Innovations of Generations
Story/Photos: T-Bone
The SEMA Show features several areas of awards from new products to Hall of Fame. Different manufacturers also present awards such as the Mothers Shine Award.
To start off the show early Tuesday morning is the New Products Showcase Awards. Of the 12 categories and close to 2,000 products up for the awards we share some of our favorites. Best Engineered New Product: Mastershift’s Magnum Paddle and Sequential Type Shifter. Best Performance-Street Product: COMP Performance Group’s COMP Cams 4-pattern Camshafts. Best Powersports Product: K&N Engineering’s K&N Street Metal Intake System. Best Street Rod/Custom Car Product: MSD Performance, MSD Atomic LSTM, EFI for LS Engines. And Best Tool & Equipment Product: Miller Electric’s Multimatic TM 200 TIG/MIG/Stick Welder.
This year Chip Foose won the Best GM Vehicle of the Show for his 1948 Blue Cadillac “Eldo-Rod”, and Troy Trepanier won Best Corvette with his 1958 Black beast. Mac Bernd won Best GM Resto-mod with an orange 1969 Camaro.
The SEMA Show also features the “Showdown at SEMA” for the Hotrodders of Tomorrow Engine Challenge National Championship. This year Team Motive Gear from Loara HS in Anaheim (right down the street from Blacktop HQ) with a record average time of 21:24 minutes. We reported earlier in the Rev’ved Up 4 Kids car show competition that this same team hit a record time of 19:11 minutes. Each student in the 7-person team won $10,000!
On Thursday evening is the SEMA Industry Awards Banquet. This year they changed up the programming a bit which made for a great evening. Comedian and car-nut Christopher Titus joined MC Dave McClelland throughout the evening in both on stage and in video segments. The theme for the evening was Innovations of Generations and started with the first SEMA Gen III Innovator Award presented to Brian Reese of COMP Performance Group. Holding several patents he gave an outstanding heart-felt and tear-jerking thank you speech to his parents and colleagues at COMP. Another moving tribute was for the 2012 SEMA Person of the Year, Marla Moore of Hypertech. Hall of Fame inductees include Nick Arias Jr., Bill France Sr, and Mark Heffington.
A great evening and even better that I was able to spend it with my friends Dennis Gage and Sheila Perkins from Madstache/My Classic Car.