SEMA’s Vice President of Vehicle Technology on the State of Advanced Vehicle Technology Today’s cars, trucks and the auto industry and performance aftermarket as a whole are being reinvented, restructured and re-envisioned. Cars are quickly moving from standalone mechanical products to smart...

New Gear From the SEMA ShowThe Trucks, SUVs & Off-Road section of the 2014 SEMA Show was dedicated to products engineered to tackle life’s harshest, and most exciting, terrain. For buyers who understand their customer’s passionate desire to shift into four-wheel drive, exhibitors unveiled hundreds...

I was talking to an old friend who runs a specialty performance distribution business, and he said, “You know, it just seems like nobody talks to each other on the phone any more.” Yep, e-mail has changed the way we communicate. The same sentiment can be heard in brick-and-mortar stores across the...

While the SEMA Show is a trade event that is not open to the general public, thousands of journalists from around the world participate in it and serve as the eyes and ears for enthusiasts. These reporters work around the clock to scour the SEMA Show floor in search of standout products to share...

The Truck’n America Family Goes the Extra Mile to Service ClientsTruck’n America—headquartered in a 10,000-sq.-ft. facility in Waldorf, Maryland, with 25 employees and six locations in the Maryland and Virginia area—has been a family-run business for more than 40 years. The team is currently led by...

Compass Points for Specialty-Equipment CompaniesBusiness trends reveal themselves in a host of incarnations, and we seek each year to ferret out those that pertain to the automotive specialty-equipment aftermarket. The SEMA Show, new-vehicle sales, educational tendencies and other indicators may...

Good News for Worldwide Enthusiasts and U.S. Specialty-Equipment ManufacturersSEMA manufacturers know that the Ford Mustang is one of the most customized vehicles in the marketplace. This year marks the pony car’s 50th anniversary, and now it comes with a larger-than-ever attraction to those who...

Three High-Tech Tools to Advance Small Product Innovators For medium to large specialty-equipment manufacturers, the concepts of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) are not likely to come as anything new. Over the past few decades, most companies with the capital have...