From Tan to Black

When I got the car, the interior was in pretty bad shape. The front seats were beat up and torn, broken interior pieces, crappy steering wheel, old Leather, smelled bad, stained tan carpet, nasty floor mats, and dirty everything. I always loved black interior cars, so naturally, my first modification to the car was trying to convert the interior from tan to black.

Here are some pictures of the stock tan interior:







Here are some pictures of the interior pieces that I removed and dyed them black. What I had to do was remove the parts, degrease them by washing them with Dawn dish washing detergent, dry them real good, spray adhesive primer on them for the paint to stick real good, sprayed a good amount of base coat to get it completely black, and then sealed it off real good with a few layers of clear. All paint products that were used were Folia-Tec products. I got them at Phantasm Motorsports. The paint that I used were vinyl paint, you could use it on the plastic and vinyl parts as well as the leather parts.

The base: a stock 1992 Lexus SC300

I bought this SC300 back in January 2008. I paid $4,000 for it, which I know I could have gotten it for much cheaper if I waited and looked harder but I really needed a car at that time. My 1997 Toyota Celica GT was out of commission due to a 3S-GTE swap gone wrong. I was using my little's sister car at the moment (Scion XA), and she just got her drivers license, so I needed to give it back to her. I bought this SC from a minister in Fayetteville, NC. Saw it on Craigslist for $5500, talked him down to $4000. Paid it with cash, borrowed money from my mom and brother to get the car (Thanx mom and Bowie). I gave the minister a ride to Raleigh in the car after I paid for it. Took the car to this spot behind Phantasm Motorsports and snapped a few pictures with my buddy AJ. AJ was the first one in my circle of friends to get a Lexus. He's into the vip tuning style like me as well.

The person that got me interested in the SCs was this guy named Chanh. Vietnamese dude from Cali that I knew from my 6GC.net celica forum. He had sold his celica and bought an SC. After he showed me pictures of his ride with the Auto Couture kit, I was sold on finding one myself. I had no idea they were so cheap, or else I would've been into it from the beginning. I always thought SCs were a lot more expensive then they really were since it was a Lexus.

Anyways, here are some pictures of the SC when it was bone stock: