One of the Slate Truck’s main selling points, besides its low price, is its enormous customization potential, with options, features, and particularly wraps limited only by the owner’s imagination. It’s kind of like giving owners the classic Crayola 64-pack of crayons and telling them to go to town. That may be why Slate and Crayola have teamed up to bring a few of its colors and a bit of creative whimsy to the otherwise drab, gray truck.
According to Slate’s website, five special wraps are available in the same colors as Crayola’s Dandelion, Razzmatazz, Cerulean, Jersey Tomato, and Fern crayons. That’s a far cry from the broad palette of the 64-pack (and the cult classic Burnt Sienna is nowhere to be found), but these are some of Crayola’s most popular colors. I personally appreciate that they’re all bright, loud colors, something to break up the 50 shades of gray that dominate the road these days. In addition to the wrap, you also get some Crayola decals reminiscent of the crayons for the mirrors and rocker panels, a Crayola dashboard badge, and a special key fob matching the color you choose. On the surface, it looks like a great way to express your artistic side or keep in touch with your inner child.
All that glitters is not Crayola Gold Medal
Digging a little deeper adds a bit of Burnt Sienna to the picture. Adding a Crayola wrap to your Slate will also add $1,549.99 to the purchase price. In comparison, a full wrap in one of the standard colors costs $499.99. While an off-the-shelf color won’t be a perfect match for Dandelion, it will save $1,050, which would go a long way toward other customizations.
Another issue is that even a high-quality, professionally installed satin wrap such as this will only last for four to six years. That means you’ll be paying $250 or more per year for the honor of having a Crayola color and branding on your Slate, only to have to replace or at least remove it when it wears out. Tony Angelo recently DIY painted his V12-swapped Mustang for $247. That should last not only longer than a wrap, but possibly longer than the rest of the car. So if you’re on a budget, it’s good to know that you can get pretty creative even with cheap paint jobs, such as Junkyard Digs’ flag Fox Body painted with a similar method.
The Slate/Crayola collab is more about the branding than the colors themselves. Some partnerships, like Ford and Eddie Bauer, are iconic, while others fell a bit short. I appreciate what Slate and Crayola are trying to do here, but tripling the price of a wrap for a unique color that will only last a few years just doesn’t seem worth it to me.
