Would You Let A.I. Build Your Dream Car?

Artificial intelligence with an “enthusiast mindset”

HAPPY RACE DAY! especially to the GT-R Festival coming to Texas this weekend.

It’s an annual event in Australia, and the Aussies are finally bringing their “Gee-Dee-Arr” drag racing circus to the states. I’ll be there! Come say hi!

In today’s email:

• V8 Manual Wagon: Catnip for car nerds

• “I F***in’ Hate This Car”: The mechanic roasting SEMA builds

• AI Meets the Aftermarket: Is MotorMia the future of e-commerce?

👇 Read on for more:

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ONE OF THE MOST head-turning booths at SEMA belonged to Strickland Motor Co. and its Speedwagon concept out of Seattle, Washington.

Strickland showed a full-size foam model that it hopes to bring to production in the future. When it’s ready, the Speedwagon will be a 500-horsepower wagon with a manual transmission and unique body styling on a BMW E46 chassis.

Strickland representatives eventually started calling out “V8 manual wagon!” to passersby. And with shocking regularity, they stopped. Manual wagons are an endangered species today, and Strickland hopes to keep the dream alive.

Follow them on Instagram to watch the process, and check out our video here.

Quick Hitters:

• Last week we had a semi-viral video about a sweet SEMA drift car with some serious muscle.

• A few days later it got ripped to pieces by William Chang, a California mechanic with 1.5 million followers.

• The builder of the drift car was a good sport, and understandably so. He got off easy compared with Chang’s criticism of a Lambo-powered Miata.

• Notably absent from SEMA? The Mustang widebody kit from YouTuber T.J. Hunt. Now we know why — Ford issued a cease and desist.

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Feature Article

This A.I. Website Wants to Upgrade Your Car

IMAGINE TYPING in your car and finding the perfect mods in seconds. That’s the idea behind MotorMia, a new website that made its SEMA debut last week. It’s free to use and has 250,000 users. The catch? It’s artificial intelligence.

AI is seemingly everywhere these days. But it hasn’t made a major impact in the aftermarket yet. That could change very soon. “We want to delight,” MotorMia founder Isaac Bunick told me. “And the early adopters are seeing it.”