Pumping Up Consumer Excitement
The first-ever SEMA Ignited event may have looked like a great party and car show, but Ignited was actually much more than that. The event was a way to show off the incredible cars, trucks and specialty equipment that our industry brings to the SEMA Show. It was also a means to interact with consumers, both on-site and through the media. The immediate social-media coverage was awesome, and now we have the longer-lead media pieces coming to fruition.
One important consumer-facing program is set to debut March 8—the one-hour, SEMA-sponsored Velocity Channel special called “SEMA Battle of the Builders.”
The Los Angeles Auto Show has developed a reputation as a “green” show that strongly focuses on alternative fuels and novel forms of propulsion. This may have been the case in prior years, but the 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show had more to offer enthusiasts than in recent years, as a burst of “track-ready” performance cars and creative variants on existing platforms came to light. That made it more like the SEMA Show—an optimistic environment in which OEM exhibitors launched fun-to-drive new models and showed off interesting concept cars that may very well enter production. Among them were several vehicles that could be of special relevance to SEMA members.
Hot Rod magazine’s LeRoi Smith took this photo in the spring of 1963 outside of Barr’s Muffler Shop in Studio City, California, for an article on building a cost-effective exhaust system for an Olds-powered hot-rod roadster. That’s Bobby Barr in the foreground talking to Jerry Eames by the tube bender. This photo is an outtake from the shoot; in the photo that appeared in the magazine, Barr and Eames are far more intent on their work. 
A car’s electrical system can be a challenge for a do-it-yourself hobbyist. That’s why car magazines—for about as long as there have been car magazines—have covered the topic to help enlighten shade-tree mechanics. 