Project Update for December 2, 2014: This is part 2 of 3 of our "lead up" + SEMA2014 + OUSCI coverage. This segment is devoted to the SEMA show itself. We got to display our 2011 Mustang at the show (parked in two different places), but there were a few bumps along the way. I personally took over 700 pics at the show with my camera phone (that many dubbed the "Potato Cam" due to a few blurry pics) and posted them live on Facebook during the show. My focus was on cool cars that corner carvers might like, as well as the parts that interest us most. More from Vorshlag joined me - Jason was there by Tuesday, Olof and Jon arrived Wednesday, and Brad flew in on Friday took some great shots in the Central Hall with his Canon gear. We will discuss cars, new parts, and the various areas of the show. But first, let's get a piece of business out of the way...
Vorshlag TT3 prepped 2011 Mustang GT FOR SALE
Yes, it it has to be done - We are selling our red Mustang S197 development car (read more
here). I'm not happy about it, and would much rather keep this car, but this car is a chunk of capital that I need to liquidate in order to help our business grow. Very soon some big changes we are making will become apparent, and this car will help pay for this expansion. Asking price is $48,500, and we have almost double that in it. Comes with your choice of tires (fresh 335/345 Hoosier A6s or fresh 335 Rivals), with or without the current livery, and more.
Click this picture to go to the FOR SALE page, which has dozens of pictures and lots of details
We had this car "sold" for several months, but right before SEMA the buyer flaked out. Oh well, what can you do? They aren't a "buyer" until the money arrives. Any of you reading this thread for a while will know about this car, which we've developed for over 4 years. I counted them up and this car has set 15 track records and has posted dozens of wins over the past 4 seasons, in Time Trial as well as autocross. It has been shown on TV shows 6 different times and the for sale page for this car was even linked in a recent
Jalopnik article. Its "internet famous"! It is also a fully street legal car, with AC, Sat NAV, full interior, and all that. If you drive around on the street in this car you will get more attention than if you had a stripper dancing in the back of a convertible. It is also pretty quick on a race track, too. I feel the price is fair, but like everything, it is negotiable. This
FOR SALE web page has all of the details you could ever want. If you have questions call Vorshlag and ask for Terry (me); the number is on that for sale page and all over our website.
This is the current look/decals/livery of the Mustang. Paint is less than a month old. Click for more details
And in case you were wondering - No, we're not building a 2015 Mustang to replace this one. With no Body In White program for the S550 for "at least a year" from Ford, building a 2015 Mustang race car requires buying a new car then cutting it up and throwing away a lot of stuff. So we'll wait for a BIY or until we can find a theft recovery/flood damages/front hit chassis to start with (I'd rather use the '16 GT350 front bits). Maybe 6-12 months from now these cars will become available in a cheaper form (used/crashed/BIY) and then we can hopefully build the crazy S550 race car that I have in my brain. Until then we have another race car build we are starting (for 2015 season) that isn't even a Ford at all (but will have a few Ford parts). I brought the chassis from my home shop (have 4 cars stashed there, waiting) to the Vorshlag shop this past weekend, so I will link to that build thread in my next S197 update. This S197 thread isn't going away - we have S197s in our shop every day and any development we do will still be chronicled here. In my next post I'll show some new S197 stuff we've been working on.
The Long Tow to Vegas
OK, back to the SEMA update. We had the car prepped and loaded last time, ready to head to Vegas. Getting from our shop in Dallas, Texas to Las Vegas, Nevada is a long, somewhat boring drive - mostly through Texas. Luckily it was uneventful, and we set-up the back seat of the crew cab F350 as a "sleeping cell", with Amy and I switching out every 2.5 hours to drive while the other caught up on sleep. With the previous 2 months being full of 7 day weeks with hectic 14-18 hour days, we both needed the rest between driving stints.
We had decent weather but hit some rain in the desert, which turned into heavy snow at higher altitudes. Luckily we didn't have to slow down much, and drove straight through in a little over 20 hours. Crossing two times zones and with daylight savings being undone during this day, we "found" 3 hours along the way, and ended up in Vegas mid day on Sunday.
