I know Fluffy Auto Boutique (FAB) aims to make cars look fab but even we were stunned at this awesome piece of work. The car was a collaboration between stylist Luisa Beccaria and Citroen. Mmmm is that gear knob available anywhere….
Despite the efforts of car manufacturers and designers, all of the vehicles they’ve provided for society in the last 60 years are pretty much uniform in appearance (inside and out). You’d be forgiven for confusing your own set of wheels for dozens of others in Asda’s car park on a Saturday afternoon. Economy of scale and cost of production prevents car manufacturers from making anything too radical, since it either will not sell in droves or they haven’t the bottle to launch something that really stands out from the rest (save for Renault with their Megane with the ‘big arse’ - it’s major selling point in the TV ad).
Unless you’re unnecessarily wealthy bordering on the obscene (a la Simon Cowell, Roman Abramovich, the Sultan of Brunei), you will likely own an ‘off-the-peg’ car. The days are long gone where you could purchase a rolling chassis and engine from Alvis, then pay a coachbuilder (Mulliner or Parker Ward) a King’s ransom for the body-style and interior of your dreams, no matter how opulent or ostentatious. Us mere mortals therefore have to content ourselves with personalising our own bag of bolts ourselves in order to make them unique to our (sometimes highly questionable) tastes.
Having learnt my lesson from my first car - as mentioned in a previous article - I stick firmly to placing the odd dangly ornament from the rear view mirror, or a window adhesive displaying where my football allegiances lay. This is all well and good, but my younger son took a particular shine to a soft toy penguin I had dangling from the windscreen a few years ago (if my memory serves me correctly, it was of one of the characters from the cartoon film ‘Madagasar’), and upon exiting my little Citroen one Sunday afternoon decided there and then he wanted it, he had to have it, he could not live his life beyond that point without it. So he grabbed it, pulled, and got out of my car - taking the penguin with him - AND the rear view mirror. Not having learnt my lesson the first time, I hung a dangly Elvis from same point a while later (an item I’d purchased in Florida whilst on holiday), and you won’t be that surprised to learn that went the same way - along with the rear view mirror once again.
But his antics don’t stop there - Perry has a penchant for altering the location / position of my window stickers, resulting in the Coventry City Football Club crest regularly being upside down and back-to-front in my rear window. This undoubtedly causes much hilarity and amusement to motorists following me in traffic - not just due to the strange positions of the graphics in said window, but the basic fact I’m brazen enough to publicly declare to the entire world I’m a supporter of the Sky Blues (and be proud of it too).
As for other decals on the rear of vehicles, a huge boom in this fad began in the late eighties, when no self-respecting owner of a ’hot-hatch’ wouldn’t be without an enormous transfer in the rear window displaying ’XR3i’, ’GTi’, ’MG’ or ’205’. These graphics were hardly discrete, taking up the entire glass area, thereby resulting in vision at best becoming incredibly restricted. By the mid-nineties, they had (thankfully) died a death as common sense and good taste prevailed, however after a brief look-see on eBay, I found it’s still possible to procure a brand new, still in packet example.
Another graphic that became a regular sight and went through a ‘flash in the pan’ phase, was the infamous ‘splat’ seen plastered across many a bonnet or boot lid. Whilst it was quite amusing seen adorned upon car bodywork when first conceived, the idea soon became monotonous and a victim of it’s own popularity, as every other Escort and Golf on all street corners had this image stuck on them. Depending upon what colour the ‘splat’ was, it gave the respective vehicle the distinct appearance it had either a) been ‘shat on’ by a low flying pterodactyl, b) been parked a smidge too close to an over-exuberant children’s birthday party just as the blancmange throwing began or possibly c) some kind member of society staggering around in the ether after closing time, suddenly found they could contain themselves no longer and had to reintroduce the civilised world to the excessive alcohol consumption they’d sank, as they generously chundered across your paintwork.
Back during the eighties, various companies would take your common or garden Sierra / Cavalier / Maestro etc and add on a reasonably sporty looking skirt and spoiler kit, plus ‘faded’ transfers along the flanks. They looked quite the business, infinitely better than what the Maestro originally appeared as in the first place when it emerged out of Long bridge - that is if you didn’t mind the car being re-appointed in polar white, pastel lemon or powder blue.
These companies would also supply body kits and graphics to the D.I.Y enthusiast who wished to personalise their own motor at home on a budget. Sadly, like all projects we undertake with our own fair hands, they never quite result in the end product appearing entirely the same as when a professionally qualified tradesman does the task.
During the last few years, it’s become the trend to place an image upon the spare wheel cover hanging on the back door of a 4×4. My, how we laughed when we saw the comedy pic of two rhinos copulating on a Suzuki Vitara, then cringed as we tried our utmost to explain said vista to our eight year old child in the most innocent, Songs of Praise style. Then, how sad we considered the Welsh / Scottish flag and the other mumbo-jumbo pasted across spare wheels of Shoguns in Bromsgrove.
