The SEMA Show even has a Champaign Room!
November 4th, 2009
by Jim McIlvaine of ESPN Milwaukee Blogs
Behold the Giovanna Wheels display at the SEMA show. The wheel and tire guys (and Chrysler) are buried in a basement, out of the way of most of the SEMA traffic, but the trip downstairs is a must for any SEMA attendee. As much as the economy has hit everyone, the wheel and tire guys seem surprisingly unaffected and the Giovanna “champaign room” was the epitome of excess.
If I didn’t know Giovanna was a wheel company, I’d have no idea what they were trying to sell. It was so dark in that room, one almost had trouble making out the scantily-clad *ahem* models, who were walking around. Someone even told me they had some Ferraris and Bentleys in there, but I barely noticed.
The economic downturn did hit the aftermarket grille companies hard. Either that or the Giovanna guys hired all the remaining pros spokeswomen in the Las Vegas metro area.
MrGrille had to resort to dressing mannequins in tight-fitting tanktops, with complimentary MrGrille stickers tucked suggestively into the front of their pants. I was hoping to snap a picture of someone snagging one, but I didn’t want the MrGrille guy to think I had some kind of weird thing for his lady friends.
Ford brought several of their soon-to-be-released Fiestas to SEMA and bribed people into test-driving them, by promising a ride in the passenger seat of a Corvette, driven by an instructor from the Bob Bondurant driving school (I guess a ride in a Mustang wasn’t incentive enough). I knew I couldn’t fit in Corvettes, but if they let me beat on a Fiesta, I’d be happy to do so…provided I could fit. I had a little trouble with my left knee in between the steering wheel and door, but not so much that I couldn’t crank hard on the wheel and make the Fiestas wheels scream through the turns on the autocross course.
