Thoughts on Wrapping a Car instead of painting it
 

Hello:

I am planning for the outside colors and graphics of the Grand Sport Corvette I'm building and I wanted to bounce some questions/ideas off you all to get your thoughts on this.

Many of you have seen it already, but I will post one of the rendering pictures of the car so for those who haven't it hopefully will give you something to visualize.

Regarding coloring my car, by Painting it, wrapping it or both, since I am going to drive this car (with any luck at all) quite a bit, on and off the road and area tracks, I'm thinking of going ahead and wrapping the car. Here are the reasons why: (Pro's)

1) Faster

2) Less Expensive (2-3k)

3) Durable

4) Easy to repair if you bugger up on single piece.

5) Easier to change designs/colors if you wanted to.

6) Don't have to worry about matching paint and fixing paint

7) Good enough for Race Cars (Which most of our Cars are types of Race cars, unless the owner just doesn't drive them how they are built to be driven) become Good enough for these Cars.

8) From the people who have used them for quite a while, they mention that "IF you do indeed have a nice paint job on your car, a wrap will do wonders for keeping the shine and finish of the paint underneath in good shape".

Now for the Con's I have thought about so far.

1) Doesn't look as nice as a painted car? (From what I'm told the finish on a wrap if done correctly looks great up to about 3-5 feet away, then you can tell it is not paint.)

2) Hurts the value of the car? (Maybe, if you didn't take the time to put a $15k Paint job on it.) I don't know about this one.

3) Feel free to add anything else you can think of.

I hope some of you will consider taking the time to give this some thought. As a Auto-X, Pro-Touring, Track/Street car, I just haven't seen this question really come up before.

Thanks in advance,

Sincerely,

Ty O'Neal

I'm going to try and get some additional information on some other sites. whatever comes up that is interesting, I'll bring over here for you all to consider.

Thanks again.

Personally, I like some of the new wraps that people are doing. Not a bad idea for durability and ease of repair either. From a resale standpoint, I do not think that this would be helpful. If resale and durability are your goals paining the car blue, then doing all of the orange and graphics in a wrap would be a great compromise. The orange wrap material would protect the front and lower rockers and all of the graphics would be easily removed if needed. If you ever want to sell the car just remove all of the material and you have a nice blue Corvette.

A wrapped car will look good until you open the door, hood, or trunk. Then it will look like caca since none of your jambs will be done.

I really like the wraps personally. If they're good enough for Lambos and Porsches (I've seen them and they look damn good when done right by a pro) then why not on our cars? I'm strongly considering it in the near to mid term as well.

Go for it. That rendering is killer.

I have a 15" cube van, 1 ton van, and 16' enclosed trailer that are all wrapped. After 6+ years (parked outside with no cover in Oregon) I'd have to say without a doubt it holds up on par with paint. I'm assuming replacement will be much less also. Originally the cost for all 3 units was $7K.

Honda did their F1 cars in a vinyl wrap one year. The vinyl definitely held up better than their engines. :D

Put a decent paint job on it (driver quality) or wrap it. If it comes down to resale latr you could always freshen it up then. I wouldn't do just a partial wrap, you will still see it in the pain5 after you remove it. (if it's left on for any long period).

Wrapping works fine and most people can't tell a good quality wrap from paint from a foot away. Mothers also has a cleaning compound that works really well on wraps - at the Goodguys show in Ft. Worth they actually polished the wrap when they did the OLC. After being wrapped for a year there was absolutely no difference in the paint if you looked where it was and wasn't wrapped - except that the paint had some swirl marks from cleaning where it wasn't wrapped.

So when you remove the wrap material it does not leave any glue residue on the paint? I see decals on trailers and trucks that have been removed and the ghost image of the decal is still clearly visible. Is a vinyl decal different from a wrap material?

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66SuperSport:

Thanks for the input. After visiting with some of the suppliers locally, I think a good high quality wrap would be really nice. Some of the lessor quality wraps I don't think should be used.

I wondering "IF" I were to ever sell the car in the future if having it wrapped would really make any difference in the value. The car is made to be driven, and I would think that any future buyer wouldn't necessarily see this as a bad thing as it would also allow them to make any kind of change they wanted for very little money to, "Make it theirs".

I am definitely going to go with one if for no other reason I have never tried one, and if it turns out to be a crap idea at least people wouldn't make the same mistake as I.

Thanks again for posting, will see if this works out well or not. Keep you fingers crossed.

Thanks,

Ty

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John:

Interesting point. I'll give this some thought and see if I can come up with a way of de-emphasizing this issue.

I appreciate you bringing this up, I have not even thought of this.

Thanks,

Ty O'Neal