We all love a good graphic. From the liveries of the Need For Speed: Most Wanted BMW M3 GTR and the Toyota Supra from The Fast and the Furious to the walls of text on JDM Mitsubishi Delicas and Toyota MR2s, to parts store catalog stripes, a bit of personalization adds character. Unfortunately, the art of graphics seemed to go underground for decades, rarely seen on production cars outside of a handful of performance models. Quietly, that’s been changing as of late. Graphics might actually be making a comeback, and the new Toyota RAV4 offers yet another sign.
It might seem like a strange concept to someone who’s grown up seeing the vast majority of cars painted shades of grey, but there used to be a time when stripes, swooshes, and stickers ruled the roost. When painting a car in an actual hue wasn’t enough to stand out, just on its own. Graphics used to be huge, then they disappeared.
I’m not just talking about Fast & Furious-era tribals and wild tuner liveries, either. Thirty years ago, the popularity of Corporate Memphis design meant that it wasn’t uncommon to see a teal Geo Tracker, a magenta Ford Escort, or even a blue Mazda MPV with some sort of sticker down the side. It’s a style that quickly disappeared in the 2000s, although graphics might be making a comeback.
Obviously, a few select serious off-roaders like the Ford F-150 Raptor have rocked graphics for a while, but the first sign of sticker packs making it back into the mainstream might’ve been the 2024 Ford Bronco Sport Free Wheeling edition with its homage-paying reflective gradated striping. Not only did this treatment make a statement, it showed up on the unibody crossover before it arrived on the big body-on-frame Bronco.
That could’ve been an outlier, but then Mitsubishi dropped this gem as an option on the Outlander Trail Edition. Yeah, that’s a stripe leading to a stylized mountain range. It’s extremely Sorel-coded, a stylistic update of something you might’ve seen on a ’90s 4×4, yet it kind of fits perfectly. The public has spoken, and they want crossovers wearing Otterboxes of cladding.
Mind you, not every crossover graphic is quite so bold. Take the hood decal setup on the Mazda CX-50 Meridian. It’s subtle, but it’s more than just a slab of satin black vinyl. Sure, there are two little contoured stripes to accent the middle bit, but also glossy inlays including the name of the car.
Which brings us neatly on to the new Toyota RAV4. You know, the world’s best-selling car. Even on the accessory side, you’d expect Toyota to largely play it safe. However, now that the configurator’s out, Toyota’s revealed three graphics packages for the popular crossover. The first consists of segmented lower door stripes and accents around the fog light grilles in grey or black, the second combines the door stripes with equally-strobing stripes down each side of the hood, and the top banana $600 package simply combines everything.
It goes without saying, these are some of the boldest OEM graphics of the modern crossover era, so the fact that Toyota’s offering them is pretty cool. More importantly, it points to a pattern. If one manufacturer was making graphics happen, it would be a fluke. If two were, it would be a coincidence. Three or more? Well, while graphics are still niche, something’s going on here. Vinyls aren’t dead yet, and there’s something pleasing about that.
Top graphic image: Toyota
I had a nice little side business in the 80’s and 90’s putting stripes and graphics on vehicles for dealers. Vehicles had much cleaner styling then and were graphic friendly. Cars and trucks are so over styled now days graphics wouldn’t look good on a lot of them.
Graphics absolutely need to make a comeback, especially inspired by the 70s. For a couple of years my 2006 Magnum SRT8 sported some 70’s inspired stripes.
https://photos.smugmug.com/Automotive/Automobiles/That-70s-SRT8-Magnum/i-GFbTKZS/0/KRJzVRt9T9tBgSGNpnJjHHrDGd3hZGmChjw99CZnK/L/70SRT8Sept-2165-L.jpg
The look was inspired by the Volare Road Runner of the late 70s.
https://www.virtualparking.net/imgdir/34570-1200.jpg
That’s awesome!
Beautiful! It’s a shame they stopped making the Magnum.
We have a WHITE 2024 Hyundai Tucson. I tried to talk the Mrs into an actual color, but it was her car, her choice, and to get something other than white or grey would have taken a while. She thinks it needs some “flair” now, and I think those sharp creases over the wheels are just begging for pinstripes at least. Maybe some fadeaway block stripes?
Graphics on most modern vehicles just don’t feel right, but I know it’s because I grew up wtih 80s/90s stuff. But I really dig that Bronco, even though I associate that color scheme with Toyota.
