SEMA 2025: Las Vegas’ Aftermarket Carnival

Now that the dust has settled after all the chaos, it’s time to reflect on the madness of SEMA 2025.

This year more than ever, SEMA feels less like a trade show and more like a living, breathing, petrol-soaked art gallery – each booth a diorama of obsessive craft, improbable engineering, and the kind of creativity that makes car people smile. I wanted to highlight just a few cars that stood out to me during the week of the show.

I”ll start with my absolute favorite build at SEMA. Ruffian Cars took Americana and made it savage. This ’35 Plymouth GT-1 pairs a patinated exterior with race-bred underpinnings (a Corvette Trans-Am GT-1 chassis) and a Viper V10. A reminder that big-block madness never goes out of style.

It’s raw, theatrical, and built to scare – exactly the kind of one-off that reads perfectly in the bright, unforgiving light of SEMA. The mix of the highlighted patina with the large amount of carbon fibre around the car is like nothing else; a new way of hotrodding that bridges the gap between generations.

Of course, I had to work my way towards the Rays Wheels booth. As a JDM nut, its small corner of SEMA is always one I have to stop by, a few times – at least. It’s a magnet for stance and show-car obsessives.

This A90 Supra sporting ADRO’s aggressive widebody did not disappoint. ADRO’s full A90 package – big fenders, carbon pieces, and a track-inspired aero stance – is designed to be both theater and function, and the Supra at Rays’ display encapsulated that duality: sculptural presence with implied track potential. Also, this Mercedes G-Class sporting the largest set of TE37s I’ve ever seen was a nice treat.

Toyo’s Treadpass has always felt more than a SEMA sponsored spot: it’s become a curated runway for some of the coolest builds of the show. For 2025, the company showcased 28 new vehicles – an eclectic mix of wildly modified cars.

Treadpass is popular because it packages discovery; boots-on-the-ground access to the industry’s most clickable builds in a condensed, walkable exhibit that feeds social media and dealer demand alike. For builders and brands, that concentrated exposure is worth its weight in press hits.

There’s a simple rule that all builders here must follow: don’t post or talk about your car until it debuts at SEMA. That one rule keeps everyone on their toes until SEMA week. It’s the same sort of anticipation I get when walking into the cinema to see a sequel to a movie series I’ve been waiting way too long for.

My favorite car at the Treadpass was this particular Datsun 240Z, featuring a brand new, all-aluminum body by Star Road; tight tolerances, perfect curves, and body lines that read like a hand-made sculpture. It’s more than lightness for numbers – the fit and finish show why Japanese craftsmanship still sets the bar for tasteful restoration and reinterpretation. It’s also topped off with a subtle RB25 engine swap.

If Star Road’s 240Z was a haiku, BradBuilds’ Dodge Viper engine-swapped 240Z was a stadium anthem. An 8.0-litre V10 shoehorned into a Datsun shell sounds implausible and, frankly, glorious. It’s the kind of swap that turns timelines inside out – a lightweight Z silhouette married to a muscle-car heart, the result equal parts ridiculous and intoxicating. To add to the build, Brad also 3D-printed the bodykit himself.

It doesn’t get more sacrilege than this: an RB26-swapped A90 Supra. This one in particular packs an 800hp punch, with drag radials in the rear. The CSF booth always hosts some pretty insane builds each year and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. You might know the owner, Shaleek Tukes, from his famous Street Alpha podcasts.

TJ Hunt brought a Ferrari 488 that blurred the line between a GT3-derived race aesthetic and a street build. Think GT3 Evo body cues, big brakes, BBS center-lock wheels, and a setup that plays to both show and serious track intent – statements that drew a steady crowd and saturated social feeds in short order. It was the perfect one-up to his GT3-inspired BMW M4.

In the back corner of SEMA’s Central Hall were these Chinese remanufactured classic car bodies. From Toyota FJ40 Land Cruisers to AE86 Corollas, this company had quite the collection of newly-stamped shells, ready to sell for prices ranging from $8500 to $10,000. I’m sure many of you have seen the posts on social media, but having them in person here in the US was quite interesting. The primary downside here is that none of the cars carry a VIN plate, so they aren’t capable of being road legal.

Chris Forsberg’s name is synonymous with drifting, but his Nissan Patrol at SEMA leaned into brute force and desert-ready engineering. Forsberg and his team created a Y60 Patrol restomod packing roughly 1,000hp from a heavily modified TB48 inline-six engine.

It’s a strange yet delightful collision: retro Mobil 1 livery and boxy 1990s charm hiding a modern powerplant capable of embarrassing much newer machinery. Next to the Patrol was Chris’s latest Nissan Z racecar that’ll be debuting at Gridlife’s newly announced Gridlife GT (GLGT) class, starting in 2026. GLGT is essentially their Gridlife Touring Car (GLTC) class, but turned up a notch.

SEMA isn’t complete without a visit to Hoonigan’s outside corner of the convention. The Burnyard energy returned with a supercharged dose of showmanship: the Subaru Brataroo 9500 Turbo, built for a new Gymkhana film with Travis Pastrana at the wheel.

Part rally car, part burnout theatre, the Brataroo is a carbon-fiber, anti-lag-equipped monster tuned to nearly 700 hp and built for explosive visuals – exactly the sort of thing that makes SEMA spill into the streets and social timelines. While the new Brat wasn’t doing burnouts for us to see, many other cars were being completely destroyed inside Hoonigan’s Burnyard pit. It’s always nice to get the adrenaline flowing, watching people hitting their car’s rev-limiter for minutes at a time, smoking out their tires.

I know I’m missing a few eclectic cars, but that’ll always be the case with a show as large as SEMA. I hope you enjoyed the brief coverage of what I was able to explore during my time at the show, and as always, I can’t wait for next year.