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    Arrow SEMA Trucks!



    SEMA Trucks
    Go Big or Go Home!

    Text & Photos by Jim Bigley

    Trucks at SEMA were there to attract attention - and boy did they! Each of the 2100+ Vendors and manufacturers who attend the annual Specialty Equipment Market Association event needed something special to lure some of the 100,000+ passers-by (and the media) into their booth. Having an eye catching truck helps them do just that, and this year was no exception. Here is a collection of GM, Ford & Dodge (and Toyota) trucks I thought stood out in some way from the others. Have a look!



    Rolling Big Power (rollingbigpower.com) parked this big red Chevy outside the convention center. RBP is big into diesel performance, and produces exhaust systems, intake kits and performance modules.





    This lifted GMC was a rolling billboard for DSO Eyewear - though not a product you'd normally associate with trucks. Nonetheless, a clean truck build, without going over the top.



    Chris Calkins' orange 1970 Chevy C10 literally glowed in the Diesel Hot Rod Association booth (dhraonline.com). A 1970 Chevy in the DHRA's booth? Must have a diesel engine, right? But not just any diesel engine - this truck is running a beefed LB7 Duramax 6600 and Allison automatic. A combination of lowered stance, 4-link rear suspension and wide-wide wrinkle-walls propel this 4200-lb truck through the 1/4-mile in the 10's.



    Chevrolet is getting back into the hot-rod truck market by combining the new Silverado with the powertrain of the Z06 Corvette. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, enthusiasts had the Chevy SS C1500 trucks. These were big block powered standard cab short box trucks designed to impress the street crowd. They still have a dedicated following. GM's reintroduction of the SS pickup a few years ago didn't quite click. Power was a mediocre OK, and they were only available as an extended cab (read family oriented). The "Laser Blue Metallic" truck shown above is named "Silverado 427", and is a standard cab short box - a more faithful representation of the performance trucks Chevy offered more than a decade ago.

    The 427 is a new LS7 7.0L Gen IV gas V-8 that produces an astonishing 505 horsepower and 470 lb-ft of torque, and is mated to a T56 6-speed manual transmission and 3.73 auto-locking rear differential. Could this be a serious competitor to Dodge's Viper V-10 powered sport truck?



    I included this photo both to show the new metallic green color offered by Chevy and to illustrate what ground-effects and air-dam components might be adaptable to GM's new HD trucks due out in early 2007. Totally missing from the GM display was the 2007 HD pickup lineup (at least I didn't see them). GM did have a half dozen engines on display, which included the LBZ, but no diesel trucks. Me thinks that was a big mistake!



    While no diesels were present, this custom 2007 Chevy was in the GM display area, which was built for NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr. Looking like it's ready for a run at Baja, I couldn't help but think about a new Duramax powered Chevy 2500HD with similar mods.

    Story continues with next post.

    Text & Photos Copyright by TheDieselPage.com
    Last edited by More Power; 11-12-2006 at 00:06.

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