Nostalgia is often a trap, but it can genuinely have its bright spots. Sure, many of the cheap-and-cheerful cars of the ’90s aren’t especially good when compared to their modern equivalents, but you know what they had? Colors and stickers. Some of the graphics you got on cars in the ’90s were brilliant, but these decals were rather poorly documented in the switch from printed marketing materials to digital. Well, no time like the present to fix some of that.
Let’s take things back to 1992, a year when New Jack Swing was still at its peak, “Basic Instinct” was causing moral panic, and “Street Fighter II: The World Warrior” was what you were blowing your quarters on. Specifically, we’re going back to Anytown, Canada because I’ve got my hands on a 1992 Canadian Tire Automotive Specialty Catalogue.
In case you aren’t familiar with Canadian Tire, picture a mashup of an Autozone and a Walmart with its own sub-fiat currency so culturally ingrained, you could buy poutine with it. I know, this isn’t helping the allegations of Canada being a bit strange, but then again, what country isn’t? Anyway, since it was 1992, it shouldn’t take a lot of guessing to figure out what was featured first in the Automotive Speciality Catalogue. That’s right, it’s aftermarket graphics, and some of them are magnificent.
It all starts on page two. That’s how big of a deal graphics were back then, popular inexpensive ways of jazzing up your ride. The demo car? Absolutely chock-full of them, all in Memphis Lite colours of magenta and teal and yellow. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with the rabbit wearing a bandana and aviators next to a fizzy drink with two straws. In hindsight, “Party Animal” is what law enforcement would refer to as “reasonable suspicion,” but outside of that context, it’s a vibe. It’s also one of four screen-printed Tropical Transfers available at the time, including a variety of somewhat period sayings like “Too Cool” and “Chill Out.” I guess some things never change, although most modern decals are simply die-cut instead of screen-printed.
At the same time, check out the “FEX” pinstripe! Sure, vinyl pinstripes aren’t exactly uncommon with dealerships still laying them on new cars, but a squiggle and some spots takes the concept from dowdy to actually fun. Of course, a magenta stripe on a blue car is a great color combination, as we also see with that strobing stripe above the door molding.
Oh, but it keeps going. Alpena, not to be confused with BMW tuner Alpina, is still around making LED lighting and whatnot, but it sold holographic pinstripes back in the day. Makes sense, doesn’t it? On this page we also see some more premium graphic kits, many of which running about double the price of the FEX kit seen in the last scan. The most expensive Wave kit works out to about $75.38 Canadian or $53.97 in U.S. currency adjusted for inflation. That’s not cheap, but it is pretty fabulous.
I do actually remember seeing some of these visual squiggles and scratches back-in-the-day, and while it’s possible some owners applied these kits themselves, I wouldn’t be surprised if certain dealerships applied similar or even identical graphics to juice their bottom lines.
Oh, and if that was a bit too pricey for you, you could drop two loonies and two caribou on some fairly basic striping tape. In fact, it’s the same sort of tape you can still buy today, from the blackout tape to the pinstripes, with one oddity: when would you need a three-quarter-inch-wide fluorescent orange stripe? Answers on a postcard, please.
Alright, let’s wrap this up with something more interesting, the windshield banners of the day. Granted, windshield banners are still somewhat popular with all sorts of tuning companies and social media influencer logos adorning sun strips. However, things were a bit cheesier 33 years ago, with taglines like “Fast and Dirty,” “Rock’n Roll,” and “Road Warrior.” More importantly, look at the sheer color on display here, rainbow fades and lime green and all that. It feels like we’ve all just become a bit boring as a society, with more outlets than ever to express ourselves yet little to express.
Were ’90s car graphics great? Some of them yes, some of them no. However, there’s no time like the present to just do what you love, and if you love graphics, bring some of that Memphis Lite-look back. Sure, it wouldn’t work on every new car, but on a Wrangler or a brightly-colored pony car, or something cheap and cheerful? Yeah, why not?
Top graphic images: Canadian Tire
Who remembers dealers applying pinstripes as a “dealer prep” item and then charging you some ridiculous markup on the sticker? Maybe they should bring that back as a way of justifying dealer markup on hot models. “It’s a $10,000 pinstripe job on that Honda Civic type R”
I managed the “new car get ready” crew at a local Toyota dealership for a while.
We did pinstripes, undercoating, passenger-side mirrors, door edge guards, and we even riveted on side molding. I got pretty good at striping, so it might have been worth 10% of what they charged for it…
Ha that’s right sometimes they were crooked!
My parents were way ahead of the curve in the mid 60s when they applied groovy colorful graphics to their Studebaker Lark (to cover up rust spots) in the form of non-skid flowers usually placed in the bottom of a bathtub.
