Three of the vehicles engineered by GM Performance Division for this year's runs at Bonneville will be on display at SEMA from Nov. 1-4, including the 2006 Chevrolet So-Cal HHR, Chevrolet California Street Rods Student Project Cobalt SS and the record-setting Ecotec Lakester.

No vehicle expresses the ingenuity and unbridled innovation of hot rodding more forcefully than the belly tank lakester. Conceived by hot rodders in the late '40s to minimize aerodynamic drag and fashioned from war surplus auxiliary fuel tanks formerly mounted on the bellies of military aircraft, these open-wheeled inventions set records on the dry lakebeds of Southern California and on the gliste...

Moderating the Rods