Prior to BangShift, the loudest and most brash section of my life was the military. Every day started pretty much the same way: I drug my tired (and probably hung over) ass out of bed, I somehow meandered my way to where we were doing physical training, and waited for Reveille to play over the PA system before we went headlong into running miles towards nowhere. The excitement came from calling out dirty cadences, and by the end of it I was wondering how many young males in their early twenties died of a heart attack. (No, I’m not a runner.)

For SEMA 2017, there was a similar setup going: you drug your tired (and probably hung over) ass out of bed and meandered to the Las Vegas Convention Center by whatever means you needed. There, at nine o’clock on the dot, the gearhead’s Reveille played: three very angry Ford-powered products creeped their way into the Ford Out Front display and within moments, proceeded to shatter the morning calm as yet another day of SEMA started up. This was the Superformance Drift Cobra show, starring a 500 horsepower “standard” car in red, a wrapped Coyote-powered car with Irish drift driver Danielle Murphy in red, white and blue, and the car everyone was talking about, the black and gold blown Coyote powered monster being driven by Pablo Cabrera. This car could wake the dead. It grabbed attention as if it had reached out and grabbed each and every onlooker by the jiggly bits and kept their eyes focused until the show was over.

And I got to strap inside for the ride.

The outer view is not me. The in-car view is me. Sorry for the language…if you can hear it!

You can watch the whole video if you want, or you can skip ahead to 20:00 to see my ride-along!