For those of you that may not know, Hot Import Nights (HIN) is an automotive lifestyle event that tours the country. The HIN Nightshift event takes place from 4pm – 11pm and includes a huge car show, music performances, drift demos, Freestyle MotoX, vendors, beautiful models and much more.

Did I mention the beautiful models?

Anyways, back on topic, we somehow managed to all pile into the cars and made the four hour trip to Concord. Luckily, Shane, our vendor relations guy here, knew of some “back roads” that we used as a shortcut during rush hour, so we missed all of the Charlotte traffic and got to the event much sooner than expected. Of course we drove the speed limit the entire way and slowed down through each banked turn, like any responsible driver should.

We pulled up to the Cabarrus Arena casually late at 5:15 or so, and the place was already packed. From the highway we could see the MotoX guys flying through the air surrounded by hundreds of cars and thousands of people. Within the first five steps my shirt is drenched in sweat. The temperature was pushing 100 degrees and we were not stoked to say the least…but at least sunset was only a few hours away. Thanks to Brent from American Tire (thanks for the free tickets man!) we got in as vendors and were free to do whatever we wanted. Well, not really, but it’s a nice thought.

Once inside we walked around for a few hours checking out the cars and vendor booths. The model tent seemed to be the place to be, which is a given. One model that really stood out to me was Jessica Barton. For those of you that don’t know, she’s a smoking hot blonde with a great personality and a 9 second Supra. What more could you ask for? I introduced myself and we spoke about some top secret National Speed business (sorry, I can’t release any information about the convo). Of course I had to snap a picture with her! And for anyone that’s interested, here’s a link to her car, driven by her, down the track.

This was my first HIN experience and I’ve always been skeptical about the events, but I had a great time checking out the show cars and badass women. Some of the cars had insane amounts of time and money poured into them. A few cars that really stood out was the 700+hp Civic and an 800+hp Lexus, both which were also all-out show cars. There was also a 1000+hp 240sx that was very impressive, and a V8 twin-turbo Lexus SC that was at the NOS energy drink tent (tuned on MoTec, might I add).

I didn’t get to watch much of the drifting, but the few minutes that I saw were quite entertaining. It was nice to see some of the locals out there getting sideways. A few of the drifters are members on a forum that we sponsor (ImportsNC.com) and they put on a helluva show. Speaking of ImportsNC, they had a huge presence at the show, sporting their own tent and of course the beautiful Team RPM models. National Speed hosted an ImportsNc meet/dyno day not too long ago and it was nice to see some familiar faces. Click here for pictures and information about that event!

I’ll try to sum up the rest of the day in this paragraph. We left the event, sat at Hooters for about an hour eating and drinking responsibly, and then realized we had no place to stay. Our group got split up and I ended up sleeping on the comfortable, concrete floor of a hotel. I don’t think I fell asleep until approximately 4am thanks to the energy drinks, and if I’m not mistaken, Taylor, one of our tuners, was up until sunrise. The next morning came way too soon, and we piled into Taylor’s Civic and headed home. I think I had a panic attack for the last two hours of the trip due to the bumble bee sound of Taylor’s Honda and his amazing driving skills, but we made it home safely and it was all well worth the drive.