SEMA International Auto Salon

"April showers bring May flowers." That's how the saying goes. But the only flowers that showed up at the Long Beach Convention Center on April 19-21 were Mayflower semi-trucks hauling booths, exhibits and show cars galore. SEMA, the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association, presented its annual International Auto Salon and it was a no-holds barred affair.

Old favorites and some newer companies set up camp and presented their best original wares and services. All of the latest in auto fashion and performance technology was under the roof of the Long Beach Convention Center. Sponsored in part by Primedia, Import Tuner's parent company, you can rest assured that we didn't let this opportunity go to waste. With the help of Pann Auto Performance in San Diego, Calif., and Dynamic Autosports in Lake Forest, Calif., we ran "Project: Zero to Hero", in which two cars were taken from showroom stock to street shock during the course of the three-day event. See the articles elsewhere in this issue for more information on these project build-ups.

Of course, the show wasn't all about Import Tuner, so we also walked the halls and snapped up bags and bags of free goodies from the manufacturers' representatives. T-shirts, stickers, license plate frames, sunglasses clips--we collected enough free stuff to open our own performance shop kiosk at the mall. In between our April trick-or-treating and ogling the models, we also perused the aisles for new products to test in our world-famous Power Pages section; keep your eyes posted for them in upcoming issues.

A convention without models is like a desert without sand, so you know that there was a fine bevy of beauties walking, signing and posing with adoring fans and industry insiders alike. Since we've already had the world's finest collection of women between the covers of our magazine, the International Auto Salon was a virtual Tuner cover-girl reunion. At the Wings West booth, Tuner cover model Hannah was subjected to the airbrush treatment, covering her entire body with the same design found on the Wings West RSX, the car she posed with in our May 2002 issue. Was she wearing a bathing suit underneath all that paint? Well, you should have been there to have found out.

The International Auto Salon is shaping up to be a show as great as its older, bigger brother, the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. If you weren't at LBC this year, start making plans to attend in 2003. As you can see by the pictures, it's definitely a show you don't want to miss. Incidentally, SEMA is also one of the most powerful automotive lobbying groups in big-time politics, so once you're done checking out the shows, check out all the other stuff the organization can do for you and for the industry in general. Then go back to looking at the girls.