East Coast & West Coast Come Together: Wrapping and Coating a McLaren 675lt

One of the joys of my job is getting calls to go work with other shops or owners from other parts North America to provide onsite solutions. This gives me the chance to visit places I may not have seen, meet new people, experience new things and offer my expertise when asked to. To say that it can get a monotonous visiting the same location every day could be accurate as well. So visiting new places keeps my craft fresh for me too.

Since 2014, we have offered onsite advanced clear bra training and installation services nationally. This has led to some pretty awesome experiences and today I would like to share one from November 2015. Though, things are a little different for this project. It was not a visit with intent to train. This trip’s singular purpose was to work hand-in-hand with the guys at Luxe Auto Spa to give a McLaren 675lt the most incredible clear bra wrap possible and then coat it before being shipped off to California, all while under threat of a shorter than ideal deadline. Here’s the story of Jean-Claude Corcoran of Detailed Designs Auto Spa in Atlanta and Cougar Elfervig of Luxe Auto Spa in Utah uniting to create an incredible solution for a client in the nick of time.

This story started with a call from Cougar 1 week prior to the project beginning. We’ve known each other for some time and having worked on some projects previously together, we know how each other work/operate. Cougar expressed that a good client of his just got word that his 675lt would be flying in from England in about a week and he was facing a serious deadline once it arrived. He was to detail, correct the paint, wrap the full car with an advanced (teardown with substantial edge wrapping) clear bra wrap and then coat the car with nano with 5 days to work with. For 2 clear bra experts to perform this service would be impossible…with 3, one just might be able to pull it off and this was the call to get that 3rd person. Knowing my staff could definitely address the projects in my shop in Atlanta and wanting to work on what was to be the first 675lt in the country, I told him that it was on!

This is something I have always appreciated about Cougar. He understands “figuring it out”. Many times, we face difficult circumstances in creating solutions for clients. It is true that sometimes requests may be impossible and there is no solution. But for those tough to figure out scenarios that are possible, the right moves mean hitting the mark and knocking it out of the park. Here was a brand new car that need to be protected but we did not have complete patterns available for. Between Cougar, Miguel(Cougar’s lead technician) and myself, I knew we had this. Long days and nights lay ahead of us but we were sure to make it happen…

Let’s get it on! The 675LT arrived via an enclosed car hauler:

Before starting on the full body advanced clear bra wrap a wash and examination was necessary. Once flawed areas were located, they were marked with tape so that the Luxe staff could address them. This is just a very small sampling of the insufficient factory clear bra and defects in the body. This would be a 5 piece article if we had to include every defect on the car. Every piece of factory clear bra was removed to allow for our seamless wrap.

After repairing the factory defects and removing the factory paint protection film, we moved onto safely removing many of the incredible carbon fiber aero pieces. These pieces would be individually wrapped with paint protection film and the areas they covered were also wrapped. When completed, the car was left with a stunning seamless clear bra wrap with incredible coverage and protection. The glossy paint received glossy clear bra and the dry carbon fiber parts got a satin finish clear bra to maintain the factory look while giving it the protection paint protection film offers. For the highest wear and tear areas, like around wheel openings, thicker 20-mil thick clear film was layered for the best protection possible. It’s at this point that wrapping paint with clear bra becomes art…

My first Utah snow was going on while we were living inside the shop for a few days.

After completing the full body clear bra wrap, it was onto the nano coating and curing process.

The finished product!

Cougar, the owner and I during the pickup when the owner first saw the car.

Cougar and I relieved that we were able to pull of the near-impossible…