My dad had an F-150 with the Freewheeling graphics when I was a kid, so I was surprised to see a Toyota with it recently. Guess it depends on your touch point!
Just looked that up, man those are gorgeous. Would take in a heartbeat.
I think of Ivan Stewart’s 80s and 90s Toyotas, as seen in this excellent forum post: https://www.race-dezert.com/forum/threads/ivan-ironman-stewarts-1984-ppi-toyota-sr5-restoration.125888/
My 96 Ford Ranger had what is best described as “90s Squiggles” running the length of the truck. I remember loving them, but I had some friends who thought they were tacky and were always like “you should take those off!”. But in my mind, it came from Ford like that, it was part of the character of the truck! Anyway in the mid 2000’s I had a fender bender and the collision center couldn’t locate a replacement squiggle, so I ended up taking it all off so at least the truck still looked cohesive. I did like the mono painted look as well, but I also missed Squiggles
Was that the “Splash?”
Oh man I loved those Splash trucks – but no this was a run of the mill XLT model, in ‘Cayman Green’ – but it was the 90’s, so even those trucks got graphics!
Awesome!
I love graphics on all my new vehicles because it gives me something to peel off when I get it home to my driveway.
…and we have crossovers to thank
I will be doing no such thing.
Holy shit I love that
Ah, the 90s, when everybody’s car had graphics like cheap paper cups. I’m sorry, but this article reminds me of all the millennial/gen z guys running around with mullets. If you remember the original, you don’t really want it back
Hey! Some of us millennials are old enough to remember when mullets were popular. Or at least, people where I grew up still thought they were fashionable in the early 80’s.
Congrats, you must have grown up in my home town!
Gen Xer here. I would give about anything to still have the hair to rock a mullet. All business in the front and a party in the back! In the 80’s if we weren’t sporting a mullet our hair was spiked and jacked sky high. All of that hairspray from my generation probably caused a hole in the ozone.
They need giant hood snakes, mythical birds, quarter panel howling wolves, stylized Asian dragon “stripes” undulating down the sides, door-hanging drop bears, etc.
You do raise a good point that it does seem past time for van murals to return. Probably with more logos, but still…
Im in! I think an airbrushed mural with a fantasy wizard would be my choice
Anything that looks like an Asia or Journey album cover would do it for me.
If you watched Archer you remember all the iterations of Kreiger’s van, each paying homage to a different Rush album cover
I feel like “crossover” is just a fancy word for tall station wagon. I sometomes wish they’d embrace the wagonness and give the world brown and yellow and lime colored ones with full wood paneling and bring back rear/side facing jump seats.
Honestly, our two Outlanders and so many other crossovers are exactly that. We do not off-road. We don’t go rock climbing. We got to the mall. I do 2500 miles of sales calls per month in mine and I go places that an AWD with Y-rated 45-series tires should not go. But I call a spade a spade, the Outlanders and many other are just like my 2004 and 2005 Taurus wagons I previously owned, tall station wagons.
And I love them.
Correct, they’re wagons with the exact ground clearance necessary to just barely sneak into the light truck CAFE category.
In the case of my Jeep Renegade, I don’t even think of it as a tall wagon. It’s a tall 5-door hatch.
I would love to have a Mazda6 wagon. Instead, I have a CX90. It’s tall but doesn’t have a ton of clearance. I haven’t and don’t intend on doing any off roading with it. But its nice having the clearance for the shitty roads in and around Atlanta, getting in and out of it is easy and the space gets used a lot more than I ever thought it would when I got it.
But the thoughts of lowering it and making it into a tall wagon have not left my brain since the day I got it
I’m an unabashed fan of this. My silver ’10 Focus (yeah, the weird refresh of the refresh of the Mk1) has a black OEM longitudinal hood stripe. Even has F O C U S embedded in the edges of each side in a what Ford clearly thought was a techy font.
Took me awhile to find it, but completely worth it.
It gives her so much more fun character, at least to my eyes. There’s no need to be serious, it’s just an everyday car that’s fun to drive, so why not a little dash of casual style? It nicely breaks up the expanse of paint and is a neat little nod to the rally connection.
The Jazz cup design on a white vehicle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(design)
Jus clicked this after commenting above. That’s it!
That’s exactly what my Ford Ranger squiggle looked like!!!
If I ever get stuck with another white car…