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Comment by baby_souffle | Hacker News Reader

You can order a wrapped professionally from the factory. Depending upon which segment of the body panels it's as cheap as a few hundred bucks all the way up to something like 800 bucks for a full wrap.

I don't think I've ever gone shopping for a car and had the dealer present me with the exact same trim options but color selection was only going to change the MSRP by $800 at most...

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> I don't think I've ever gone shopping for a car and had the dealer present me with the exact same trim options but color selection was only going to change the MSRP by $800 at most...

Am I misunderstanding here? I bought a new vehicle last year, and for a given trim there were a half-dozen colour options available at no extra cost, with the upscale options either a $600 or $800 upcharge.

Toyota runs dealers on allocation. Subaru allow you to order a car to spec. They make the "twins", gr86 and brz. You cannot order the Toyota. You have to try to find what you want being built or on a lot already and contact the targeted dealer to buy it. You can order the Subaru and wait 6 months for it to be built to spec.

Sure, but Toyota's one manufacturer, it's not like factory orders where you spec the colour are an industry-wide uncommon thing.

It's about 50/50 based on some quick research of Toyota, Honda, Kia/Hyundai, gm/chevy, Ford, Nissan. The first 3 are almost entirely allocation and don't allow custom orders. The last 3 support custom orders on their "regular traffic" models but not as much for their halo cars .

Too late to edit parent but I might be wrong about wrap from the factory. (up to) $800 just for the materials is still reasonable but even with experience doing wraps, I would probably still bring it to a shop. DIY wrap is a bit like baking cookies; you don't need much in terms of skill or tools to do it but you absolutely can tell the difference between cookies made in your average kitchen using the recipe on the back of the box versus cookies made by people that earn a living making cookies.

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