Ahh…finally…time for the enormous batch of photos from the 2011 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. I have to say, this one was one of the best trips to Vegas yet. I’ve gone in years past and it’s always been good, but this year was definitely a memorable one. The show itself was probably the best one yet I feel in terms of variety and quality cars. I don’t know if it was just me but the show seemed more full this year and foot traffic seemed to be a lot better. I went every day but Friday and it was extremely busy all week at SEMA. I kept asking everyone what they thought there favorite car was of the show and now in hindsight, I understand why no one could give me a straight answer. There was just so much to see and so many different types of builds and styles of cars to even come close to a decision as to what a favorite would be. There are definitely cars that stood out though, that’s for sure. From the moment we walked into the show til the very last moments when we walked out for the last time, there was always something that captured our attention…

I know you guys have seen a bulk of what SEMA had to offer already from various internet sources, but I promise you, the coverage here will be unlike anything you have seen. I will take you from the show to the after parties and all the while, I will include all the cool random things that we encountered along the way. The photos won’t be in any particular order….I’m basically going to provide you with everything I saw in the order that it happened through my eyes. Unlike last year, I didn’t cover the drive there though because it was pretty uninteresting. Nobody took any cars this year to SEMA and we basically took our daily drivers and got there as fast as we can. I hope you enjoy indepth coverage because I covered everything that I could. I know this is a Honda-dedicated site, but there just wasn’t that much Honda content at SEMA this year. I love all kinds of cars so I captured whatever sparked my interest and if I saw something stupid or ridiculous going on, you better believe I covered it. I have to give a special shout-out to May because she took the time to cover all the shenanigans that occurred during the after parties we went to. Luckily we were taken care of every well at every party and didn’t have to stress out on getting in or getting VIP passes or any of that BS. I’m happy that we know good people that helped us out with that. With that said, let’s get started on day one of the SEMA Show 2011 Mini-Series…It’s going to be a good one…

One really cool thing that happened this year was having Halloween happen on the same week as SEMA. SEMA is always on the first week of November but this year, it just so happened that the 31st of October landed on the Monday of SEMA. I have been to Vegas in Halloween in the past and it was always a good time so we decided to head out there on Monday to check it out. It’s cool to see people dressed-up in costumes and just walking around on the strip and it always helps if there is a reason for women to dress like scantily-clad whores in Vegas, haha….you guys know what I mean. This year, I noticed a bit of a disturbing trend in Vegas though…instead of hoards of scantily-clad floozies, I saw an abundance of dudes dressed-up as women all over the strip…it was not a good look. It is what it is though so we decided to grab some dinner at Tacos El Gordo, and then put on our costumes and walk around the Las Vegas strip…

Here we are after dinner walking around the Palms… DPK Jared was dressed as Hipster Teen Wolf, I was Waldo, and DPK David was “The criminal from any reality television show about cops who doesn’t agree to sign the release to have their likeness displayed on TV”,…that’s why his face is blurred….or he could have been “What DPK David looks like to me if I didn’t have my contact lenses on”. Either costume works but I thought it was a novel idea. I gotta tell you one thing though, if you want to dress up as Waldo, be prepared for any and every one to randomly walk up to you and go “I FOUND YOUUUU!!!!” in the most obnoxious tone possible because IT WILL happen. I already knew it when I got the costume but my last costume was a complete Jesus outfit and that yielded even stranger responses from people….I’m sure if you are single and ready to meet annoying drunk girls the costume would work out great, but alas, I am neither single or drunk enough to talk to random girls in their drunken state…

After walking around for a bit, we decided to call it a night and head back to our hotel. On the way back, I asked David if he had ever been to the famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign before at the front of the strip and he said he hadn’t, so we stopped by for a quick photo….

We got back to our hotel shortly after, watched some television, and then knocked out to prepare for the first day of SEMA…

The next day, we grabbed some breakfast at a local deli and set off to the Las Vegas Convention Center. All the stupid traffic and detours from construction threw me off so we ended up getting lost and stuck in traffic for a bit before we eventually got to the show. We parked in our usual spot and made our way into the SEMA show…

DPK David was all smiles and enjoying the lovely scenery in Vegas…

The first car we saw upon arriving at the show was the Meguiar’s Lexus CT200H… Jon Sibal actually did the original rendering for this car and you can see more of it here….

The paint finish on the cars inside the Meguiar’s booth are always immaculate…absolutely love the way this pick-up looked…

Acura TL sporting a full wrap by Meguiar’s Wraptivo…

DynaSport 1932 Ford Roadster…Check out more build photos of it here….

