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Came across this:-
Seems like a way to re-create the early Smart panels.
John
Seems like a way to re-create the early Smart panels.
John
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The Aqua panels are indeed hydrographics as far as I know (I think Evilution states this?). It would be a way but I would hazard a guess it would be expensive and you may struggle to find someone with a big enough dip to do whole panels (the door panels being the biggest single panel). Then again, there must be someone who does do them, I've seen a 2006 Fortwo that was done in Hydrographics recently. -
Yes the numeric panels (and aqua/scratch ones I believe) are indeed hydrographic dipped.
The difficulty in re-creating them is no so much finding someone with a big enough tank, as all of the hydrographic transfer places have tanks big enough, it's that none of them have the original smart patterns to transfer onto them. And they won't attempt to reproduce because smart have the copyright on them.
I have seen a number of hydrographic dipped smarts (including the wood one, and the one with the skulls all over it) at various shows/meets.Comment
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Back in 2003, thesmartclub included the opportunity to visit the Cubic factory next door to smartville where a small group of us saw those special panels being made. Seeing the process up close really made me want a set of scratch black, which was a new design back then.Comment
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There is an hydrographics company that made enquires with smart about getting the patterns for all the relevant designs and they were told where to get them from but when they made enquires it all went south... The minimum amount of any of the design they could buy was 1500meters of whatever the width was, and the amount per meter wasn't cheap either......Comment
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