At the heart of SEMA 2022 was the eBay Motors Experience. A 100,000 square foot space featuring drift ride alongs in the Mk5 Supras of Skip Barber Racing School, The Hoonigan Burnyard burnout pad, simulators and plenty of different builds on display.
As well as hosting the Burnyard, Hoonigan had a number of cars on display. My favourite of which is ‘Slay Poupon’ – a Hellcat powered, space framed Rolls Royce drift taxi.
The ZZ632 10.4L 1000hp natually aspirated Camaro that was a previous build for SEMA 2021.
‘Lord Frightening’ is a Toyota 2JZ swapped Ford F150 Lightning and a tribute to the parts truck in the first The Fast And The Furious movie.
The Chevrolet P10 multi-drop delivery van that Hoonigan used as a merch van.
In a completely unrelated point – USPS use a similar microvan called the Grumman LLV which is right hand drive. I’d love one as a daily here in the U.K!
Finally we have the supercharged donk project.
Donks are quite an unknown to me. I always thought ‘donk’ meant any high-riding 1970s-1980s American car with massively oversized wheels. It turns out that technically to be a donk it has to be a 1971-76 Chevrolet Caprice or Impala.
I can’t find any definitive answer to why they’re called donks. Apparently the logo for the Impala sort of looks like a donkey and thats how the car got that nickname.
I’ve also just found out that people drag race these. I would love to see that in person!
I didn’t get much footage from the burnyard, but here’s Gabby Downing shredding her Corvette: https://www.tiktok.com/@richardfrancismsfmh/video/7161117169885957382?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en
Along with a Chevy Suburban doing donuts. I wasn’t expecting that either! https://www.tiktok.com/@richardfrancismsfmh/video/7161572892403092741?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en
Travis Pastrana had a couple of cars on display. This is his Subaru GL wagon gymkhana car with active aero. This car debuted at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year, an event I must get to soon!
One of Pastrana’s older gymkhana cars – a very heavily modified Impreza.
Emelia Hartford’s twin-turbo C8 Corvette. This was for a while the world’s fastest C8 covering a quarter mile in 9.36 seconds.
Chris Forsberg’s new Formula Drift car based on the new Nissan Z (RZ34)
I’m gutted we aren’t getting these in the U.K.
Throtl’s Tesla swapped 370Z with Liberty Walk body kit. An incredible build!
I’m not sure what this is, but I like it!
ChrisFix was doing DIY demonstrations throughout the week with his E46 race car.
Christina Roki was showing her Hellcat swapped Challenger.
Dodge and Motortrend gave a number of social media influencers a Hellcat engine, 6 speed manual transmission and $10,000 to build a drag car.
The car was used in the competition and then eBay motors took it on the ‘Parts of America’ tour, with the final stop being SEMA.
Underground Racing do twin turbo kits and builds for Lamborghinis and Audi R8s.
They dominate the 1/2 mile racing scene and are a company I’ve admired for a long time.
It was cool to finally see one of their builds – a heavily stripped down twin turbo R8.
I’m going to have an article coming out soon which will be covering a few more twin turbo supercars in a bit more detail. If you don’t want to miss it, head to the bottom of this page and you’ll see a subscibe button. Pop your email in there to have it sent straight to your inbox!
There were quite a few other builds in the eBay Motors Experience.
The car I’d like to end on is this prototype Golf race car.
The dazzle camouflage wrap is used to stop the onlooker from being able to properly see the shapes and dimensions of the vehicle. Car makers use it all the time on their pre-production models. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it on a race car though.
Dazzle camouflage was originally used by U.K and U.S in World War 1 to not only disguise the features of a battleship, but also to make the ship harder to track and range find with all the weird shapes and patterns.
It was great that eBay Motors got involved with SEMA. They put on a great exhibition.
eBay is a phenominal tool for hobbyists. I’ve used it many times for car parts as well as bits for the trains, slot cars and other bits that you see me post about. If anyone from eBay is reading I’d love to work with you all on something!
Thanks for reading. This is the first of a number of SEMA posts that are coming up, if you don’t want to miss them, please subscribe to the blog via email (from the box at the bottom of the page).
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By Richard Francis
