Mark Heffington was born October 2, 1941, in his grandmother's home in Memphis, Tennessee. As a fifth grader, he enjoyed helping out in the school library, where he became inspired by three car books, The Modern Racing Engine, a technical book published in late '40s, and two fictitious novels, Hot Rod and Street Rod, both written by Henry Gregory Felsen. By the time he was 15, he had his mother taking him and friends to local drag races.

William Henry Getty France Sr. is remembered throughout the world as the founder of NASCAR, the most successful stock-car racing series on earth. Born in Washington, D.C., on September 26, 1909, France developed an interest in racing early on. As a teenager, he played hookie from school to take the family Ford Model T to a local board track near his Laurel, Maryland, home. Legend has it he would while the day away doing laps at the track until the last possible moment, then race home before his father could get there and discover what he had actually been up to.

Turning the pages of Petersen’s Hot Rod magazine, Joe Schubeck fell in love with drag racing. At 13, he was reading articles by Wally Parks, and those stories ignited a lifelong passion.

Wade Kawasaki was pumping gas at the corner of Venice and Vermont in Los Angeles when he was just 10 years old. The year was 1970, and he was working at his father’s Shell gas station, which Kawasaki describes as a window into what was coming in his life. “Just filling up those cars with gas, washing their windows and checking their oil—I got to look under their hoods,” he explained. “That was cool stuff!”

At first glance, Eric Grant may seem an unlikely SEMA Hall of Fame candidate. He never owned a garage, never built a performance vehicle, never manufactured or even sold an automotive part. A lawyer by trade, he couldn’t be classified as a "car guy" per se. Yet his profound impact on the automotive aftermarket and SEMA’s earliest years cannot be disputed. After all, he was SEMA’s very first executive director—and how that came to be involved an incredible twist of fate.

No one can deny Boyd his rank in hot rodding and customizing. Boyd’s remarkable success with the production and sale of high-end billet-aluminum custom wheels is unprecedented, and his specialty-vehicle designs have received worldwide acclaim for craftsmanship and originality. He opened Hot Rods by Boyd in the late 1970s, while the late 1980s brought Boyd Wheels. His custom rims gained fans in the hot rod world as well as the hip-hop community.

Butch is recognized as being one of the specialty aftermarket leaders, an individual whose business acumen has led to a preponderance of successes in the wholesale and retail distribution of performance parts and customizing accessories. Butch has been an ad director, account manager and marketing director. He has served on the SEMA Board of Directors and as the SEMA Treasurer as well as on various committees. Additionally, he served on the Board of Directors for AFFTA and SREA. He was both Director and Treasurer of PWA.

Joan Weiand overcame the obstacles that lay before her when she took over Weiand Industries in the wake of her husband’s death.  Joan supported industry causes with zeal; she established and maintained a SEMA Scholarship Fund in her husband Phil’s memory.

The founder and CEO of Superior Industries, former used-car salesman Lou radiated the spirit of entrepreneurship. He started his company, Superior Industries International, with the design and production of alloy custom wheels. Today, Superior wheels are found on tens of thousands of production-line new cars. He had been on the company's board of directors since 1958, serving as chairman until 2007. Lou was also a major supporter of the SEMA Memorial Scholarship Fund and one of the Scholarship's subfund sponsors; the L.L.

Hilborn is a popular name in the Indianapolis 500 race, because Hilborn fuel injection units have been on Indy race cars for more than three decades. It was Stu Hilborn, an automotive engineer and lakes racer, who designed and developed the hybrid injection system, a variation of which is now used on new cars in an electronic configuration. His injectors have been used successfully and set many records in all types of racing including oval track, drag, dry lakes, super modified, off-road, motorcycle, tractor pulling, hydroplanes and Indy Lite series.