For car lovers, SEMA is a bit like the holiday season a month early. The SEMA Santa is bringing the goods from Mopar and the best design minds at Chrysler Group, including a  556-horsepower Dodge Challenger, a Jeep® Wrangler that melds into a mobile campsite, a luxury Dodge Ram 1500 and a seriously (very seriously) rugged Jeep Wrangler with 40-inch tires. 

The four vehicles share tricked out courtesy of Mopar, will all appear in Las Vegas next month.
“The aftermarket is not an after-thought in our design studio,” said Ralph Gilles, President and CEO-Dodge Car Brand and Senior Vice President - Product Design, Chrysler Group LLC. “Our vehicles are designed and built by the same passionate automotive enthusiasts within our company who are designing and engineering new Mopar parts and accessories for vehicles in our product pipeline.”
 

The SEMA lineup starts with the Mopar Dodge Challenger 1320 (as seen above), named for the 1,320 feet on a quarter-mile drag strip. The SEMA street legal bound design draws inspiration from vintage Mopar muscle with updated technology in the form of Mopar’s 426 cubic inch, all-aluminum, HEMI® V-8 crate engine. The 556 horsepower mill is equipped with unique Mopar-designed valve covers and a dress-up kit.  It also includes a six-speed manual transmission and a custom Dynatrac rear housing with Mopar Dana 60 internals and a selectable, ARB locking differential.

Mopar police wheels, widened in the rear, and Nitto street-legal drag radials to bring extra grip at launch to handle its 540 lb.-ft. of torque. A non-metallic yellow paint, known as Acidic Hue, is offset with matte black graphics in a wicked combo. 
 

The Mopar Dodge Ram Bianco is layered in several coats of Arctic Ice pearl paint, but this ride anything but vanilla. The 1500 Sport with a 5.7-liter HEMI V-8 is plenty upscale inside and out. The mods include a classic hard tonneau and a truck bed that features (get this) a Mopar bed rug - a plush, yet washable carpet. On the outside, a Mopar body kit and modified Mopar fender flares add to the sophistication. A Ground Force lowering kit not only lowers the Ram, but also improves ride and handling.

Inside, there’s more than a touch of class with white and black Katzkin leather seats and matching door trim, along with piano black and arctic ice accents add to the luxurious theme. A Kicker audio system consisting of an audio amplifier, a powerful subwoofer and upgraded speakers will let everyone know this Ram approach-eth.

For Jeep, class meets the elements.  The Mopar design team started with a canvas in the shape of a 2009 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon and converted it into a mobile camp site. They freed up cargo space by replacing rear seats with a flat rubberized utility floor. Atop is a cargo rack is a new ARB two-person Simpson II rooftop-mounted tent and touring awning – great for tailgating in the desert.  

American Expedition Vehicles’ (AEV) helps off-roaders with an Nth Degree, 3-inch suspension lift and a Full Traction rear sway bar, which enables easy storage of 35-inch tires mounted on 17-inch steel Mopar winter/off-road wheels under the Jeep.

An AEV Jeep Wrangler heat-reduction hood and snorkel kit is fitted to the vehicle so the Jeep Wrangler Overland is prepped for desert duty, while Mopar windshield-mounted off-road lights and Daystar bumper-mounted lights provide additional lighting for nighttime and off-road driving.
 

Finally, the Jeep Wrangler “Lower Forty” (as in 40-inch x 13.5-inch tires) mounted on Mopar’s 20-inch forged aluminum wheels, may just steal the show in this humble blogger’s view.

Mopar added these mean wheels and tires to a stock, two-door Jeep Wrangler Rubicon without a suspension lift.  That ground clearance required extra engineering to maintain the vehicle’s center of gravity.  The engineering team removed large amounts of body metal to make room 40-inch rollers, while three inches are chopped from the windshield frame and a 10-degree rake were added.

The custom front and rear fender flares are a full inch wider and are located 4 inches higher than a stock Jeep Wrangler. A new one-piece carbon-fiber hood with a Jeep CJ-like power dome and an all-new drop-down tailgate stamped with the “Jeep” logo were added to complete the exterior design.

On the interior, an all-new roll cage is tightly integrated into the body tub and tied directly into the frame rails. The spare tire was relocated to the cargo floor and a custom cargo rack, supplied by Poly Performance, holds extra gear. And just to make sure you can spot this Wrangler, it’s finished with a coat of Red Eye No. 3 paint - a custom color developed by Mopar.

The Jeep “Lower Forty” features an all-new 5.7-liter HEMI® V-8 engine and a Getrag 238 six-speed manual transmission.