America's Next Top Car Blogger: Your Semi-Finalists And What's Next

We've whittled more than 300 contestants for the $10,000 contract to be America's Next Top Car Blogger down to these 20 champion semi-finalists for you, our beloved commentariat, to choose from this weekend. Below, the names and "secret" topic.

Here are the 20 semi-finalists, in alphabetical order by first name (When I was a kid I was always last because of my last name so I thought I'd switch it up because if I were in this list I'd be, like, 8th from last):

Corey Ireland
Csaba Daradics
Derek Mead
Eggwich McSpencer
Garrick Jannene
Kieran Chaudhry
Luis Quinteros
Marty Densch
M. Tyler Rose
Niek Smit
Optixtruf
Phil Lacefield Jr.
Ron Schunck
Scott Ith
Terry Otsubo
Thewantslip
Toby Fray
Tom Joslin
Travis Okulski
Vinny Minchillo

Congratulations to them all and congratulations to everyone who entered. You're all winners in our book.

Now, here's what happens next. These writers will all have until midnight EST tonight (hey, we all got to work on deadlines, so don't whine about work) to email tips-at-jalopnik-dot-com (subject line: "ANTCB Semi-Finalist") a 250-300 word post (as a text file) — complete with headline, 40 word lede (You don't have to include that in the word count), images and/or YouTube videos — on the following topic:

Some of you might remember the old school Jalopnik masthead that said "Jalopnik loves cars. Secret cars, concept cars, flying cars, vintage cars, tricked-out cars, red cars, black cars, blonde cars – sometimes, cars just because of the curve of a hood." It's clear, from the results of this contest and from the fact it's first on the list, that car guys love "secret cars." Heck, one of Murilee's favorite topics were cars found on a secluded street that was so secret even rust had forgotten about it.

So that's our topic. Write us a post about a "secret car" — something we haven't seen here on Jalopnik yet.

Good examples would include secret car dealerships, secret car graveyards, secret Mustangs, secret Orbitrons, lost jet-powered cars, secret driverless cars, secret car drivers, secret carmaker IPO presentations, secret safety cars, secret chase cars, secret automaker connections to organized crime, secret freeway signs, and many more. Just make sure it's a story of a secret car we haven't seen yet on Jalopnik.

So there you go. Now hop to it semi-finalists, you're already wasting time! The rest of you? Come back tomorrow and Sunday at 10:00 AM EST to see a new batch of ten semi-finalist posts go up every hour on the hour. Then, Sunday night, voting begins to find our two finalists who'll duke it out the next weekend to see which one becomes America's Next Top Car Blogger!