Import Market bubble burst?
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Has the sport compact tuning market bubble burst?
By RICHARD S. CHANG
AutoWeek | Published 04/25/06, 8:58 am et
Has the import scene lost steam? That’s what was on our minds as we headed to Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, for the SEMA International Auto Salon last month.
Just three years ago the Auto Salon, SEMA’s annual consumer and trade show for the sport compact segment, was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center next to the Staples Center, where the Lakers (and Clippers) are entertaining movie stars in the NBA playoffs. Two years ago it moved to Atlantic City. It remained there last year, though more in spirit than in size. The Fort Washington Expo Center is the least glamorous venue yet. Thirty minutes down the interstate from Philadelphia, it looks more like an industrial park. Inside, electrical sockets were exposed. The roof leaked. “Grassroots,” Peter MacGillivray, vice president of marketing for SEMA, called it. On the plus side, parking was free.
This raised questions about the health of the sport compact segment as well as the future of the Auto Salon. All over the show there were rumblings of its pending demise. “There are a lot of things on the table right now,” MacGillivray said the following week. “There are a lot of things being discussed. But my boss has challenged me with coming up with outrageous and crazy ideas.”
For example, there is talk of rolling it into another SEMA event—the SEMA Spring Expo—or collaborating with the NHRA Sport Compact Series. “We’ve discussed things like that and everything in between,” MacGillivray continued. “Even to have a similar show to what we had this year—what about having it in Toronto? Bringing it to a different market altogether.”
If the options seem wide open, that’s because the sport compact market has gone through a recent shakeup. Companies have filtered out. Budgets have been trimmed. In other words, the market has corrected. Is it losing steam? Maybe. But more than that, it seems to have fractured into many different scenes. This year’s smaller “grassroots” Auto Salon revealed how the new landscape might take shape.
Drag cars—once the superstars of SEMA events—occupied a limited space inside the Expo Center and didn’t include the usual clutch of pro champions. Once upon a time sport compact enthusiasts wanted only to go faster—you know, live life a quarter-mile at a time. These days consumers seem to be less interested in full-bore engine performance, or less impressed by it, anyway.
There were as many Scions—a brand built on style over speed—as Subaru WRXs and Mitsubishi Evos. In the Falken Tires booth an Infiniti M45 and Lexus GS showed off yet another recent trend from Japan. Nope, not drifting. It’s VIP style (pronounced “bippu style”). If anything, variety was the message at the show. Maybe the most glaring wrinkle was how few Hondas there were. The brand synonymous with the sport compact aftermarket was limited to a few exhibitor booths.
Another sign of the times: Across the hall from the official Auto Salon stage, which had a full schedule of guest speakers, import models and featured show cars, radio-DJ-turned-Ford-shill FunkMaster Flex held court under a small E-Z Up, blasting hip-hop and offering showgoers a chance to win a Flex-customized vehicle—a Ford F-150 truck.
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Originally Posted by nightracer
