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.

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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

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Hyundai’s Genesis Coupe garnered a lot of good press and gearhead interest from the get go. And it seems to be fully justified and also understandable. The Hyundai Genesis is well styled (enough), rear wheel drive, and above all, reasonably priced. It’s a car that a young tuner-oriented kid can sink their teeth into, and there’s already a pretty decent aftermarket for the car.

And Hyundai just added a new wrinkle to the mix with its announcement that it will be making a Genesis Coupe 2.0T R-Spec for 2010. With a starting price of just $23,750 and hitting the dealer showrooms fairly stripped down, that way being all the better for future customization by the end user, the R-Spec promises to be even more of what the aftermarket tuner wants.

Photo gallery of R-Spec after the jump
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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.

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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.

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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

In June of 2008, the team at JleviSW.com embarked on a new project car - code name, “Red Dragon”. Keeping the aftermarket scene in mind, they chose to modify the extremely popular E92 335i, as it had significantly higher production numbers than the nascent E92 M3. Furthermore, having thoroughly enjoyed their VF Engineering Supercharged E46 328Ci, the team was simply unable to resist the temptation of a Twin-Turbo Inline 6, and immediately saw the immense potential of this tuner car. From the outset, the goal was clear: the company would showcase its expertise and product line in an effort to inspire customers, inviting them to share in every step of the process.

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One of the annoying, on going problems with owning a sports car can be ground clearance. You know, speed bumps and sloped driveways and potholes and what not.

Well worry no more, or at least you can stop worrying about ground clearance issue if you’re the proud owner of a Porsche 911 or an Audi R8.

Porsche tuner Cargraphic has come up with a solution for this problem in the form of the “Airlift Suspension System”. Available for the Porsche 996/997 and in the near future, the Audi R8, patented automatic level control system enables the car’s front suspension to rise by 55m.

Cargraphic’s “Airlift Suspension” will automatically lower the car back down to normal ride height once it has reached a speed of 50 km/h (31mph), which is a common feature on other aftermarket systems of this sort.

One unique feature of Cargraphic’s suspension system is that in the 911, it can work with the Porsche factory PASM (Porsche Active Suspension Management). There are 2 versions of the Cargraphic Airlift Suspension available, a complete kit that includes BILSTEIN B16 suspension or as an upgrade kit for OE coil over suspensions

OK you lucky owners of Porsche 996/997 or Audi R8s, get cracking.

Source: CarScoop

In the land of aftermarket “tuning” there’s no such word as excessive.

Or so it would seem when it comes to South Side Performance and their 820 hp turbo upgrade for Nissan GT-R. Obviously what the GT-R lacks is power, right?

The tuning firm, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, of all places, is offering a set of upgraded stock turbochargers for the GT-R that could boost output to 820 hp when used with other unspecified performance mods.

The technical details go like this: You swap out the stock turbos’ center section with a remachined compressor and turbine housings, (sized 68mm and 53.8mm, respectively, in case your interested). The aluminum compressor wheel is good for up to 32 psi of boost. Yikes! Counterintuitively, the swap appears to be a simple bolt-on affair since the basic hardware is the same. South Side Performance says the turbos make more power at stock boost levels and provide a linear power band throughout the rev range. Right. Color me skeptical, but I’m betting the throttle response is like a light switch.

If you’re interested and have $6,499 for the upgrade, you can get the GTR820RR kit from GT-RR.com who distributes the kits for South Side. Owners can send their stock turbos for the upgrade, and the approximate turnaround time of one week.

Best of luck explaining this to your wife, your judge and/or your insurance rep.

Source: AutoBlog

Volkswagen’s Eos is not the first car you’d think of if someone were to say the words “frighteningly fast” or “outrageously overpowered”. No, you might think of words like “I’d like it more if … ” or “flight attendant”.

But if you hand over the VeeDub’s drop top to the lunatics at B&B, you’ll be saying more than “WOW!”

B&B is a German tuning firm with a long and storied past. The first gained attention for modifying all sorts of German iron, Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs etc., to put down huge amounts of HP and they also got known for making some custom retractable hardtops decades before anyone had thought of it.

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I know, this is meant for Japan, but I still find this whole idea kind of funny and too cute by half.

What we have here is the home market only Honda Zest, a tiny little urban box of a car, designed for crowded city environments (sort looks like the car that comes INSIDE the Scion Xb, doesn’t it?), and Mugen, sometimes sort of tuning partner to Honda has taken a swipe at it.

I’ve got nothing whatsoever against tuning cars, but I have to admit that this gave me a bit of pause. It’s sort of like fixing up a riding lawnmower. Sure, you could, but really, what would be the point? The point, bedsides the fact that there’s probably a market for it, is that Mugen tunes every last vehicle Honda makes (I’m guessing). And hey, why not. After all, Mugen is not a firm to be trifled with, having bulked up everything from Honda’s NSX to supplying parts for Honda’s various F1 efforts to actually running the F1 team for a stretch, so why not let them have a little fun with the entry level city car.

Mugen did the usual tuner stuff: front spoiler, a modified front grille, side skirts, a rear spoiler and a roof wing, 14-inch or 15-inch alloys, a sport exhaust system and suspension.

Bedsides, you never know, with CAFE standards being raised, Honda just might end up bringing these little guys over here.

Source: CarScoop