During our coverage of SEMA 2012, we bombarded you with hundreds and hundreds of photos featuring neat cars, innovative parts, and the future of the high performance aftermarket. Normally, we spend a few hours at the end of the week walking around shooting cars that literally make our skin crawl, make us look away in sheer embarrassment, or just make us look at the sky and say, “WTF?!” We were busy actually doing our jobs in 2012 so we didn’t have time to shoot the horror show gallery, but the good news is that we still managed to capture images of the things we didn’t like, get, or ever want to see again.
Scroll down to see my pick of the Top 10 SEMA lowlights –
You are shocked! After all we celebrate and embrace TRARs here on BangShift, but there's a time and place for everything and this Chevelle was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It looked to be rolling on a civilian Hummer chassis and driveline. Had we spotted this at a mud bog, on eBay or anywhere else, we probably would have dug it, but the thing looked kinda sad outside of the convention center.
I don't dislike all mini-trucks, but I didn't have any love for this little Toyota. The hood scoop is weird, the paint scheme is weird, and I just didn't get it.
This Viper limo was part of the Mopar Alley display. It is like a singular automotive statement about everything gaudy and wrong about Las Vegas.
There are always a couple of armored vehicles on display at various booths around the show. This happened to be a luxo armored up SUV. All of that armor is great, but when someone shoots out the tires, you're going to be in an Alamo type situation and that didn't work out so good. On the plus side, this thing was ugly as hell.
Kia had a few super hero themed cars in a display. This one is apparently themed after "Captain Horrid Design That Looks Like It Sprung From The Late 1990s"
Here's the next Kia "hero" car. You can clearly see the design ethos here. They followed the "glue some shit on the outside and throw red lights everywhere" motif. This hero? "Captain I Hope No One Sees Me Driving This Awful Thing"
I saw this an actually had to fight my lunch down again...and again...and again.
I found this to be an exceptionally sad end to a cool open wheel race car. Painted with "orange chrome" and hung upside down to rotate. It is like the car picked up a meth habit and would just do whatever it took to score again...including this.
The words I want to use to describe this thing would put me on a government list. Who thought that this was a good idea?!
Finally, Chad and I looked this creation over for several minutes. It is a super comp dragster trike thing. Big block Chevy power, slicks that have obviously been used, all the electronics and controls in the driver's area, etc. We both left befuddled and a little sad for reasons we couldn't quite put our finger on.
How did I not see some of these!? I totally missed those 3 Kias (probably for the best though). There was only rage when I saw that Chevelle…I don’t care if it WAS a memorial car, they should be drawn and quartered
The kias were in the far north parts building, no great loss
The trike will wind up as a HOT WHEELS piece soon.
Nick
That Viper was criminal. Who the hell builds a limo with four seats anyway?
Brian,
Thank you for putting words to feelings that I couldnt quite understand! I felt them, but I was having a hard time seperating them from the feelings the pastrami sandwich I wolfed down gave me. Your description of the Spectrachrome race car is spot on. The painted on chromed out Gravedigger truck was also kicking my butt.
BKB
Just because they aren’t to your taste means nothing, I personally think they all look alright or cool (minus the chevelle and formula car)
Sooo….the Chevelle and race car are no good – but you like the Kia’s? Which one does your seeing eye dog like the best?
I reckon the most frightening thing about that trike would be the steering. Combine the rake with its length and it’d have a turning circle sbout the size of Western Australia.. (Texas fits into WA 13 times – I learned that at school – in Western Australia. The teacher was very proud of the fact for some weird reason )
Those Kia corporate rice things are just puke on wheels.
If I had to drive any of these it’d be the Chevelle but not on road – I’d like to thrash the shit out of that in the outback.
The Toyota pickup’s brindling reflects the level of irresponsible ghetto-irresponsible blinging pitbull owners and breeding and how far they are willing to go to legally say their “dogs” aren’t really pitbulls.
See? This mutt’s really a truck.
the answer to “who thought that black truck was right” … is right on the winshield…. Rich Evans …. who else … it goes right along with his god awful mustang body kits