Wesley Walls

So at the risk of ghettoing up an otherwise sophisticated car, I'm curious if anyone has vinyl wrapped their roof, side skirt blades, side mirrors or rear spoiler in black (or other finishes). I have a Glacier White Metallic S4, and to me, white has always worked well for satin (or glossy) finish black ancillary exterior bits, like side mirrors, rear spoilers, etc.

Honestly, I like the "Black Optics" A4 treatment better than the S4 as it comes with the black side skirt blades, spoiler and side mirrors (whereas the S4 comes only with black window trim and front grill) - so I was thinking about how I could "covert" the S4 to the A4 Black Optics. Thoughts? Does this work well? Cost? Just curious if anyone else has considered and/or done this work. I'm most curious if anyone's done this to their roof.

mplsbrian

This goes back a year ago, but I remember a guy paid a shop to "black optics" his Daytona Grey B9 S4 by wrapping it. This was before BO was available as a factory option (within the first couple months of it being available on US shores). There are photos on this forum somewhere, probably a solid dozen-plus pages back at this point...I recall it looking pretty nice and costing a little less (but honestly not too much less) than the factory BO package ended up costing when it finally did become available. You'd have to go find the thread. I do remember it didn't include side skirts or mirrors which he left body-colored and factory alu-optic respectively.

FYI, wrapping tight corners or small objects e.g. mirrors is usually an expensive and complicated ordeal that really tests the limits of the wrapping material's flexibility and installer's skills, and that usually makes it an expensive job that they might only trust one guy in the whole shop to do (and that he'd need to seriously take his time with). So usually you will have a better and cheaper result just by buying aftermarket mirror caps for something like that...I know there are some CF ones out on the market for example.

Roof consideration 1: don't wrap your roof if you ever intend to put crossbar towers on it.

Roof consideration 2: The B9 roof is one big continuous panel and does not have rain gutters or seams of any kind along the port or starboard sides, leaving no convenient place to terminate + tuck a wrap. This means any vinyl section applied to it would need to have a precise cut made and would leave a visible+tangible raised edge roughly where the arrows are drawn in this random Google Images photo I found of a B8. I am sure it would look fine if your installer says it would, but it is something to be aware of and it represents an area at increased risk of peeling, wax accumulation, etc.

Wesley Walls

Thanks for the input mplsbrian!

Don Nguyen

Yes.