been all the rage for quite a while now, and first seemed to pop up in Europe. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have a certain look to it, but for starters I think calling it “matte black”, or even worse “satin” is sort of pretentious. It’s primer black. Yeah, it does lend a hot rod feel to your car, but it also seems like a lot of time trouble and money to go through to make your car look like you still have to finish the paint job.

Read the rest of this entry »

If the rumors hold true, and Volkswagen does indeed bring their Polo here to the U.S. just what sort of car will we get? More importantly, just what sort of car could we make it into (I’m looking at you, Euro tuners)? The Polo is a small-ish hatchback that’s is below the current Golf, size-wise (or about where the Golf was one or two generations ago).

That’s a good place to start, because smaller usually means better performance. And even better, the Polo is not new, just new to these shores. It’s been around Europe for quite some time, so what happens if a respected Euro-tuner, let’s say ABT, the guys that do heavy mods to Audis as well as race them in the DTM series, were to get their hands on the current gen Polo?

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2008, Suzuki came out ready to brawl in the sport compact class with a four-door, sport-oriented sedan, the SX4 Sport. This pugsly fighter came rumbling onto the street scene with front-wheel drive instead of power robbing AWD, a sport-tuned suspension that rides lower than its more sedate siblings, 17 inch wheels, and an aero kit to give it a lower ride height. Suzuki even fitted a rear crossbrace in the sedan’s trunk for a 15 percent increase in structural rigidity over their corresponding hatchback model. The little sedan, with sporty aspirations, was outfitted with a 2.0L powerplant capable of producing 143 hp and 136 lb-ft of torque — all in an affordable package.

With the 2010 SX4 SportBack model, Suzuki wanted to spice up the hatchback version of the SX4 Crossover using a similar formula as the SX4 Sport sedan. The parasitic all-wheel drive system was replaced by more efficient front-wheel drive, a slightly larger and more powerful engine became standard, and an aero kit complemented with 17 inch wheels and tires developed by Dunlop specifically for the SX4 Sport completed the makeover. A peek inside this fancy crossover five-door reveals an all-new instrument cluster, aluminum-look trim accents (including the pedals), and integrated nav-system.

Drive-off video of the 2010 SX4 SportBack after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Dinan’s generosity is bigger than Mt. Rushmore. When we came up with the idea of pitting the IS-F against an M3, Dinan tried to connect us with BMW’s M brand manager. Due to our very short time frame, we were unable to procure an M3 sedan in time for the test. Instead, Dinan offered one his personal cars for the day so we could run our series of tests. Yowza! “Just bring it back in the same condition” was Steve’s only request. We nearly reached nirvana when we rolled out of the parking lot with two high-performance V-8 demons under our wings. Or was it because we inhaled too much exhaust fumes from these 400 horsepower brutes?

Read our comparison test to see how the sum of the parts improved a very good car into a great car — Face-off: Lexus IS-F versus BMW M3

Read the rest of this entry »

ABT, a Euro tuning house, has been up to all sorts of fun/crazy stuff these days, a heavily modded VW Scirocco Coupe and a worked over Audi Q5 and R8 to mention three. They continue on in that vein with their new massaged Audi S5, which they dub the AS5-R and whose most outstanding feature is 510HP.

The AS5-R makes its debut at next month’s Geneva Show. The ABT version of the A5 coupe includes an updated version of the current S5’s 344HP 4.2-liter V8 engine, modified to crank out 510-horsepower. ABT is staying schtum on any more info on the AS5-R, but aside from the massaged engine, you’ll also notice a new body kit, larger alloy wheels along with a modified suspension and a more powerful braking system. About what you’d expect.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dear God, that’s a lot of horsepower for a car this small. Not to mention it’s all going through the front wheels. The torque-steer must be massive … and fun! What we have here is VW’s latest Scirocco that has been tuned by a Swiss outfit by the name of Sportec. So much for the Swiss being a bunch of buttoned down boring bankers huh?

Does this sound boring:

A sports suspension, alloy wheels rims and engine upgrades that boost the 2.0-liter turbocharged output from 240HP to 350HP. And the torque? How about a massive 354 lbs/ft in the top of the line version?

Sportec’s engineers modified the 2.0 TFSI’s supercharger, ran some updates to the ECU and ditched the stock exhaust system with one that breaths better. for looks, they added a carbon-fiber engine cover . On the handling front, they developed an in house sports suspension that drops the coupe 35 mm, and stuffed 20-inch alloy wheels shod in 245/30 high-performance sport tires into the wheel wells.

Of course they fiddle with the interior. 4-part floor mats made of soft velour and a multi-part carbon interior with the Sportec logo, nice, but it doesn’t make the car faster.

So, fill me in VW, have you made up your mind about bringing the Scirocco to our shores? It’s on again, off again, on again … I can’t keep track. If you’re not, you should. And if you do, send me the contact info for Sportec, will you?

Source: CarScoop