Live from SEMA: A Brief Tour for Dodge Fans

LAS VEGAS – For those that have never been, SEMA is a collection of displays from thousands of companies large and small around the auto industry. From satellite radio, to tires, to coolant tubing, to rims, to full race packages, to paint, to wax, to pretty much anything you can think of.

Some of the displays are nothing more than one guy, a few fliers and his product. Others take up city blocks of space, with towering lights, speakers, spokesmodels signing posters, free stickers and video boards. Long story short…it’s huge. The show takes up three full convention halls, some with lower and upper levels – plus several acres of parking lots. There’s reality automotive TV shows filming live in the lot. There’s bass booming in stereo demos. We just passed a pair of tattoo artists permanently etching tire marks on showgoers’ arms. There’s thousands upon thousands of folks walking around looking for new ideas and new products in the auto biz.

Generally, much of the show trends a bit younger on certain floors, tapping into the popularity of tuning and customizing. It’s all about performance and appearance. And the SEMA show bursts with energy, with celebrity car designers, rappers and models making appearances from time to time.

For Dodge’s part, it showed off its performance prowess under the MOPAR banner. Visitors got to nose around the 2008 Concept ‘Cuda (just a show car, everyone), the Dakota MX Warrior we mentioned last week, the new SRT4 Caliber, a “StormTrooper” Avenger (read Autoblog’s take here), dozens of displays of MOPAR heritage and new products and even a tuned Grand Caravan. Dodge also debuted a pair of Dodge Ram pickups custom-made for some Baja racing (see the full release and photos at Jalopnik here.)

We’ve got tons of pics to take you to the show floor below. Click past the jump for more…