The crux of the matter here is everyday cars need that certain little something to make them unique to ourselves, just like our homes are. Even with the economic climate as it currently is, motorists still strive for that elusive feature to make their pride and joy echo part of their personality, rather than the ego of the post-graduate who designed the vehicle sitting in Coventry University’s Automotive Design Studio. But as a closing thought, take heed of a girl I used to know during my time at University - she had acquired and affixed so many Jaguar and Daimler emblems to the rear hatch of her Metro, it was truly a sight to behold in bad taste and over the top personalisation. I did tell her she was probably burning a good extra half a gallon of fuel per week just to cart around the extra weight!!!!
Stuart Tidman September 2009
You don’t have to have a VW Beetle to have a flower in your car now! Have a look at the beautiful Autovase Car Vase from Fluffy Auto Boutique. We love this little vase here at FAB.
As long as the dashboard has an airvent this autovase will fit well.
The Vase clips onto your car’s air vent and the clip rotates for horizontal or vertical vents. It also adjusts up or down the glass tube and can also be removed from the vase for cleaning.
The metal holder comes in a choice of silver or black.
You can see how it looks with the flowers in if you have a look at FAB.
If you think back to the time when we passed our driving tests and then had our first motor, you’ll no doubt remember it was - not to put too fine a point on it - a complete and utter heap. For some completely irrational and unfathomable reason with no realistic hope of success whatsoever, a good percentage of us decided to ‘personalise’ or ‘customise’ said bag of bolts to our own warped tastes. This is all well and good if it’s simply adding a set of mud flaps, pair of fog lights, even new seat covers, but sadly it goes way beyond this into the realms of ’For goodness sake……………….’
Modern science and psychiatry has yet to fully establish why this particular affliction seems to be more predominantly found in the male of our species. From my own personal experience, this is actually quite (and embarrassingly) true. I did some horrendous things to my first car - a bright custard yellow 1975 Vauxhall Chevette that in hindsight I should’ve been beaten about my person with a cricket bat which had six inch nails inserted through it for my crimes against motoring good taste and common sense.
In my defence, the interior of the Chevette was boring beyond mind-numbing tedium - faeces brown vinyl, peculiar khaki-tartan upholstery that in retrospect the Burberry company would now be ecstatically proud of, and finished off with carpet that very shade of brown you only ever see on the fur of stray, mongrel dogs. To my late-teenage mind back then, this just was not socially acceptable. I didn’t have a love-life as such back then, but this would’ve terminated it altogether. Something different was desperately required.
First of all, the upholstery. I found a pair of front seats in a Coventry breaker’s yard - infinitely more comfortable that the originals in the Chevette (these replacements had head-rests too), plus being from a Mk.1 Cavalier / Opel Ascona (stable mates of the same era) I assumed the fittings would be identical to my little car. What do you know - they weren’t!!! I established this as I endeavoured and toiled to install them. The only way these seats would fit was by removing the anchoring assembly from the original seats and somehow fix it to these replacements. A very frustrating Sunday afternoon ensued, with several blooded knuckles, many choice words that would’ve made Gordon Ramsay seriously impressed, and my father questioning my sanity on numerous occasions.
The other slight problem was the colour of these ex-Cavalier seats - the exact same hue as a Persian blue feline. I purchased a black set of covers from Halfords but being made from Nylon meant I could see the old upholstery through the covers. It looked vile. Mind you, it was my own fault for purchasing a more inexpensive collection. And my disappointment didn’t end there either - the set did not include head rest covers, and I was totally unable to source anything suitable - so Mother made me a pair!!! That’s right, homemade head rest covers!! At least it was something to talk about to a date as I was driving her home, should a girl ever be brave enough to be seen dead inside an insipid yellow car.
And finally, if these replacement seats hadn’t been enough of a headache, they were too wide for my Chevette. To put this into perspective, if I shut the driver’s door a tad too firmly, the passenger door would fly open immediately. Perhaps they weren’t ex-Cavalier seats at all - possibly from or something bigger, for example a Carlton or Opel Commodore.
When the seats were removed from the car, I also tore out the worn carpet. I had my eye on a nice new black carpet but the purse strings wouldn’t stretch to this sadly. Mum and Dad came to my aid again, by giving me a reasonable size off-cut from what they had their stairs layed in. The only snag was this new carpet I’d inherited was the same colour as weetabix - brown again!!!!! Still, the old saying is you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so into the Vauxhall it went.
Installing this wasn’t without it’s tribulations either, as proper car carpet is a ‘cord’ weave and quite thin. This was household carpet. Four times the thickness. I think for the rest of it’s useful life, it was the carpet and adhesive that was holding certain parts of the chassis together in the correct places.
I do believe it’s rather self-explanatory why in the four years I owned and drove this car, I only ever had three dates. What a babe magnet, eh?
My girlfriend, Annette, ironically enough also had an old Vauxhall for her first set of wheels - a 1972 Viva HC. Obviously she was as thrilled as the rest of us at gaining her motoring freedom upon passing her driving test, but faced with the prospect of driving an aging car from the early seventies she did add something to the interior herself to personalise it - a magic tree air freshener.