Custom rat rod pick-up from Honest Charley Speed Shop…

Rotiform wheels were everywhere this year. It was the wheel of choice for many of the exhibiting cars in attendance…This particular set looks good on this white Camaro…

Really liked this red GS that I saw once before at the Team Praxis/VIP Modular meet a couple months back…I actually hit up the shop that put this car together to do a story on it for one of the mags I work for but never got a response…Guess they weren’t interested… :P…

F50 CIMA on VIP Modular wheels…

A pair of R35 GT-Rs built by Jotech Motorsports from Texas…

Linda’s TRD Supercharged Toyota Matrix representing Team Praxis…

Jay Borcena’s Acura TL sitting on 18-inch VIP Modular wheels and Accuair suspension, also from Team Praxis…

Joey’s VIP-styled Scion tC from Praxis…

Cool looking custom fire truck…

Factory Five ’33 hot rod…

A pair of lowriders from LIFESTYLE…

Troy Trepanier’s Chevy Nova aka “NOTORIOUS”…572 cubic inch big block Chevy equipped with a Procharger supercharger…

The moment I came upon this E-class, I instantly knew that it would be one of my favorite cars at SEMA… Carlsson everything sitting on custom bronze BBS LMs…

Such a good looking Benz…Turns out that Sunny from Franklin Autobody painted this car as well and I got a chance to meet and chat with the owner for a little bit…I got a lot more of this car but towards the end of the SEMA show. I liked it so much I went back and just hovered over it for a while…haha..

This literally looks like one of those toy die cast trucks you can buy at a department store…those big ass wheels are fucking ridiculous…

One popular trend that I noticed at the SEMA show was putting older front clips on new body-style domestic muscle…I don’t know how popular this trend is but it’s definitely not that great of a look…This particular covertible has an older Camaro front end on a current generation Camaro…That’s like taking a decent looking girl and putting old lady titties on her…haha, just fucking weird man…

Porsches were definitely at the 2011 SEMA show….this one is equipped with a Top Secret aero kit and SSR MS1s….

I’m unsure about how I feel about this G35. Overall, it doesn’t look bad but I just don’t understand why people put their car on air suspension and it looks all racked like this with the front end slammed and the rear sitting high…looks like the car is braking really hard at stand still…

We still hadn’t picked up our SEMA passes yet so Jared, May, and I walked up to the Media Center to grab our media passes. The nice old lady that was giving us our passes starting laughing when she read that the passes belonged to people from a site called “stickydiljoe.com”, haha….

One of the many perks of having a media pass was this special section that offered food and drinks to media members…Jared and May grabbed some coffee while I drank some ice tea/lemonade… DPK David was off looking for Rywire Ryan to get his pass from him so we decided to meet up downstairs…

While we were waiting for David to come back, we spotted Quinton “Rampage” Jackson from the UFC walk by…

This was random as hell, but while we were waiting, the side skirt on this Audi randomly just fell off the car, haha….

I didn’t believe it so I walked over there and the side skirt did indeed fall off the car…how embarassing, haha….Nobody was even standing near the car or anything, shit just fell off…

One of the more popular vehicles in this area was this Cadillac convertible…

Once David met up with us, we made our way inside one of the halls to check out the cars inside. This white R35 GT-R looked real good in the Rotora brakes area…

This blue Camaro convertible inside the Extreme Dimensions booth ended up winning one of the awards for best cars at SEMA I believe…I don’t know that much about it other than this crappy photo I took of it…haha…

I thought this was supposed to be a Firebird Trans Am-style kit designed for the new Camaros but it actually isn’t. It’s a Camaro known as “The Firebreather” and was built by Classic Design Concepts for an upcoming movie called “Jinn”. I don’t know shit about the movie or what it’s about but this car looks pretty cool and the guy that played Darth Maul in the Star Wars movie is set to star in it….

Loved this old Ford Bronco resto-mod in the Ford Motor Company section…

2012 Ford Mustang V6 from MRT Performance…

Really digging the new Ford Focus…this one had a matching green bike on the roof and HRE wheels…

This was also on a new Ford Focus but I snapped this photo because I thought it was a cool way to show off the brakes…

Tjin Edition Ford Explorer…

This 1970 Mustang was built by the Ring Brothers and is dubbed “The Dragon”…

Roush 427 IR crate motor…

This whole package is actually available for purchase through Ring Brothers and isn’t just a one-off, one-time build…

There was all kinds of crazy commotion and hoopla going on outside in the Lexus area so we decided to walk into their gigant tent set-up to see what it was all about… Turns out that they were unveiling the new Lexus GS F-Sport and also unveiled the 5Axis GS F-Sport along with it. 5Axis can never really do anything wrong in terms of styling and this GS F-Sport looks fucking amazing…There was such a huge crowd around it that it was hard to get photos of it but I managed to elbow my way in and get these shots. Easily one of my favorites at the SEMA 2011 event…

Here is the GS F-Sport in stock form…sorry for the somewhat blurry photo, I was mid-elbow during this shot…

Walked out of the tent to get some air and spotted this Lexus SUV “factory off-road racing” build…

Another perk of having a media pass was that you could get in line to get a ride in the new GS F-Sport…They had a nice course set-up for some “spirited driving”…

DPK David and Jared didn’t hesitate to go for a spin…

That’s all for today…back with part 2 tomorrow….

Thanks for looking!!