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
I understand the why, but I think that they took the realism out way too far, in light of what the Nazi’s did in the holocaust concentration camps.
Jay Foreman wrote a song about a skin sofa 8 years ago. It, too, had a nipple.
https://youtu.be/dMELl2EVKnc
Haven’t had a more appropriate time for the NOPE Button for a while…
https://youtu.be/m3zVpMk1wgE?si=NYIhvhT0YFlI574H
Does the center console have pubes?
What do you think the shift knob is covered with?
That’s 100% scrotum!
I believe the shift boot is scrotum.
The shift knob is covered in fore-on-the-floor-skin.
Torch will craft the most absurd/creepy stories into a surprisingly engaging text. There should be a word for that.
Weirdsmith? That person that can take bizarre stuff and transform into a good read? Can I make “weirdsmith” happen just so my autocorrect will stop changing it to “weird myth” even after I wrote the thing twice now?
This reminds of a scene in Borat 2, at the very beginning, where Borat is sitting in the office of the Premier Minister, on a chair made out of his former producer’s (Azamat Bagatov) skin, complete with his genitals. It’s just as creepy….
So these guys just built what amounts to Ed Gein’s daily. Absolutely unsettling.
Well what do you expect now that the whales are endangered (making the whale penis leather hard to come by) and the fellacio monkeys have gone extinct (which is where we got velour)?
It’s either this or the incel penis leather interior as an option.
Buffalo MoBill!
Unfortunately I am in Australia so might get exposed to this ad. Thanks for the warning torch!
Ha, it may be synthetic but other than the hair, the colors, the nipple, and the ability to sunburn it’s not any different from interiors upholstered in leather made from various species of animals (yeah, after all, human is a species of animal, lol.) It’s always a little unsettling to think that one is sitting on the skin of dead animals whenever one’s sitting on leather upholstery regardless of the origin of said leather.
For a while in the early years of the current pandemic there was a shortage of gummy bears because of the automotive microchip shortage (insert domino meme here). Because fewer cars were being produced due to the shortage of microchips there was a decreased demand for leather upholstery which led to fewer pigs being slaughtered which then led to a decline in the supply of gelatin hence the shortage of gummy bears.
Shoots to number one on the creepiest thing I’ve read this year, bumping Byron Noem to second place.