Was your dad Moe Syzlack??
Moe’s car is a 1980 Bonneville according to the Simpsons’ wiki, so no, haha
…and thus was discovered the first automotive anti-skid system.
Oh, yeah, those graphics were *everywhere* in the early 90s, at least around here; apparently a small business in my hometown had a patent or something and produced a lot of the designs for whoever manufactured the stick-ons. But the fad passed fairly quickly so by the late 90s these stick-on graphics were virtually nonexistent.
When I was attending college in the late 90s I lived off campus so I would just park in a nearby neighborhood (which was very similar to the one in the 1990 film Slacker) & walk to campus; parking was free. However, parking spaces were quite at a premium. There was a really beat old Mopar minivan that inexplicably had such stick-on graphics that said HOTTT! (the extra Ts always made my pedantic English major eye twitch) in neon splash colors; frequently the damn jerk that drove it would park it in such a way that it’d take up *two* precious spaces. Was sometimes tempted to key the heck out of that damn minivan, especially in the stick-on graphics, despite my pacifist ways but I was always running late for class, ha… Yeah, still annoyed about that minivan nearly 30 years later, lol.
I’m a “party animal” but I’m also “too cool,” so I’m not sure which on of those I should get.
obviously, both
Buy the “Too Cool” for the sides, and the “Party Animal” for the trunk lid. Then it’s like a mullet, with the party in the back.
I actually bought graphics stickers for my 85 300ZX. Thanks to dents, dings and rust, I got body work done to my car. Thanks to being poor, I had to paint it myself with rattle cans. Two tone paint, blue-black metallic up top, with a silver on the bottom. A fade-out horizontal tape stripe joined the two
Canadian Tire had a graphic tape that EXACTLY matched the original Nissan tape. Once I colour sanded and polished the single stage paint, I started the new tape at the wheel well and it integrated perfectly.
It looked like this one, except non-turbo, and not as nice.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1985-nissan-300zx-turbo-18/
Canadian Tire had a graphic tape that EXACTLY matched the original Nissan tape. Once I colour sanded
We already knew. 😉
Hunh?
Did you pay with a cheque at your favourite branch? Hehe
I think only Americans still use cheques, Canuks are up with the rest of the modern world and use contactless.
Don’t point that shit at us – I haven’t written a check in 12 years, and that was only for my rent as it was a small landlord who didn’t have an online system.
The Ford Festiva had some of the best stick on graphics. Check out this old commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOFu3dYu-Rs
I had a red 1990 Festiva with the same stick-on graphics as the yellow Festiva in the commercial that got ‘crushed’.
Ford even brought the decals back for the Fiesta when it returned to the states!
I would argue that the early aughts were the crescendo and final frontier for wild automotive graphics. Case in point: the first three Fast & Furious movies.
Toyota Tacomas still came with some really ugly vinyl striping in the early aughts, or at least the dealers thought people wanted them..
Hollywood was quite late with that stuff in FNF, but the popularity of FNF did cause kind of a sticker bump after its release.
This has me picturing a replica Countach or Testarossa with a powdery white pinstripe running fore to aft, terminating in a decal of a rolled-up tube of currency at a jaunty angle. Fun at Radwood, probable cause pretty much anywhere else. Interior decorations could feature spent cans of Aqua Net, Zima and Binaca.
Bring back the ridiculous graphics!
I want to put a “Jazz” paper cup graphic on my white BMW e36.
Let me the first to publicly say, you should absolutely do this.
I feel like Autopian should create one that they send to members or sell as merch!
If I didn’t know how busy Jason already was i would see about contracting him to design me one.
In the 1960’s Esso petrol stations (garages, English english), gave away bullet hole stickers. Maybe a tie in with Goldfinger?
back in my motorcycle days I really tried to get a Esso Boy keychain to match my 59 club patch. too rich for my wallet at the time.
Just trade some naughty children for one at xmas time.
Except the naughty children go to Spain, they use Repsol.. 🙁
Johnsons Cafe, A20?
I’m not that old! Also did most of my riding in Texas.
Real neon was getting popular about this time. I remember going into a shop that had the license frames and he said kits of tubes to go under the whole car was coming out soon.
I remember the neon, but could never do it. I’m too engineer-y. I did have a neon plate frame (mounted behind the plate), but that was nothing compared to some of the other 3rd gen F-bodies in the area.
#BringItBack!!!
===turbo===
This is a subject near and dear to my heart, as anyone who has seen my Ram 50 can attest.
The Raddest Graphics prize is a staple at our local 80s/90s shows.
Wait, is this Chris H?
Chris yes, H no.
