Your vehicle is your interface with the public. You are making a social statement with your personal car. You might be enhancing your business presence with staff cars, service or delivery vehicles. Your vehicle is likely to be the first impression you make in a public venue. A car or truck is an expensive resource almost everyone tries to maximize, because it’s understood that you only make one first impression.

Transform Your Ride

Car wraps can completely transform a vehicle into something that’s difficult to recognise as the original machine. This unique set of design tools can allow it to become a mascot that represents your business identity in a uniform way with your company logo or theme, or highlight the original style and shape of the vehicle. Custom car builders, outdoor shops, radio stations, sports teams and audio stores frequently build automotive designs that can use vehicle wraps as an integral part of the concept.

Designer techniques might include printed details that photographically mimic machined metal parts or fasteners, such as around the fuel filler, mirrors or door handles. Other favorites are simulated custom badging and false shadows to simulate scoops, aerodynamic features and exhaust outlets. Photographic highlights can be applied to make it appear as if styling curves have been added to the bodylines, or make the body appear to be composed of materials like carbon fibre or burlap.

It‘s a Team Sport

A vehicle wrap involves a technology-intensive process to go from a concept sketch to the final rolling art. This is a form of large-format printing, of the same type sometimes used to cover buildings in advertisement. The same technology can work wonders for your staff, service and delivery vehicles. The technicians need to be familiar with computers and software for graphics processing, large-format printing specifics and operating related equipment. They need to have the ability to perform long hours of physically demanding work, and a precise attention to detail.

Everything in Its Place

Where the vehicle wrap is performed is important to the success of the team. No matter how talented, they need the right conditions in which to perform their work. That means a climate-controlled environment. The material used to create this rolling artwork needs to be heated to allow it to conform to a vehicle’s curves and irregular shapes. If the temperature is too cold, the wrap cannot succeed. If it’s too hot, it can lose its elastic properties, become distorted during installation or fail to adhere. Due to the physical nature of the work, you want your crew to be comfortable. A team that can operate in comfort will be able to concentrate better and deliver a better result. The installation facility needs to have a lot of room for the team to work in for the best results.

Choices, Choices

You don’t have to own a catering truck or a lumberyard to take advantage of the benefits of a car wrap. There are lots of applications that are logical alternatives when it comes to customizing your car. To begin with, the vinyl material that is used for a car wrap will serve to protect the car’s original paint, and can be removed later if you want without harming the paint. The cost is highly competitive compared to custom paint, and the choices are nearly endless. The makers of these car wrap materials now offer versions that look like factory paint in solid colours, so it’s possible to change the original color of the car completely. Hoods, wings, ground effects and other components can be wrapped in material that duplicates the appearance of carbon fibre, brushed metal, polished stone, color-changing paint, chrome and just about anything else you can imagine.

Vehicle wrapping technology has matured over a period of decades into a fully developed process of vehicle customisation and maintenance. Municipal buses and large retail chains have been depending on this technology for a long time. Even major automakers are using it now to provide an exciting, high-tech finish to some of the products offered by their high-performance divisions. Mercedes, Nissan, Infiniti, Subaru, Ford and others have been wrapping special edition cars for several years now. Your flamed lightning skull paint job may finally come true, and it won’t have to cost a year’s pay if you use a wrap. Stop in sometime and prepare to be astonished.