A Car With A Human Skin-Like Interior Complete With Hair And Moles Was Made For A Good Reason But Holy Crap Is It Unsettling

How’s your day going so far? Pretty well? Free of, say, deep-set feelings of discomfort and existential disgust and a body horror that makes you want to just launch yourself into the nearest black hole? If so, great. But how’d you like to change that? If you feel like your day has been too free of such terrors, allow me to introduce you to a 2020ish Toyota Camry that has had its interior redone in what looks just like human skin, down to having pores, moles, blemishes, and hair. Oh, and a nipple. There’s at least one nipple in there.

Yes, a car interior slathered in human skin! It’s as good as it sounds! The skin can also redden and, significantly, get sunburned. Because that’s the real point of this car, not making you want to stop being a corporeal being altogether, but rather to make you more aware of the dangers of skin cancer, and in that context, it does a pretty good job.

The car was commissioned by Australia’s mycar Tyre & Auto and is designed to bring about more skin cancer awareness, as Australia has one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world. The car’s interior is upholstered in a (thankfully) synthetic material that reacts to UV exposure in much the same way as human skin, so you can see how much risk there is even while you’re inside your car.

The company worked with an expert in the field, Dr. Jo Maitz, Burns Surgeon-Scientist at Concord Hospital in Sydney, who describes the experiment as

“…an important reminder to drivers and their passengers to understand the UV risk and protect themselves.”

Dr. Maitz also worked closely with the team that made the Sunburnt Car, who normally specialize in creature and prosthetic special effects, so they’re very used to replicating highly-realistic-looking skin. Damian Martin and Adam Johansen were the principal craftspeople behind the interior, and they did a fantastic job, both based on the metrics of accuracy and demonstrating the effects of sun on skin and on how absolutely mind-scramblingly disturbing the end result is.

It’s so creepy. The hair:

Hair is bad on a dashboard, but somehow it’s even worse on a seat:

…and I think this is some sort of scab?

…and holy crap, they actually did it, I think this is a nipple, a mothergrabbing nipple:

It’s terrifying. And look, I get it’s for a good cause, and while this video from a local news channel states the “intention wasn’t to make people feel discomfort”:

…there’s no way they weren’t aware of the gut-level impact a car full of skin and hair and pores and nipples would have on people. I mean, that’s why I’m writing about this now. Because it makes me feel so very uncomfortable. Now I know how a Christmas tree must feel when it’s dragged into a wood-paneled den. Terror. Blind, unconscious terror.

It sort of reminds me of the work of photographer Charlie White. He tends to use props that are disturbingly biological, like whatever the hell this woman is manipulating there:

Whatever that is, it would be right at home as, say, the gearshift in this cursed Camry. Look, mycar Tyre & Auto, I think you accomplished whatever you needed to accomplish with this thing. I’m thinking about skin and skin cancer and whatever. Mission accomplished.

Now please kindly launch this abomination into the sun.

Top graphic images: mycar Tyre & Auto