The sun was setting on our last day at SEMA 2015, but that didn’t stop us from snapping a few pics in the Optima Batteries Ultimate Street Car Invitational paddock behind the North hall. There’s so much awesome going on with these builds, I’m just going to throw a whole bunch of pictures of them at you.
Optima deserves a gold medal for building a competition that attracts such an eclectic mix of domestic and foreign hardware. We need to make it out to one of their events next year.
Before the 5-pm whistle blew we jumped back into the Central hall for one last peek and found this murdered out Ecoboost Mustang in the Turbo By Garrett booth. Ford really did nail the styling and proportions of the S550.
Garrett also had Mad Mike’s new FormulaD beast in their booth sporting twin GTX40 turbos bolted to an insane 4-rotor built by PPRE. With something like 1200-hp on tap, the angry Mr. Whiddett must have a serious case of testicular elephantiasis to drive this thing sideways at 100-mph.
But arguably the coolest car in Garrett’s booth was this ’67 Datsun Sports 1600 roadster. This thing was immaculate inside and out.
I suppose it should be called a Sports 2000, though, given the SR20VET engine under the hood. I believe it’s equipped with one of Garrett’s new GTW turbos (which slot in between the GT and GTX on price and tech), and it apparently makes around 500-hp. Ya, that’ll do nicely in a sub 2000-lb roadster.
As you can tell, Peter also liked this HKS erraythang GT-R built by Kaizen Tuning.
We’re not 100% certain on the engine specs, but we’re guessing its got a HKS VR41 GT1000 engine under the hood, given this purple manifolded display next to it.
Another respected Japanese tuning company, Cusco, had this Winmax brake pad display in their booth. We tested a set of these on our S2000 and our S14, so we can say from firsthand experience that the W3, W4 and W5 compounds perform flawlessly at the race track and offer outstanding fade resistance.
I thought this was a pretty clever way for Cusco to showcase their roll cage and other chassis related products.
I’m not sure if Cusco owns Fujitsubo, a high quality Japanese exhaust manufacturer renown for a mature sound quality, or if they’re simply a distribution partner. Either way, we were coveting this complete exhaust system for the Toyota 86 as a solution to our FR-S’s loudness.
Pretty tame looking Camaro, right?
WRONG! This big block V8 packs high 4-digit power figures and ran the Hot Rod Drag week event just as you see it!
This Camaro (or Firebird or Trans Am or whatever) in the Penske Racing Shocks booth was slightly more extraverted and had Motec everything inside. Damn.
Alright, that wraps up our SEMA coverage for 2015, so here’s that booth babe I promised. Ok, so maybe we’re biased since Turn14 is our title sponsor, but come on fellas, you’ve got to agree that pro fitness model Juliana Daniell is rather easy on the eyes, and she’s also super cool and friendly in person. Plus I think it’s safe to say she could beat most of you in a crossfit competition.
Oh, and be sure to check out our Day 3 video over on our YouTube channel as well. Pete’s voice is extra sexy thanks to that overnight flight we took home and three days of grinding it out in SEMA to bring you guys the good stuff. You’re welcome, Internet!
I can’t be the only one who expected the “booth babe” at the end of your coverage to be David in a dress, right?
GrantC Oh man, opportunity missed! Where were you when I needed this idea a few days ago??? 🙂