This truck won the GM Design Award at SEMA last year. Now it’s on CarDomain—and it’s for sale to help fund future projects!

It’s getting pretty close to that SEMA time of year again, and that gets a lot of us hankering for an over-the-top show car. Finding them is easy: on eBay Motors, click the Advanced Search link, specify "Cars and Trucks" in the drop-down menu, enter "SEMA" as your keyword, and check the box for "Search title and description." Hit search and voila. Of course, it’s up to you to verify whether your matches were ever actually featured as SEMA show cars—this A-Team van, for example, clearly wasn’t. But the majority of the rides in there, like this Magnum that was featured at the ’06 show, seem to be the real deal. I suspect that this search will yield an increasing number of matches in the coming weeks as the sellers try to time their listings to cash in on the buildup to the 2008 SEMA show. Check out the current SEMA show-car listings!

With gas approaching $4 per gallon a lot of folks are starting to think about getting an econobox for their daily driver. There are a lot of cool options out there. My buddy keeps threatening to buy a Honda Fit. I kind of like the looks of the Yaris–I loved this one at SEMA. And the new Fiat 500 really needs to come to the US. How about old school econoboxes? Of course Jen loves her Escort. And I have a soft spot for Mark 1 Ford Fiestas. But if I had to pick I’d probably go with the Mark 1 Rabbit or the original Mini.

What’s your favorite econobox?

CarDomain member Freesol has gotten his Solstice GXP into the new Fast and the Furious movie! He attended the casting event a couple of weekends ago, and has been told his car will be used in the opening scenes that set the tone for the film. This 2008 Solstice has had a lot of adventures in its short life—it was also featured at the 2007 SEMA show!

Anyone else getting their car featured in the film? Post a link to your ride page!

I didn’t mange to make it over to the Nissan booth at SEMA, which as usual was over in the back corner of the South Hall. But Brian had his awesome turbo Altima Coupe parked there, and it looked hot. Luckily he has a bunch of pics and specs on his ride page. Larry also got some shots of the car in the Nissan booth. I just wish Nissan had made this one RWD. I guess we’ll have to wait for the Silvia in 2010.

This is it: the polls are officially closed, and it’s now time to announce our Best of SEMA winners—the hottest, illest rides at the 2007 SEMA show, as chosen by readers of the CarDomain blog.  First up, you guys voted on restored cars: the delicious ’54 Corvette you picked was probably the least stock of the restorations nominated, but hey, you’ve never been much for unmodified rides! For Off-Road, the winner was a vehicle that had actually been off-road: this totally over-the-top JK Wrangler—though a screamin’ Chevy Suburban sure wasn’t far behind. In the Exotics category, the Porsche Gemballa GT soundly trounced the competition, a testament to our readers’ good taste. In Muscle Cars, the Nemesis Motorsports Roush-edition Mustang pulled ahead near the end for a solid win. For the Light Truck category, you went with the classics, choosing this gorgeous kandy ’65 Ford pickup. In Hot Rods, the mighty Mercules had the win from the start, certainly owing to its perfect combo of mind-blowing horsepower and super-insane custom bodywork, though the Viper-powered ’57 Chevy was close on its heels. The Luxury category yielded another point for the classics, with the badass ’68 Continental beating out a slew of late-model rides by a landslide. Since donks are unfailing in their ability to inspire disagreement, it’s fitting that the Hi-Riser category nearly resulted in a three-way tie between the Riviera, the Skylark, and the ’89 Caprice, with the the Riv squeaking ahead in the final hours of voting. The Sport Compact category was another tough battle—and in the end (would you believe it?), the Team Koshak Scion xD beat out both a Skyline GTR and a carbon-fiber Elise, an outcome that truly lays bare the leanings of your dear little tuner hearts. And for Racing and Motorsports, we found it pretty hilarious that you overwhelmingly chose the Hot Wheels Twin Mill, leaving the "real" race cars to split up less than 50% of the remaining vote between them! Well, it sure was a wild SEMA show this year, and we’re amazed and impressed that y’all could agree on anything. Good battles in every category—congratulations to all of our deserving winners, and thanks to the hundreds of you who voted!

Heads up, race fans! This will be your final chance to cast your vote in our "Best of SEMA" series, and for today’s poll we’ve got some tasty picks in the Racing and Motorsports category, including the Lexus that won this year’s 24 Hours of Daytona, Jeff Gordon’s #24 Car of Tomorrow, a sweet Porsche 997 WCGT3 Cup car, top driver Donny Schatz’s World of Outlaws sprint car, and, of course, none other than the Hot Wheels Twin Mill. You can browse the candidates at our SEMA 2007 Group page. The Best of SEMA winners will be announced tomorrow night, and it’s not too late to vote in the other categories!

It was pretty easy to narrow it down to five hi-risers, because, well, there weren’t too many at SEMA. But those that were there made a big impression. So here are the five for today’s vote: the ’71 Riviera in the MHT booth, the ’72 Skylark vert in the DUB booth, the Rides ’85 Caprice, King of the Street’s ’89 Caprice, and the crazy Cadillac Limo. So take a look and then vote for your favorite. You can see more pics of these hi-risers over in the SEMA 2007 group page.

SEMA always brings out the best-of-the-best in the automotive aftermarket community. It’s like stepping into a tuner’s dream world—more chrome, polished metal, and carbon fiber than you can shake a wrench at. This year’s sport compact offering was a bit smaller than previous years, but the overall quality was nothing short of amazing. Check out our top picks in detail with many more pics in the Best of SEMA 2007: Sport Compact coverage, then vote for your favorite. Think we could have made a better choice? Let us know.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Because the SEMA show is so huge, it’s inevitable that you’ll only get to see some of the coolest cars after the fact—like this ’55 Thunderbird that I read about today in the SEMA newsletter. What’s special about this ride is that it belongs to John McLoughlin, the 9/11 firefighter who spent nearly 24 hours trapped under the smoldering rubble of WTC 2, and whose story is dramatized in the Oliver Stone film World Trade Center. When Melvin Benzaquen of Classic Restoration Enterprises discovered that McLoughlin owned a rotting basketcase of a T-Bird that would probably never see the road again, he decided to restore the classic completely from the ground up—free of charge. The unveiling at SEMA was the first time the 9/11 hero had laid eyes on his beloved T-Bird since its restoration. Check out the full story at SEMA’s site.