[magidea]

http://youtu.be/lfQnONqlNJw

 

[Reg]

Must be nice...

A loaded 4x4 manual without the gaudy orange bezels. I'm sold

Unfortunately, it will never happen. Not in this country.

Thanks for posting anyhow.

 

[tony]

I love how white looks.
I just wish we got to see how this looks with the lower panels in body color rather than in black

here's the video you posted, now embedded:

 

[SubVet]

I have heard that they typically do the lower body panels in black or a darker color to give the illusion of an increased ground clearance. You'll notice they do this on a lot of CUVs nowadays.

 

[raz-0]

I have heard that they typically do the lower body panels in black or a darker color to give the illusion of an increased ground clearance. You'll notice they do this on a lot of CUVs nowadays.

It's not just that, it's for visual weight and masking of quality of materials, as well as cost control. When presented with contrasting colors like that, your brain tends to estimate them as separate things. This helps it look smaller, and smaller equals lighter, right? Then you have the choice of doing big panels of cheap material, or big panels of good material, or regular sized panels of good material with add on panels of cheap material.

Look at the scion xB in certain flavors. HUGE swaths of cheap body colored plastic, that makes it look bigger. They flex, and that makes the car look cheaply built. Take the soul, and it uses steel body panels with a polymer skirt, all one color. This means you get a bigger look and no cheap flex because the plastic panels are smaller. With the renegade, it will make it look lighter and more nimble, and they plastic skirts will all be black, so other than the trailhawk bumpers, it's one common part in one color for all variants of the car regardless of body color. This is one way to control costs. Hyundai/kia spent money on some really nice robotic paint application, so good paint costs them less than for many other manufacturers.

Another reason more cuvs are going to black plastic for the skirting is hiding aerodynamic features. Shuttered grills are less obvious in all black, and it's a complex part to paint. Adding some air dams is aerodynamic, but not in line with the visual design of the car, so black helps remove the details of them at first glance. THen of course you have the how many grills does this car have and which ones are real. These days the answer to those two questions is 3 and 1 more often. Renegade has three visually, but how many are functional?

 

[Jeepers]

Doesn't it depend which trim level you get though? Aren't the lower body panels colored on certain trim levels?

 

[JamieInLasVegas]

Look at the scion xB in certain flavors. HUGE swaths of cheap body colored plastic, that makes it look bigger. They flex, and that makes the car look cheaply built. . . .QUOTE]

Do you mean the Honda Element? I'm not picturing panels on an xB. . .

 

[raz-0]

Look at the scion xB in certain flavors. HUGE swaths of cheap body colored plastic, that makes it look bigger. They flex, and that makes the car look cheaply built. . . .QUOTE]

Do you mean the Honda Element? I'm not picturing panels on an xB. . .

Front and rear fascia have HUGE swaths of plastic. Particularly the first generation, and it is aging very badly, at least here in the mid-atlantic area.

I was also being a bit unkind to the model as a whole as quite a few of the local ones seem to ship with dealer installed stick on panels on the sides looking up actual factory photos. I was mostly referring to the first gen.