I thought I would post some pictures of my trip to SEMA from a different angle with other cars and stuff. If you want 350Z pictures, there are some here (at the end), but there are a lot better threads and pictures of mainly just 350Zs elsewhere. I would suggest a Forum Search for "SEMA" and go from there. Here's the ones I know about:

SEMA Pictures by ACP
My ride @ SEMA by DiscountTireDirect
New pics from SEMA by VividRacing

Long story short, ATI/Procharger agreed to put a Procharger in my car, so I mailed my car out to them (Boston to Kansas). Unless I see something with my own eyes, it's tough for me to believe, so I wanted to go to Vegas to check it for myself. I mentioned this to my brother, he called the Luxor and they invited him to come out. He took them for ~$4000 last time he was there and they wanted his money back. I wanted a free room. Everyone's happy!

I will admit that I felt kind of bad for my brother because they don't give people 2 bedroom suites, all the food and drinks they can put down, limo rides, passes for shows, etc without expecting to make the money on the backside. My brother knew that but was willing to take a gamble (pun intended) on it. He took ~$3000 with him. His results are at the end....
Sorry for the long intro. It's picture time!

Here's the room. It was stocked with food and drinks and that Pyramid thing on the table had more stuff in it. BTW the suite took up four room numbers!


Here's my brother's bedroom. On the far wall is a hall to his bathroom. His bathroom was ~500 Sq Ft with a full jacuzzi, etc. The suite had three bathrooms!

 

OK, enough of those. It's SEMA time. First let me explain about the Las Vegas Convention Center. It's friggin' huge! On top of that, all along the outside were all kinds of cars that didn't fit inside! I would be very worried about leaving my car out there, but I assume they have excellent security.

Here's the first car I saw. This is a Cadillac Escalade (with some 26" rims) but it really looks more like a Hummer. DUB magazine had a bunch of cars there with 26" rims which means 28s will be right around the corner I guess...


Speaking of Hummers, they were probably the most prevalent car there. Here's a bunch of them (all with $30K stereo systems) talking to one another...


Ummm, OK I thought the appeal of the Hummers was so that you could go places other 4X4s couldn't. In this case a speed bump would present a major challenge...

 

There was whole section on trucks that I never made it to, but I did take a couple of pictures of some other 4 x 4s.

Big...


Bigger


And what goes better with a big 'ol 4 X 4 than a big 'ol boat...


And what goes better with a big 'ol boat than a couple of big 'ol engines. BTW I wonder if anyone ever actually water-skied behind this boat and still has their arms attached?

 

OK, change of tune. Just outside of the boats and SUVs was a small little section with some Fords (they paid a lot of money for this show so I guess so they could park their cars anywhere they wanted). According to the guy that "built" this Ford Focus, a doctor wanted the ultimate sleeper car that could beat a Corvette Z06. ~$70,000 later he got this car back and sure enough he took it track and did it (low 11s)! A fool and his money are soon to be parted...

BTW, Nazar, who is on this board, and his friend Chris were witness to this story.


Speaking of Fords, here's some pictures of the new Ford GT40 . I believe only three currently exist. The blue lighting sucked plus it was spinning around so I didn't get a lot of detail.






I believe this is the engine that goes in the GT40 or possibly it was built for a small rocket ship that Ford may be developing...


OK, more realistically, here's some pictures of the GT40s cousin, the 2005 Ford Mustand GT. I believe I had just asked the model if she wanted to go get a drink with me and she was thinking it over...

 

Speaking of cousins, here's a couple of Skylines I saw. Nazar (he built one of the first sub enclosures for the 350Z) actually got to ride in the silver one on Tuesday as he sells Pioneer equipment and they were a sponsor of the car. I'm pretty sure they even got to do some drifting in it!!!










Speaking of new cars, here's a couple of new ones coming out next year. Each car actually comes with a diet plan so that you can lose enough weight to fit in them when they arrive!

The current "mini" car, the Mazda Miata with a hardtop


and everyone's favorite future "mini" car, the Lotus Elise

 

OK, quick question: which Supercar would you rather have, a Ferrari Enzo (399 + 1 made @ $650,000) or a McLaren F1 (100 made @ ~$900,000)? Both were there. We kind of slipped in the "back door" of the Enzo display and I started shooting pictures of it until they saw me (about 5 seconds) and asked me to stop taking pictures of it and get on the other side of the "rope". Sorry

2003 Ferrari Enzo



1997 McLaren F1 (note steering wheel in the center of the car)

 

I guess it's time to move on to the 350Zs. As I mentioned, most of these have already been posted but I just thought I would post a couple more shots.

