A couple weeks ago we went down to sunny Stuart, FL to attend Detail Fest put on by our friends at Autogeek.net and held at their headquarters. This was the 7th year for the event and there was definitely a lot going on. I think this video montage will give you a feel for what I’m talking about.

In addition to a car show with a couple hundred cars in attendance, Autogeek had many of their suppliers on hand and they were all doing product demos. Mike Phillips, Autogeek’s surface enhancement guru, was holding mini hands-on workshops and Autogeek founder, Bob McKee, was giving tours of the facility. They have about 35,000 square feet of warehouse space, and it is packed to the roof with more detailing products than I’ve ever seen in one place.

I was there as a guest and wasn’t shooting, so I actually got to just enjoy the show as an attendee for a change. As you might expect, every car there was detailed to the max; a few of which had actually been done by Mike Phillips himself. Some of my favs were a very rare ’55 BMW 507 roadster, one of the new Audi R8 mid-engine screamers, and a really nice factory triple-yellow ’67 Olds 442 convertible. A couple of my TV compatriots, Matt & Bruno from Truck Universe were also there.

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A few months ago, the lovely and talented Sheila, our VP of Sales, brought to my attention an event in Indy called, Slamology, based on something she’d seen in SEMA News. My first reaction was, “Have you lost your mind?”, but then I got to thinking. I always profess that this is an extremely broad hobby and everybody gets to play. The event was basically in our backyard, and it was a category we hadn’t really covered in any great depth before. Maybe it was time I put my money where my mouth is.

We drove up to Indy the night before thru some pretty heavy thunderstorms, but it had cleared off by the time we got there and we got to witness one of the hallmarks of this culture; draggin’. That’s not drag racing. It’s draggin’, as in dropping the vehicle’s body on the ground and draggin’ it down the street. Those sparks you see are created by metal-on-pavement, and it’s quite a crowd pleaser.

Altho the weekend weather forecast had been pretty favorable, when I pulled back the curtain in my hotel room at about 6:30 Saturday morning, I was greeted by thick gray clouds and steady rainfall that looked like it had been going on for some time. Never a good sign.

Slamology is in its 8th year, and it’s held at the Marion County fairgrounds. Normally this would be a good thing, but I had visions of these low-down machines trying to negotiate a muddy show field or worse yet, nothing at the show field!

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