Eye-catching cars

Sticker-maker adds patterns and colours to make autos a visual feast

Published on November 28, 2007

Eye-catching cars

Peradech Tonthong’s visual creations adorn his two-litre turbocharged Nissan S15. He has managed to get a whole host of bright colours onto the bodywork and wheels.

Peradech Tonthong has been creating stickers for decorating cars for more than 10 years. It is a career that grew from his favourite hobby of drawing and painting cartoon characters.

"I design car stickers to make cars look more attractive," he says. "I also design exclusively for racing cars. I began this career because I liked drawing cartoon characters when I was younger, and I gathered experience until I got the chance to enter this business."

Drawing cartoon characters is the same basic art form as that used for making decorative car stickers.

"All young men admire sports cars, but the price tags of European sports cars are exorbitant. I found I would have to accrue wealth for decades if I wanted to buy one, so I decided to fulfil my dream by buying a Japanese sports car," Peradech says.

Because it had a reasonable price and low maintenance costs, he bought a Nissan S15 - a 2-litre turbo-engined car with manual transmission.

"When the turbo kicks in, my car consumes too much fuel, but I bought it because I like its design. Even though it was produced more than 10 years ago, it remains a popular model, and spare parts are easy to find," he says.

The Nissan S15 was once very popular among Japanese teenagers. Now it remains popular among Thai drivers who modify such cars for drift-driving, because they are rear-wheel driven. Typically, prices for used Japanese sports cars with rear-wheel drive have not dropped significantly, because they are more durable and respond to modification, Peradech says.

"You can replace the engine with one from another model, or even from another brand of car with rear-wheel drive. To make it look more beautiful, you should add colour to the car's body. My designs concentrate on eye-catching colours. They also focus on patterns. Both patterns and colours are balanced to make decorated cars more attractive.

"Given my career, people often think I'm a fast driver, but I'm not. Beauty is my focus rather than high speeds. Amid skyrocketing oil prices, we must be concerned about driving at high speeds, because it's not economical," he says.

Thanadol Rila

The Nation