Professional Car Wraps: A Great Way To Expand Your Options When Shopping For A Used Car
Posted on: 3 August 2015
Are you in the market for a new car? Are you interested in only vehicles of a select few colors, or avidly avoiding all cars that are drab or flashy in appearance? If you're skipping over perfectly good cars because you've got strong color preferences, then you should know about professional car wraps and how they can expand your used car buying options.
What Are Professional Car Wraps?
Professional car wraps are flexible strips of vinyl that are fitted to all painted surfaces of your car. The vinyl is stretched in place and then heated, which activates its adhesive backing and secures the wrap tightly to your vehicle.
A correctly applied car wrap will mold perfectly to the contours of your vehicle with no creases or folds in the vinyl. The resulting appearance will mimic a new paint job. Car wraps originally started out as a new platform for advertisers to promote their businesses, but their popularity spread to everyday drivers as their advantages became apparent.
What Are The Benefits of Wrapping Your Car?
If you're shopping for a brand new car, sure -- you can pick the color of your vehicle. If you're shopping for a used car, however, your color preference usually has to take back seat to more important things like safety features and gas mileage. It's pretty tough to find a used car that both meets your standards and happens to be your favorite color.
You could paint the car you buy, but a high-quality vehicle paint job will run you between $4,000 to $8,000, depending on the type of vehicle and your paint choice. If you want a more unique color or something fancy like sports stripes, you could be looking at costs as high as $20,000.
A high-quality full vehicle wrap, however, starts at just $1,800. If you budget in this cost when used car shopping, you can choose any vehicle you want and easily turn it into your favorite color once you get it off the lot.
It gets better, though. Vehicle wraps can actually help retain the resale value of your car because they protect the vehicle's original paint against dings, chips, and fading. You'll also have more options when choosing how you want your car to appear, since vinyl wraps are digitally printed, making it easy to apply fine details or graphics.
How Long Do The Wraps Last?
The vinyl used in vehicle car wraps is both scratch and fade resistant, so most wraps last between 5 and 10 years. The wraps also require minimum maintenance. In fact, high-powered washes and scrub brushes are discouraged. After application, you need only lightly hand wash your vehicle or apply a specially-formulated waterless wash compound when needed.
Are They Hard To Get Off?
Because vinyl car wraps are made for long-lasting durability they can be a bit tricky to remove. Don't worry, though. As long as you don't leave the wrap on your car for years after your wrap warranty expires, there will be no damage to your vehicle's paint upon removal.
There are a few different ways to remove a vinyl car wrap. You can take it to your local wrap professionals who will heat and peel the wrap from your car, or you can have at the removal process yourself with just an inexpensive chisel tool (designed to get underneath the wrap and lift it), some citrus-based cleaner, and a little elbow grease. Just be sure your cleaner is labeled safe for vehicle paint.
If you're shopping at a dealership like Grey Chevrolet Inc for a used car and passing by solid options because you don't like their color -- or worse yet, admitting defeat and thinking you'll just have to drive a car you don't like the appearance of, then you should know about professional car wraps. With professional car wraps, you can shop for safety, comfort, and performance first, knowing that you can easily change the color once the car is yours.
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