Portland, OR - To be honest, we didn't know what to expect at the Lowrider show in Portland. We didn't think of Portland as being a hotbed for Lowriders, or car audio enthusiasts either. Luckily for us, there is usually no correspondence between reality and our ignorance. What we don't know would probably fill up all the world's libraries, but what we do know is a cool car when we see one. Not only did the show have the expected Lowriders, there were plenty of other types of customized vehicles, including of course the first and second place winners of our Trifecta competition.
First place went to Chris Roberts and his center-drive Scion xB. While the rest of us were sleeping Roberts has slowly been putting together one of best cars we've seen all year. This competitor/installer came out of nowhere. Which is a good indication of the type of talent that's out there in the world of car audio. No one may know Roberts yet, but they will when the finals take place at SEMA. Not only did he take first place plus the $500 prize, he also took the plaque for Top Sound Quality.
Second place winner Jojo Pagulayan and his Phoenix Gold-laden Supra squeaked out enough points to qualify for the finals. Third place went to Slim of Seattle Street Customs and his Escalade. Special recognition to him and his team. In our opinion they had the best group of vehicles (including a motorcycle decked out with A/V gear) at the event. Our Best Daily Driver award went to Bill Johnson and his rolling SPL machine, a black Excursion. Johnson competes in dB Drag competitions with his behemoth sound machine and uses the truck on a regular basis (he drove it up the coast from northern California to enter the competition).
Myrtle Beach, Sc - This was the first time we've done a show with Funkmaster Flex. His Custom Car & Bike series is big on the East Coast where Flex is a top radio DJ. And you've probably seen his show on ESPN, Car Wars. It might not have been a war, but there was definitely a battle at the Myrtle Beach show. While donks dominated the scene we had possibly the best group of high-end, highly customized cars in our two years of competition at a single event. There were at least five vehicles that were worthy of being at the SEMA finals.
While Carlos Machuca easily took first place with a rather distinctive Buick Regal (readers of Car Audio will easily recognize the car), and Mike Edens won second with a sleeper car of sorts - everyone was a bit surprised at the level of design and craftsmanship in his Hyundai Tiburon - it was Pete Colello and his HIN winning Toyota Celica and Jeff Greggory's chopped-top Scion tC that drew most of the spectator attention. Then there was Jeremy Barrow with one of the best 350Zs we've ever seen.
The list goes on; Dennis Delphus entered a classic yellow Willys roadster, one of the cleanest and sharpest hot rods on the East coast. It had a minimal audio/video setup and couldn't compete against the other cars with full systems but the overall beauty of the car was almost enough to sway our judges. In the end, the winners were determined by the quality of the audio. Edens' Tiburon scored the necessary extra points with a 130+ dB reading and that was enough to nose out Colello's Celica which had some audio related problems. It goes to show that just a show car isn't enough to get to the finals. On the other hand, just having sound won't get you there either. Matt Roberts' Chevy C1500 earned two more points than the Regal to win Top Sound Quality (achievement enough in our book), but even with an all-time high score of 27 points didn't have enough for an overall top three finish.
Special thanks to our sponsors and competition judges: From Installer Institute, Jason Anderson and Joe Padula, and installer extraordinaire Calvin Thomas of Audio Designs. On the Sound side: Ed Ng and Keith Turner.