July 17, 2020

Your chances of stumbling across a classic Rally-Ready Mini, especially a barn find, are remote. You may have better luck if you check out a New Mini Showroom not far from Trafford based Auto Wrap…

The motoring public around the world has really taken the modern Mini to its heart. Manufactured by BMW, the car, in all its incarnations, takes its design cues from the Original Mini but emerges as a very practical and well sized vehicle that’s demonstrated an enduring appeal. Lots of people buy them, and, if you happen to be in Manchester and are on the look out, Williams Mini in Trafford must be among your destinations.

Not far from Williams Mini you’ll find a team of very accomplished vehicle wrappers known as Auto Wrap Manchester. It’s a company that occupies the rarified air at the very top of its game. The work it delivers is of exemplary quality and the ‘vehicles’ it wraps are many and various. Even boats have been dressed by the company’s team.

Williams and Auto Wraps are not strangers to each other. Auto Wraps has produced works in the past for the dealer and so the latest call when it came wasn’t a surprise. The brief was though.

Williams wanted to create its own very limited edition Mini, for sale off its own showroom floor. The car needed to do a convincing job of looking like a rally-ready classic from the sixties, but not ready-to-race and wearing a pristine livery. No, this one needed to look more like a car that had seen a bit of race and rally action and was then consigned to a barn to be found by some lucky person years after it last turned a wheel.

That’s quite a technical challenge. Lucky then, that the brief had come to Auto Wrap.

Lots of history exists to inform the design of a classic Mini’s rallying livery and so it was no problem at all to get the elements of it rounded up, digitised and ready to print and apply. The weathering though took a lot more deep creativity and effort. Eventually though, through a trial of texture-mapping and tedious selection of rust-scabs and scratches, the design was done. It could now proceed to print.

The team at Auto Wrap turned to Metamark’s new MetaCast MDC to produce the wrap. MDC is one of Metamark’s Premium MD-Class digital materials and like others in the portfolio it does a truly exemplary job of resolving detail and tonal subtlety in print. It came through for Auto Wrap. The product is a pure cast formulation too and that supports extreme elongation and class-leading handling.

The print Auto Wraps has produced is a convincing and very detailed rendition of a weathered and scarred vehicle surface. The ‘paint’ is depicted as sun-battered, faded and flattened. MetaGuard MGC in Matt played its part in dulling down the gloss finish of the MDC. Rust scabs and scratches punctuate the surface. Even mouldy touches blight the brilliantly disguised roof. It’s stunning.

Application of the printed wrap was greatly aided by the MetaGlide adhesive that is a feature of the new MetaCast MDC Wrapping Film. The new adhesive manages the initial tack of allowing very easy repositioning of the printed graphic - an important consideration with highly detailed print. Once applied, it builds to a very reliable ultimate bond that’s clean to remove when the time comes.

The finished result is a car that’s a magnet for attention. The wrap is brilliantly executed and places the new Mini in a class of its own. It’s a limited edition of one. Sat among all the new cars that will surround it on the showroom floor at Williams, the Rally Mini is truly distinguished in its brilliant livery. Its disguise suits it in every detail. It’s a New Mini for sure - but it’s cast in a new role.

Brilliant work, Auto Wrap.