The SEMA International Auto Salon has proven to be a pretty accurate barometer of where the industry niche, Sport Compact racing, is going, and it appears that if it’s going anywhere, it’s away from drag racing.

This once-important industry mini-convention came to life three years ago with an impressive showing at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  The following year it moved cross country to smaller digs in Atlantic City.  This year it moved to the Fort Washington Expo Center, a warehouse-like venue 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia. 

The SEMA International Auto Salon has proven to be a pretty accurate barometer of where the industry niche, Sport Compact racing, is going, and it appears that if it’s going anywhere, it’s away from drag racing.

This once-important industry mini-convention came to life three years ago with an impressive showing at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  The following year it moved cross country to smaller digs in Atlantic City.  This year it moved to the Fort Washington Expo Center, a warehouse-like venue 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia. 

Show participants indicated that this might have been the last year for the Auto Salon, with SEMA officials hinting that it could be rolled into another SEMA event, or might even become a part of the NHRA Sport Compact Series, which itself appears to be struggling for a wider audience and acceptance.

Aftermarket firms that were once wildly enthusiastic about sport compact activities are now seeing budget cuts as parts sales for many have flattened and even declined.

In some respects the Sport Compact niche has mirrored the short-lived craze of Drifting, which has already drifted from the consciousness of many after an initial flurry of media coverage and support.

We’re not suggesting that the NHRA Sport Compact Series won’t survive, but clearly, the bright future once predicted by management hasn’t come to pass.  A few events in selected locations continue to by artistically and financially successful, while others are highlighted by a lot of empty aluminum seats disguised as paying spectators.  The number of professional entries also appears to be dwindling, and periodic appearances in POWERade Series events hasn’t worked to enhance these cars popularity because an increasing number of competitors regularly decline invitations to participate.

 

 

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As the NOPI series has proven, participants in Sport Compact events are as far removed, emotionally, from the average fan of POWERade racing as is the fan of neighborhood T-ball games from the guy holding first base side tickets to the World Series.

Sport Compact affairs are lifestyle events, something the NHRA has only recently, and seemingly reluctantly, come to grips with.  We are making no judgments, but merely an observation when we suggest that in order to appeal to this apparently shrinking audience one must have the ability to get inside the participant’s heads.  When a significant number of those participants are tattooed, body-pierced young men and women sporting hair in every color of the rainbow, whose musical tastes run to bands with names unknown by few over the age of 25, it helps if the officials running the show have some way of connecting.  By and large the NHRA can’t connect with these young people, a group who appear to have little use or patience for officialdom of any sort.  They’re not necessarily rebellious, it’s just that they have so little in common with individuals wearing corporate attire who lamely try to ape their language choices that they have as much chance of connecting as would Dick Cheney with Pink.

The NHRA would like the Sport Compact Series to be about pure drag racing, but the participants and fans are as likely to be enthused by a thumping stereo competition and/or bikini contest than they are by a front wheel drive Chevrolet smoking the “wrong” tires.

 

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If you have any doubts about this lack of connection between the NHRA and Sport Compact audience, look no further than Shaun Carlson, who came over from that series to wheel Don Schumacher’s red Stratus in POWERade Pro Stock.  A likable young man with a bright personality, Carlson’s appearance – his dyed cornflower yellow locks are offset by various piercings dotting his visage (how does he get that helmet over them?) – has produced more than a few raised eyebrows – and often overheard derogatory comments from some within the NHRA family.  Most have emanated from individuals who don’t appear to have ever interacted with him.

If the Sport Compact Series is to survive management had better gets its collective act together.  A good place to start would be to find executives who can not just connect with the audience, but are a part of it themselves.  In some parts of the corporate world appearance is tantamount to success.  A Brooks Bros. suit is likely to get one further up the corporate ladder than will baggy Fubu jeans, dyed hair and a spike through an eyebrow, but in this case the latter will go much further than the former.

The problem will come from NHRA management, which has about as much chance of relating to an executive who looks like that as they would to a Top Fuel entrant from Venus.  If you can’t emotionally connect, you’ll never understand who and what your core audience is all about.

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