Wrapping a car, it sounds easy right?
First off, NO, its not easy. If it were there would be more people doing it. Second, NO, its not cheap. If it were, manufacturers would do it. So.... Why does it cost that much? What's involved in vehicle wrapping?
We get your car and break it down to its basic shell. No lights, no handles, no mirrors, no bumper, no rear bar, not badges and pin holes, not even those shiny bits. We carefully remove all of those, and that takes time. NOW we get to clean the car, like in the gaps that have never been looked at, all the panel joints, the bits NO ONE ever looks to clean. It's all about adhesive contact at this point.... Then we clean the entire car over again in a solution we "know" will agree with the adhesion based properties of the vinyl that we're using. - This is crucial. Next we make a flat piece of vinyl stretch, warp, mould and sit in an area its not wanting to, but the adhesive liner on the wrap film we use is telling it to. Then the critical part! We heat that sucker! We have to run a heating point over EVERY section of the vehicle.
More specifically we NEED to heat any area that has been heavily conformed....
WHY?
Well the vinyl has a manufactured memory of being flat, so heating to, and slightly past that point, "resets" that memory to the shape that it holds. So when that flat piece of vinyl gets hot enough curved around your rearview mirror, it gets reset. Then if it were to be removed, it would hold the shape of that mirror. Now, imagine having to reset the shape of an entire Hyundai iLoad, Ford Transit, Mitsubishi Triton.... It takes time to heat those areas up! So the price............. Lets say one bloke knocks the design out of the park in the first try (our designers are magical!)... He needs to set up the bleed, the tolerances and the layout. Two blokes strip down the vehicle and prep it, then apply the graphics. That's three men spending almost two full days on one van.... before materials.... So when a cost comes in at $3-5K don't lose your mind ~ understand the amount of work we put into your pride and joy, to make it our pride and joy!
And that's, a "wrap!"