Did you attend Radwood LA last weekend?
Nope I’m on the other coast. I’ve only attended Radwood in Charlotte.
A friend of mine was there in SoCal, though.
Well in that case there just happens to be a Chris here in CA who has several MINT condition ’80s/90s vehicles, one of which is a Ram 50 which was at Radwood last weekend and won Raddest Truck.
Last time I saw the truck it had pink striping on it, this time it was yellow, so it seems he is having fun with the 90s color schemes too.
I’ll watch the Radwood feeds for pics of that. Mine is @sunset_truck_90 on Instagram and was also featured here on Reader’s Rides a few months back.
It won Raddest Truck at Radwood Charlotte this past April.
The one I saw is the lede image in this article. I’ve seen it at several shows around SoCal.
https://journal.classiccars.com/2019/10/02/japanese-classic-car-show-keeps-them-coming-back/
Do you like gladiator movies?
PERFORMANCE TRUCK
I bought several small rolls of pinstriping tape, Teal, Purple and Blue from memory to do some sick custom stripes on my Samurai. I didn’t bother with the “masking tape” and just freehanded the stripes, with typical early 90s near waveforms. It turned out pretty well, and is something I wouldn’t mind replicating on my 03 Civic Lx.
Ford totally embraced factory graphics on the Festiva.
and the Ranger Splash!
And later on even. My ’10 Focus has an OEM center hood stripe that was a model-specific accessory that almost nobody got.
I think there could be an entire article on compact pickups of the 80s and 90s and how two-tone gave way to sweeping graphics from disposable fast food cups.
Oh man, this is giving me flashbacks of going to Pep Boys with my dad around the same period. Stick on neon graphics galore.
But I always loved going to Pep Boys to see all of the truck accessories and imagining what my dad’s ’86 Chevy C10 could look like. They had a whole wall of Kenco colored bug deflectors and running boards and tool boxes, etc. Good times.
Yes, don’t forget the lock guard and the puffy door handle inserts too! So many tacky accessories. Vehicle specific mud guards (with name, not molded to engage the body) were very common.
My father disliked car names/badges cluttering up the exterior, so he would remove them. Most by the 80s were stick on, so it wasn’t a big deal. Some had holes, or did years prior – he would pay a body shop friend of this to fill and paint where the holes were. We had an 86 Topaz and one of the trunk badges had holes – much to my father’s surprise.
At a swap meet at the old Northville Downs in 86 or 87 we found a rectangular “turbocharged” badge that fit – so he stuck it on. It was easy to wax around and caused many comments – is that a turbo version? Why yes, it is, thanks for noticing! Well worth the few bucks the badge cost! Might have even helped at trade in – can’t remember!!
I was just thinking the other day of when Ford announced the return of the Splash package for the Ranger and how underwhelming the new graphics were.
And b/c of the time in which we live, nobody’s getting even them b/c happy and fun isn’t their automotive mojo. Sigh.
It seems like a missed opportunity, because people pay good money for the right special edition of something, but as I type that it’s just like you say – it’s all off-roady tough styling.
The Maverick might have been better suited for a good Splash edition, as more of a lifestyle truck like the original Ranger Splash. (then every internet comment board will rage that it isn’t a flareside bed)
To your point, I often see Mavericks in bright hues – that orange is fantastic – but (current) Rangers only in black.
Didn’t Nissan do one recently for the Frontier that even included the triangular looking wheel centers? Apparently it came and went fast.
It did – the Hardbody! I’ve sadly never seen one for real, as you hint.
I’ve looked around and apparently there are some actual, honest-to-god unsold new ones still out there for sale. They’re advertising over $6k off sticker, and I bet you could get quite a bit more than that off if you were serious about buying one. I am tempted.
When Kia introduced the Soul, there was a really sharp dragon graphic available from Kia, probably through the dealers. I thought it looked pretty sharp, but wasn’t willing to spend the money on it.
What page of the catalog are the lock guards on?
Same one as the neon double wiper blades.
Just below the chrome double wiper blades.
Some things are best left in-period and largely forgotten about. This is one of them.
But please, for the love of Dog, bring back COLOR to cars! I miss when a parking lot or a freeway looked like a spilled bag of Skittles and not a depressing gray-scale landscape.
I am kind of enjoying the retro-stickered Broncos that I am seeing.
As far as color, it isn’t going to happen until people balk at buying the achromatics stocked on car lots. Unfortunately. I did my part though.
That’s an entirely different and less obnoxious/tacky period… 😉 Some past popular things are good and become classic, some really need to stay in the past.
As I keep saying, we live in the worst timeline, and humans suck at pretty much all levels. That we seem to be living in a monochrome world is an excellent example.