How to build a demo car

I've had several hectic weeks...

Two major installs, with lots of flash, fiberglass, fabrication, and special effects.

Both were done soup-to-nuts in about a week's timeframe each.
Of course, that meant about 14-16 hour days per each, for each of us, and sometimes needing to call in a little additional labor to help us out (sanding, sanding, sanding... ) - but we knocked it out in a week, like an episode of Monster House, it was. Tick, tick, tick... deadline! h34r:

Without further ado:

One of them was a demo vehicle for a local shop here that I'm associated with normally on a business strategic planning, and marketing level... but I get to pull duty on high profile stuff through the shop as well... the "stuff that matters most", if you will. B)

Here's the scene:
Owner's Dodge Neon SRT-4.
Stock, save for performance upgrades (like 2 stages of Dodge SRT modification above and beyond the stock turbo system! :blink: ), and a pair of Sparco front seats.

Car was specifically being built for show... and to begin with, one show in particular (a concert that the shop was title sponsor of) - hence the one week deadline.

First rule of building an audio demo car for show purposes:
Forget about making it sound good. Make it look good.
Forget about making it practical or functional. Make it look good.

With this in mind, we set out to build something that would impress those looking at it from beyond the tensabarriers that would be surrounding the car.

Let's see...
A small fiberglass shell underhood, housing an LCD screen is something unexpected.
Four more LCD screens in the car always attract attention... so let's install them in the doors, so that as the car sits with the doors open, they are right out there... in four more fiberglass pods.
Let's paint these black, to contrast with the door panels, which will be completely smoothed, and painted red, with the trim bits wrapped in black vinyl.

Ditch the back seat. Let's make that a black vinyl lower panel with two glowing shop logos that illuminate, and two black vinyl amp racks at each far side where the seat backs used to be.
A frosted plexi panel in the center, with an Audiobahn sponsor logo.

Since Audiobahn would be sponsoring, and since this car is for show - how about two 12" Eternal subs... and with the crazy flame baskets, how could you not mount them inverted?
Simply fiberglass shell out the trunk, so that nothing else can be seen.
And an Audiobahn component set in the front - also inverted, displaying the beautiful chrome frame and magnet structures.
And huge Audiobahn flame amps of course.

And 4-channel computerized Varad LED strobe/pattern kits... lots of them. Illuminating everything... footwells, engine bay in 4 spots, subs, amp rack, etc... even a multi-color changing LED undercar kit.

5 days, and it came out better than either myself or the installer working with me had imagined.

Pictures coming soon - I took a bunch, including build-up shots!
(eventually I'll put a page together for my website, too)

 

eh, I probably won't be able to get the pictures up until after CES too...

...hopefully I'll see you there! B)