Parking at our hotel was tight so we had to unload the Mustang down the street and park it in front of our room. The trailer and truck were stuck off site until Monday morning, then we were allowed to drop off the trailer for the week at a LVMS parking lot. This left us with the F350 to tool around town in, until our guys drove in Wednesday in Amy's BMW 740iL. The Mustang managed to get over the many speed bumps in the hotel parking lot as well as traverse the "above ground storm drainage" ditches along the many many secondary street intersections in Vegas. #BecauseStreetCar
Parking With "Ford out Front", aka: the Worst Parking Spot at SEMA
This next section is full of some bitching and moaning, so feel free to skip it.
There's more content again down at "Notable Cars of the Vegas 50".
SEMA is a huge show that continues to grow, and now it has spread into 3 main convention halls at the Las Vegas convention Center, covers three huge parking lots (both with open displays, active cars driving, and big air conditioned tents), alley ways, and there's even the AAPEX show (OEM parts and suppliers) that is inside another convention hall in the Sands hotel, around the corner. Its a huge freagin show. I haven't been to SEMA since 2010, and it has grown a lot since then, and changed in some fundamental ways. Many have said this was the best SEMA show they had ever seen, and I tend to agree.
Ford Motor Company has had a BIG presence at SEMA for many years and they have spent a large budget to get your attention. Back in 2010 (the last time I was at SEMA) Ford was already renting the big parking lot in front of the main Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. This lot had barriers lined around the lot and they had set-up jumps in the middle to show off the new Raptor trucks' suspension. I remembered seeing people lined up to ride in a "jumping" Raptor back then, but I didn't pay it much attention. It was a side-show distraction, plus I worked a booth for 3 days that year and was rushed just getting away to see a few manufacturers we worked with then.
Well a lot has happened since 2010 - Vorshlag has gotten a lot bigger, we've been building some notable cars, I won the USCA qualifier so I was finally guaranteed a spot at the OUSCI (Optima Ultimate street Car Invitational), and we were even invited to park our car in the "special Ford area" to
celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Mustang. Two invites to SEMA in the same year? Craziness. Optima requires that your car is shown somewhere at SEMA for the full week, either in a booth or in their special "Optima Alley" parking area. When I had the choice of having our car park in a "special Ford area" out in front of the Central Hall versus a back alleyway with the Optima group, I chose FORD. Duh...
All 50 Mustangs were parked in front of the Central Hall, parked in the shape of "5.0"... for about 45 minutes, then shuffled away
There were all sorts of extras that went with the 50 cars picked to represent each year of the Mustang. "The Vegas 50", which had a special Facebook group and email list, got exclusive invites to a private Ford meet-and-greet event at the Ford booth on Monday (press day + load in), and we got Exhibitor badges from Ford that let us walk the show floor all day Monday - which I had never done. There was also an extra Exhibitor Party we got to go to, which sounded cool, and tons of free Mustang and Ford swag.
Our red Mustang was in the lower part of the "0", of the "50" picture
A lone Ford employee was trying to coordinate all of these activities: a parade of 50 Mustangs from some outlier lot to a special aerial photo shoot on Monday, then to the week long "special display area". Long story short, it ended up being a big hot mess, and a big waste of time. We stood around waiting for too many hours on Monday, the parade route was all of 200 yards long, and the aerial photo shoot (see above) took far longer than it should have. Then we got lined up to park... and it was immediately obvious that I had made a huge mistake.
See the drifters spraying 50 Mustangs parked around the perimeter? That wasn't cool
We were corralled like cattle and parked two wide, bumper-to-bumper in between concrete barrier walls and a parallel ring of bike railing surrounding the Ford out Front
DRIFTORO SPECTAKULARRRR!!! I was immediately leery of this "special Ford spot" when I saw a couple of trucks practicing drifting around the parking lot that Monday night, so when we pulled into place I quickly darted to the "outer ring" of the two wide parking sports - that move likely saved my car's paint job. I asked our Ford contact "Will there be drifting all day here, and won't that send lots of asphalt and crap onto our cars??" There were several rare and special six figure $$ cars in this line-up of 50 years of the Mustang, and I didn't want this to turn into a really bad place to be stuck all week. "Oh no, there won't be any problems! This is a GREAT spot with lots of visibility and foot traffic! We'll having someone come dust off the cars every morning!"
The DROFTORO SPECTAKULARRRRRRRR had just begun... and our car was parked right in the "spray"
We left the car with a bad feeling, then went and got some free food + beer at the party for Exhibitors on Monday, meeting up with our friends from EVO-Dynamics and MyShopAssist (exhibiting). Then we went inside and did the special Monday night deal at the Ford booth at 6:30 pm, which wasn't much but included more food and drinks.
