SEMA 2025

Words by Tim Wong

Another year at the largest automotive trade show around, SEMA, takes over the Las Vegas Convention Center once again. I’ve been attending for so long now, it just has become a regular part of the year. Last year, the convention center was still under extensive renovations which seems to have most of it completed. The new West Hall is massive and now really filled in with booths compared with previous years which seemed more like some extra space they didn’t know what to do with. The area outside of Central Hall was once the main demo area featuring drifting, ridealongs, burnouts, and all that stuff has now been split up to a couple different areas with the addition of the Tesla loop out front which takes up lot of space that used to be a show area for cars.

Las Vegas is about 4-5 hours out from Southern California which is about a medium distance if compared to Nor Cal as a long drive being 7+ hours. It’s a drive I’ve done countless times, but I think which the general shift of things in Vegas being worse I have less desire to make the drive all the way out there nowadays. Everything seemingly getting more expensive and getting nickle and dimed for everything gets tiresome. Even the buffets, a staple of the Vegas culture, has become rare, more expensive, and worse. SEMA is the only thing I drive up there for anymore and if they moved to a different city like in California, I wouldn’t even have a reason to go anymore.

As for this year’s show, I made my walk throughout of all the halls and found some of the old big vendors still missing from the exhibit halls, but it also made way for some new ones. Some trends from previous years seem to be evident as the shift seems to still be heading toward the “car Youtuber” type crowd. Personally, I prefer to focus on craftsmanship and creativity over the trendy stuff at the time, but a cool car is a cool car.