Wayback: Dodge Neon shop demo car

[geolemon]

I thought these pages were lost to time, but found a way with the Wayback machine to get them, so hopefully they will stay archived here.

This was a shop demo vehicle that we built back in the good old 'fiberglass volcano' days of the early 2000's.
This one HAD (key word) just perfect construction shots that unfortunately the Wayback machine didn't archive... I was working with two fabricators who taught me lots beyond what I knew back then about fiberglass.

I wish the pics were bigger - zoom in if you can.

This was a 2002 Dodge Neon SRT4, that started life as the shop owner's personal car, pride and joy, had a few stages of official SRT performance upgrades,
he drove it for a few years, then turned it over to us for use as a demo vehicle the year of this concert...
...then we removed the front door monitors so arms could rest again.

	The car was unveiled at a large concert event, Kissmas Bash, brought to Buffalo by pop music powerhouse Kiss 98.5, and sponsored by our shop [name removed - today is a motorcycle shop]. These shots show the car just after the display and barricades in the main walkway were set up, day prior to the event.
	Many Varad LED products were used in this install - I've become a big Varad fan after this one. This shot shows the trunk, which got a smoothed and painted fiberglass shell treatment. We used many Varad four LED kits - whose illumination and strobe patterns are controlled by a separate brain and control panel.
	From this angle, you can see another cool Varad product... the color-changing LED undercar kit. I wish I could have captured the effects better - it not only cycles through a seemingly infinite number of colors (or lets you lock into just one), but also lets you select a ton of patterns, colors sliding up and down the tubes, around the car - or just light up solid. Very cool.
	In this shot, you can see I hid two of the four red LED's in the baskets of the Audiobahn Eternal subwoofers, out of sight, where they make interesting light patterns on the fiberglass shell, controlled by the Varad controller.
	We made pods for each door to house an Audiobahn 7" video screen. Each was fabricated out of fiberglass, transitioning from the rectangular shape of the screen, to the odd shape of the upholstered factory pad that each pod replaces. Vinyl wrapped pods were made for the bottom of each door conforming to another factory shape, but each door was fully smoothed and painted as well.
	The back seat was replaced by a rack for two monster Audiobahn amplifiers, and a Carbon Dioxide bottle (not Nitrous) which feeds a spray-bar system mounted to a Sparco intercooler - part of two stages of SRT modifications above and beyond the already potent SRT-4 factory offerings. The rack was also wrapped in black vinyl, and contained other illumination tricks: The floor of the rack holds two black plexi windows, when illuminated, the shop logo appears. Between the two large amplifiers, a frosted panel was created with the Audiobahn logo, which is backlit by another pair of Varad LED's, also controlled by the Varad controller.
	In this shot, in addition to having a better look at the video screen pods, and the Audiobahn DVD head unit, but also the Audiobahn component set - which was installed with each midrange driver inverted, to create greater visual appeal, showing off the chromed basket structure. Also, at the bottom of each front door is the same shop logo illumination trick that was incorporated into the amp rack in the backseat area. A black plexiglass panel closes off an opening in the door that was formerly a storage pocket, with a black vinyl wrapped panel fitting a factory shape in the doorpanel below. A white Varad LED pattern kit was installed to illuminate each footwell as well.
	The final surprise for observers is the fiberglass pod located underhood, housing the fifth Audiobahn 7" screen. Also shown in this picture is yet another 4-piece Varad LED pattern kit, installed underhood. I again wish I could have captured the effects better, as it was pretty dramatic. All LED kits used in the car were hidden completely, so that only the illumination effects were visible.