First up is the infamous 350Zpartz car. Looks like they may not have had enough time to get it completely ready for the show as I understand they were installing the black electrical tape molding the day of the show. What's weird is the car on the website looks good.

 

Just around the corner from the 30Zpartz car was this nice looking Roadster.

 

I tried to visit the members on this board's cars but I only met up with Thackattk (sorry I forgot your name). The car really looked great and it was nice to meet you.



Here's BigBadBlackTrack's car. He left on Wednesday, but I still got a "goodie" bag from Borla that included some hats, a bunch of stickers and some other stuff from the European sales manager.

I could barely get a picture of it due to so many people looking at it!


This is DiscountTireDirect's (Todd) car. I missed him, but I don't blame him for wanting to walk around. I would have done the same. Nice looking lip (DAMD) and rims (Sparco)! I believe they actually put the body kit on there, but fortunately didn't need any black electrical molding tape... Here's his thread that has more pictures, but I'll go ahead and post the pictures I posted over there anyway.




I saw Beaker02's car at the Allied Wheel booth, but he was also gone both times I stopped by. I was really hoping to discus additional ways to save weight on the car including the controversial Balsa wood rear fender and gas cover modification. I didn't get a chance to take a picture as my batteries were dead at that point. Also I never was able to find IPT or Sensemotorsports cars. Sorry.

 

I did take some pictures of the Toucan car that had a pretty wild dash.



This Vertex Z had some pretty cool "rainbow" graphics applied


And this one had nice headlight covers and spoiler on.

 

Finally I was very happy to see that my car did make it to the show and that they had installed a Procharger in it! All of the people there at the booth that worked for Procharger were really great people. Obviously I can't thank them enough. Unfortunately the installer, Darian, wasn't there as I really wanted to meet him in person. I know that there have been a couple of problems that are related to the procharger, but if I truely thought that the procharger was the problem, I would have never even considered putting it on my car. I just wish I could have started it up just once and driven down the aisle, but they were required to remove the battery cables and I didn't have my tools with me! After this show it is heading to LA for some more upgrades and then a magazine shoot so I won't get it back until ~Christmas or so!

Following are some pictures, although for the lighting didn't work out so well. The Procharger people said the response to the car was great and that made me feel really good. The response to the JP/Vizages bodykit seems very positive, but I'm still getting used to it. It also came with headlight covers, but they were concerned with how to attach them so they left them off. Hopefully that will be rectified before the magazine shoot as they look really good.







Well, I guess that's about it. If anyone wants a hi-res picture just email me at Email me.

 

Oh, one last thing. There's still the matter of my brother and how much the trip ended up costing him. Well, you'll be happy to know that he made out too! Here's a picture of his winnings. ~$6800 which means he ended up ~$3800 ahead!!!

 

You stole the show for me, Went back to the Procharger booth at least 4 times to meet you and find out where to get the body kit. It's a bad a$$ kit and you did a great job on it .
Can you give me a contact name and phone# to get 2 of these kits

 

Thank you very much! I was hoping we all could have gotten together at Ebay on Thursday around noon and then plan something for Thursday night, but only Nazar showed up. I even went back to most of the member's booths trying to meet people but to no avail. In any event, I had a great time!!!

As far as the kit, it was shipped to me direct from JP/Vizages and is the first one in this country (and the first one out of the mold). I'll see if I can get you any information and forward it to you. Thanks again.

 

Thanks for your quick reply ,well I want to be # 2 or 3. I've got to have a extra set of side skirts for my wife's CS Veilside Car.

 

Thanks Anyone2u, you are a high quality member.

 

Great picture diary of your trip Roger. That was quite a room your brother got too! Glad he left on top too

 

Roger, great story and thanks for posting your adventure. Looks like it was a fun time. The pictures, as I expected, are awesome and your car just looks incredible. Looking forward to seeing it in person but I guess we'll have to wait until next year.

 

Excellent post....great information!

 

Great post!!!
Great pics and your brother came out flossin! haha