Where car designers go crazy

It’s SEMA Show time again; that moment when carmakers you would assume should know better just can’t help themselves.

A trade- only event that keeps the punters firmly outside, SEMA is where automotive suppliers showcase all sorts of crazy, outlandish and extreme products, usually bolted to crazy, outlandish and extreme cars for full effect.

It also takes on the appearance of a stag weekend for usually serious and sober car designers.

Increasingly, SEMA is the occasion mainstream manufacturers let their crayonwielders go a bit mad and bring to life insane versions of otherwise merely manic metal.

Did we mention this all takes place in Las Vegas? Oh, but of course it does.

You’ll be best to head online and check out the hundreds of image galleries that spring up in its carbon- wrapped wake for a sampling, but highlights this year include a 2017 Camaro SS Slammer wearing 24- inch rear tyres ( merely 22- inch on the front), a camouflaged hydrogen fuel cellpowered Chevy Colorado ute designed by the US Army’s Tank, Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Centre R& D division, a Kia Sorento on quad caterpillar tracks, a Toyo Tyres display area that featured a couple of the maddest accessoryladen Lamborghini Aventadors and Nissan GT- Rs you’re likely to see, a Bentley Continental GT with more air vents than a cheese grater and what looks like every modified Chevy Silverado in the west.

We also particularly liked the optimism of drift car superstar Ryan Tuerck, whose 425kW Ferrari V8- powered Toyota GT4586 ( see what he did there?) is our kind of origami hot rod.

And as if to prove it isn’t just that carmaker’s diminutive sports car that is ripe for Franken- fun modifying, Toyota also showcased a 1491kW V8 Land Cruiser dragster. In short: hooray for SEMA!