The next morning, we entered the back of Central Hall and started walking the show. Pretty soon I was getting all sorts of texts and messages from some of the Vegas 50 folks, and it sounded BAD. We made it out front to take a look by 11 am and our cars were already COVERED in asphalt pebbles, tire junk, and various dust and debris. The cars looked like they had been parked in a bombed out ghetto all night once the
DRIFTORO SPECTAKULARRRRRRRR!!!! was in full swing. They were drifting anything with four wheels: Raptors, Trophy Trucks, NASCAR Cup cars, New 2015 Mustangs, older S197 Mustangs, anything that could break the tires loose was flinging rocks and crap all over our cars. I was losing my MIND and was looking frantically for the Ford contact, but eventually we found her and she said that no matter what, we were stuck there for the rest of the day.
I won't get into too much more of what I said, other than to say I was less than pleased, and I wasn't alone. A guy from the Lucas Oil trailer out front brought over a gas powered leaf blower out of their trailer and blew the crap off most of the Mustangs at the end of the day of drifting, which got about 80% of the junk off. After waiting for 90 minutes later than promised, we were finally able to get our car out of that fiasco and move it to Optima Alley. Once parked there I used a California Duster thing and got even more crap off the paint, and Wednesday morning I went crazy with some Meguiars Quik Detail and finally got it clean. We weren't the only owner to move his car Tuesday night... by Wednesday the "Vegas 50" was the "Vegas 18".
Leaving the Ford out Front area Monday afternoon, Amy and I ran into the star of the TV show
"Highway to Sell", Dennis Pittsenbarger (below). We know Dennis from Optima series events, and when he saw our Vorshlag jackets he grabbed us as we walked by. We caught up with Dennis about his the first season the show (he's hoping it gets picked up for season 2!), which we had both watched every episode of. He was also announcing all week at SEMA for a televised gig, then for the OUSCI event on Saturday and Sunday (he had lost most of his voice by then!).
It's cool seeing folks you meet at racing events or through the car world that make a TV show, which usually becomes a big break in their career. I also ran into Kevin Byrd of Two Guys Garage during the SEMA show, who I have known for years (he built an LS1 BMW E30 that we chatted about numerous times). He was filming cars in Optima Alley for a show they are doing on SEMA 2014. We also bumped into Aaron from GMG on 4 different occasions, met the two Brits from Wheeler Dealer, and saw about a dozen other "cars and sparks" TV stars throughout the show.
Notable Cars of the Vegas 50
The 50 Mustangs that Ford picked to represent each year were mostly either almost completely stock or "modified show cars". I'm not really part of the "show car scene" but its all part of the car culture and I gotta respect that - these people like to show and shine, and that's cool. There were a couple of "racey" looking builds in this group, which I will point out below. There were a few others in the Vegas 50 that tracked their cars, but these two were the most epic builds.
The
Creations n' Chrome built "Top Notch" fox Mustang was pretty wild. I had seen this in magazines but it looked even better in person. It had a supercharged Aluminator 5.0L, a tube frame chassis with a
carbon fiber body, massive engine + driver set-back, along with wide wheels and flares. What's not to like?? I think this car got one of the Golden Ticket invites to OUSCI but I don't know if they could make it, and it was on the wrong type of tires to run that event? (200+ treadwear is required)
Another car that caught my eye was this dark blue Mustang II, which was damned cool. I have never said "Cool" and "Mustang II" in the same sentence in my life. A high school buddy had a 1978 "Cobra" Mustang and I had a 1972 Mustang, both with built 302s. Looking back at that time in my life, they really were both
hideous cars, from the two worst generations of Mustangs ever made, and we kind of knew it. This blue car above redeemed the entire Mustang II generation of cars - but it had very little Mustang II left, of course.
A tube chassis build that was based loosely on a C5 Corvette platform, with the T56 rear transaxle and torque tube in place. A new floor and tunnel were fabricated, then the remainder of the Mustang II body was plopped on top. All new fenders and wheel arches were made to cover big meety wheels and tires on the C5's wheelbase, with a custom sheet metal front end based loosely off of the 2013 Boss302 LS. Crazy interior and engine bay work were also part of this build.
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