Car graphic kits
Yes, but only if the artwork is designed to fit your specific car rather than pulled off a shelf. A stripe kit lines up properly when it's drawn to follow the panel shapes and body lines of the exact model it's going on. Generic kits skip that process, which is why they so often sit slightly wrong.
Why generic stripe kits don't line up
The problem with an off-the-shelf kit is that car panels are rarely flat. Doors taper, wheel arches curve, and body lines rise and fall along the length of the vehicle. A stripe printed to a standard shape has no way of knowing where your car's lines actually run, so it drifts. Be just a few millimetres out and the eye picks it up straight away, even if the person looking can't say exactly what's wrong.
A stripe designed for your specific car works the other way round. The design starts with the car itself, so the lines follow the body rather than fighting it. That's the difference between graphics that look like they left the factory that way and ones that simply look stuck on.
What making a custom kit from scratch involves
When there's no existing artwork to work from, the design has to be built around the car. That means measuring the panels, tracing their shapes, drawing the graphics to scale, and test-fitting everything before committing to the final installation. Each step helps ensure the finished stripes stay perfectly in line with the vehicle's body.
We recently produced a full side stripe kit for a Porsche Boxster at our Newton Abbot workshop with no existing artwork to start from. The design was created entirely from scratch and set so the stripes follow the natural lines of the doors and rear quarters. Done this way, the graphics sit with the car instead of cutting across it.
The part most people miss: fitting
Designing the kit is only half the job. The other half is fitting it correctly, and that's where most self-fit attempts come unstuck. Applying vinyl to curved and contoured panels without lifting, creasing or trapping air takes experience, patience and the right technique.
A kit bought cheaply from somewhere like eBay still has to be fitted, and that's the part most buyers underestimate. Applying it properly takes skills that most people simply don't have. We do not fit customer supplied kits.
That's why we design and fit every stripe kit as one complete job. The artwork is created to suit the car, and the same hands that designed it install it, so there's no gap between how it was intended to look and how it looks when it's finished.
What a custom stripe kit costs
A full custom side stripe kit starts from £125 including fitting. The final price depends on the design, the size of the graphics and the vehicle, but that's the genuine starting point for a made-to-measure kit that's professionally fitted, not a generic sheet you're left to line up yourself.