This year’s Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show certainly felt quieter than usual. With many of the familiar pandemic-era struggles persisting and dampening the usual exuberance, the show had about 1,400 exhibitors this year, down from as many as 2,100 in previous years. Attendance seemed similarly sparse. One thing this year’s show wasn’t short on? Trucks.
A lot has happened since the last in-person SEMA show in 2019, including newly popular modes of family travel, a surge in motorsports interest, and the debuts of the first production EV pickups. Accordingly, what emerged at SEMA this year was an array of fresh approaches to the old pickup as the aftermarket trains its focus on overlanders, campers and a new breed of rugged EV haulers.
We walked the show to take stock of the top current and upcoming trends in the truck sector, and here’s what stood out.
Extreme Glamping
The overlanding craze has been a fixture at SEMA since at least 2016, but this year’s show dove deeper than ever into this hot trend. But between the pandemic-fueled acceleration in camping and Rivian launching its R1T pickup with an entire optional built-in kitchen, truck outfitters are now scrambling to outdo each other in take-it-all-with-you roadtrip opulence.
Truck-bed setups seen at the show included outdoor air conditioning, home-theater-grade a/v, elaborately-integrated holders for bikes and gear, and entire functioning chefs’ kitchens complete with cooktops, refrigeration, ice-makers, and microwaves. One F-150 Hybrid in the Ford booth built by Hypertech even leveraged the truck’s optional 7.2Kw onboard generator to power a plumbed washer-and-dryer combo.
Typically, these home-away-from-home setups are highly configurable, with components packed into smooth-rolling slide-outs and adjustable bed racks that make optimal use of space, while playing nice with both vehicle features and other accessory components in the manufacturer’s line. The adjustable-height rack displayed in Mopar’s booth, for example, was built to clear the “RamBox,” the neat bedwall-integrated locking toolboxes that are a favorite option on Ram pickups.
Nostalgia Meets New
Throwback paint schemes are showing up on a lot of brand-new trucks this year, as well as entire tribute-truck builds, adding up to a retro-styling trend that doesn’t take itself too seriously. One standout here was Toyota’s TacoZilla, a Tacoma built as an homage to the classic compact Dolphin motorhomes of the 1970s and 1980s, complete with a charming wood-paneled interior.
Another notable mention was a beautiful slammed Ford Maverick built by Tucci Hot Rods, whose lowered stance, aggressive rear wing, and white steel wheels recalled California mini-truckin’ culture of the late 1980s. That might seem a distant trend at first blush but recall that hip-hop duo L’Trimm’s 1988 ode to mini-trucks, Cars That Go Boom, went viral on TikTok in 2020, mostly thanks people too young to remember the eighties. Those are the people Ford hopes will buy the Maverick, and customizers hope will buy their accessories.
Meanwhile, the Reese’s-Pieces-hued 80s livery popped in a booth shared by a Smittybilt Gladiator and a 4 Wheel Parts Tacoma. Other retro paint schemes referenced a specific motorsports heritage, like Ford’s just-released Bronco DR (Desert Runner), decked out in the colors of its Baja-1000-winning forebears.
Baja Beasts
The Bronco DR was hardly an outlier. Off-road desert racing is a formerly niche interest that’s exploded in recent years. Manufacturers were vying to highlight their dune-busting chops with a variety of trophy-truck builds and concepts that even included a handful of intriguing electrics.
The 650-hp “Chevy Beast” concept, based on a modified Silverado chassis equipped with a long-travel suspension and supercharged LT4 crate engine, hunkered menacingly at the leading edge of the manufacturer’s popular booth, impossible to miss.
A couple of halls away, sister brand GMC featured its Chip Ganassi Racing Hummer EV.R that will be running in the all-electric Extreme E Series starting in April. Even manufacturers competing in smaller-scale events were eager to feature their factory entries with the dust still sticking to them, like Nissan’s NISMO-equipped Frontier pickup campaigned in the last Rebelle Rally by Lynn Woodward and Sedona Blinson.
For its part, SEMA hosted a “Baja 1000 Experience” interactive exhibit, featuring historic footage, driver autograph sessions, and a hall-of-fame of notable race trucks from the event’s past and present. It’s safe to say that there’s been no previous SEMA show featuring this many bed-mounted full-size spares, and desert-racing trucks are a trend that will likely evolve as Baja-inspired performance and dress-up bits proliferate in parts and accessories catalogs.
Hardworking LEDs
The advent of consumer LEDs has spurred big changes in automotive lighting, and SEMA’s truck hall is where the latest illumination products often get their debut. Dancing light signatures for LED headlights formed a distracting trend this year, but many of the new vehicle-integrated LED advancements pack in quite a bit more utility.
With its new LightShield Pro, for example, AVS (Auto Ventshade) takes the humble bug deflector, a staple piece of truck kit, and adds an inlaid LED strip that’s integrated into the vehicle’s electronics, enabling it to sit static as a set of marker lights or pulse directionally when turn signals are activated.
LEDs for classic trucks keep getting better as well. New this year, Morimoto’s “period-correct LEDs” banish the harsh white light and clear lenses of first-gen LED sealed-beams for a nostalgic warm glow and faceted polycarbonate lens. Offered in classic sealed-beam sizes like 7”-inch round and 5 x 7-inch rectangle, these headlights offer the improved illumination of LEDs but in a casing that’s virtually indistinguishable from vintage glass.
Electrification
This still felt more like a nascent future trend than an established presence at this year’s show, the somewhat sparse “SEMA Electrified” section notwithstanding. But with the wealth of high-profile EV pickups being rolled out by the automakers this year, electricity is certainly in the air, and we know the aftermarket won’t be far behind.
Indeed, GMC’s booth was packed exclusively with variants of its new Hummer EV, and Ford’s F-150 Lightning EV pickup was front and center in their section. But classic rides generally steal the show at SEMA, and sure enough, a gorgeously-restyled electric 1978 F-100 ended up being the star of Ford’s booth.
Dubbed the “Eluminator,” the classic truck is running a version of Ford’s new EV crate powertrain, a pair of electric motors putting out a combined 480 horsepower and 634 pound-feet of torque. Old-Ford-friendly EV propulsion will likely be a game-changer for the restoration industry, and we’re expecting to see Eluminators in both cars and trucks at next year’s show.
Electric power in motorsports was another emerging theme this year, and not just in that Ganassi-built Hummer. EV innovator Hypercraft partnered with off-road race truck chassis builder Geiser Brothers to produce a 1,600-hp electric trophy-truck prototype intended to compete on the desert race circuit against conventionally-fueled rivals.
Although the truck won’t make its production debut until February 2022 and no race schedule for it has been formally announced, efforts like this one offer an intriguing glimpse into a potential EV-powered motorsports future.
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