By: Jon Maib
The number of custom vehicles found at SEMA is overwhelming. We spent 3 full days scouring the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and still didn't get a chance to see all of them. This year, the vehicle of choice seemed to be the Jeep JKU 4 door Wrangler as almost every booth was sporting a customized JK. In fact, SEMA named the Jeep Wrangler as the "Hottest SUV" at the show. We could show you thousands of pictures of the Wrangler, but those aren't necessarily the rigs that stuck out to us.

By far our favorite rig was this 1951 Power Wagon displayed in Ramsey's booth. This truck has a custom fabbed chassis and is sporting a 12-valve Cummins turbodiesel. Power is then routed through a NV4500 transmission and an Atlas transfer case. From there it's split to a rear ARB-locked 14-bolt axle and a front custom ARB-locked Dana 60 axle.

If we were forced to drive a minivan, we would have to pick the Toyota Ultimate Utility Vehicle (or UUV). It's basically a Sienna body on a Tacoma truck chassis. Toyota added some black wheels, off-road tires, a black grille, and restyled the fenders for this minivan. They then added a matte black paint job, tinted headlights, auxiliary lights, and some beefy bumpers.

Fab Four originally made the Legends Jeep to display what they could do. After much chatter about a non usable 4x4, they decided to build the Legends 2.Woah to showcase a usable offroad vehicle. Starting its life out as a '14 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, it now sports a pair of heavy duty Dynatrac ProRock 80 axles, over-the-top fenders, 50-inch-tall tires, and a chopped roof. Fab Four gave the 2.Woah a Mohawk for no practical purpose other than to get attention. (it apparently works)

Legends

Legends 2.Woah

The Hauk Steampunk Willys stopped crowds. This 1947 Willys has a 128-inch wheelbase and the extra long hood was made from two Willys hoods. Underneath is a 12-valve Cummins turbodiesel that is said to generate 700 hp and 1,400 lb-ft of torque. Power is routed through a TH 400 trans to an NP205 T-case, where it then splits out to an Auburn-locked Dana 60 front axle and an Auburn-locked 14-bolt rear axle. The suspension includes 14-inch-travel ORI air shocks. While this Willys is more a work of art than an off-road wonder, the attention to details was amazing.

Wild Boar brought their HellHog. This custom built six-wheel-drive Jeep JK Wrangler has been given the heart of a Hellcat with matching transmission. This show rig is the first Hellcat-powered Jeep Wrangler to actually run and makes for a great marketing tool for Wild Boar. The do have plans to eventually offer as a 754 HP supercharged Hemi Jeep JK Wrangler 4x4 that you can buy! This was built in cooperation with Dakota Customs who got the engine transplanted. The HellHog has a D44 up front, and the rear D44 works in concert with a Ford 9-inch pass-through axle with custom drive shafts and 4:10 gears. (psst, notice the A-Team looking paint job???)

The 1952 LSX Willys was on display and honestly, if you haven't watched a video of the LSX Willys, you are obviously living under a rock. This Jeep has seen more Youtube time than Justin Bieber. It is comforting to see that he finally put a cage in it though because seeing this Jeep 3 wheeling while blowing out Corvettes in a race is pretty gutsy with no cage.

Starwood Motors had their Jeep JK Wrangler Unlimited with a 6.4L HEMI called "Ruf Nek" on display at the KMC Wheels booth. While we hate to see this done to a perfectly good JK, some of the work that went into display Jeep was pretty cool. While we hate bed liner used on the exterior of vehicles, the rusted paint job on this Jeep was well done. It really was the little details on this Jeep that caught our attention, like the Edison lights for headlights protected by some rebar and the vintage looking airplane seats padded with dark leather. While not practical for off-road, still a very cool looking design.

ICON had their custom built FJ44 onsite. These hand built Landcruisers are the perfect marriage of classic design meets modern performance. ICON makes these in an extremely limited production Landcruisers here in the states and gives many options to what goes into these. One of these will set you back around $180,000, so spend wisely.

This is such a small chunk of the interesting/cool rigs that we saw at the show. For more vehicle pictures, check out our SEMA gallery.

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