Annette did the direct opposite of me (no doubt having infinitely more common sense and better things to spend her time, money and patience on), leaving her Viva as it was, keeping it the same as when it left Ellesmere Port. She simply began saving for her next motor, not bothering with insignificant cosmetic adjustments to a car she clearly wasn’t going to hang onto.
Once Annette had amassed enough necessary, she purchased a Mk.1 Ford Fiesta XR2i - a car sporty enough for her tastes, that didn’t need any personalisation in the vein of the criminal acts I’d performed upon my Vauxhall (save for magic tree). She could look stylish, modern, a bit of a ‘girl racer’, but had seen sense and not pillaged the accessory section in Halfords for items that just add weight to your car and serve no productive contribution to it’s performance.
Now, as a fully-fledged ‘proper’ grown up, I frown upon seeing any car that’s carrying ‘bling’ and been customised to within an inch of it’s life. It took me a good quarter of an hour the other day to work out underneath the spoilers, tinted windows, pointless over sized rally bucket seats and hideous alloys was a Citroen Saxo. But it may have been a Corsa. Or a Clio for that matter.
Praise the Lord common sense and good taste prevail eventually - bar those members of society who purchase a Fiat 500 with it’s high usage aimed white / beige interior!!!!
Stuart Tidman August 2009
FAB (Fluffy Auto Boutique) is proud to have styled the New Fiesta, Focus Cabriolet, and New Kuga at Polar Ford’s recent Swish Party Ladies Event. 
During the SWISH Party the cars became the shopping trolleys and each boot was labelled with ‘accessories’, ‘bags’, or ’shoes’. Clothes were hung up next to each car and organised into sizes.
A whistle was blown as we all lined up, ready to run towards our fav items.
FAB used the new Autovase car vase and added flowers and feathers to co-ordinate with the car’s paintwork. Here’s a few of the flowers we used:
Cab (N)
From Cabriolet….the enclosed driver’s compartment of a vehicle….
Usually they’re just dull, dull dull! We’ve gotta fluffen them up a bit!
Fluffy Hearts Air Freshener
Gerbera daisies 
have long been associated with the Volkswagen Beetle and its dashboard bud vase. This car was the first to have a flower bud vase included as standard with the car itself. However, with the growth in availability of car accessories for females over the past two years, it looks like flowers and vases are now being produced for all makes of cars, not just the VW Beetle. I’ve got a bunch of purple feathers in my Golf GTI 
If I was going to have a flower I think it would probably be a large sunflower because I think these flowers are like the lions of the flower world and they make me smile everytime I see one. 
What flower have you got in your car?
Mini’s, Beetle’s, Suzuki’s, Fiat’s, Fiesta’s… they’re all getting the makeover treatment at the moment and things are getting pretty hot out there. Female Car style and Car Styling is no longer the domain of boy racers. The girls have grabbed the baton now and we’re getting braver with each step forward. Car flowers, roof graphics, car jewellery, aerial toppers, valve caps, steering wheel covers….
We’re adding colour to the bland grey world of motoring.
Female Car Styling … it’s happening … now.
Something is happening in the motoring world. A miniature adventure is evolving into a national craze.
Cars are getting the makeover treatment, girl-power style. No longer are we settling for the dull grey/black interiors and limited choice of exterior colour. It’s not quite ‘Pimp My Ride’, but we’re definitely making cars look both fluffy and fierce.
These two pics come from www.sjbaker.org
This latest craze for customisation seems to have started around the same time as BMW’s launch of the New Mini in 2001. In the dealer’s showroom we discovered that the Mini had a vast range of accessories and options available. We could shop for our car like we would for shoes, bags and jewellery to go with a main outfit. Accessorising and colour co-ordination are important to many females, but car buying has never really a place where this has been accepted. Usually if you asked a dealer what colour options were available for a car you got a patronising laugh or comment, but the Mini dealerships seemed to understand the desire to customise and stamp your individual style onto your vehicle. The Mini is our British equivalent of the VW Beetle: a small, fun car that we love to keep and make unique.
But you don’t have to have a Mini to get involved in the customising craze. Buying a small car and personalising it seems to be a particular trend at the moment, especially amongst females. Here’s a mad but awesome example from this year’s Car Styling and Tuning Show at Donington Park, Leicestershire.
There are now many stores, both online and in the high street where you can buy accessories and graphics to liven up your motor whatever model or age it may be. Even Asda and Wilkinsons have started to cater for the female motorist, and you can now locate the motoring section of these stores by looking out for the pink aisle! That’s a definite shift, from almost no colour to just one colour – but it’s a step in the right direction.
Sunday 23rd November 2008 17:03pm
Sat 2nd August 2008 at the Excel Centre, London:
Ok well it was actually just the London Motor Show but I saw similarities between a Fashion show with its catwalk and stunning statement pieces, and the motor show with the cars as unattainable, desirable models, turning for us on their rotating pedestals.
Most of the car companies had a tempting, beautifully-lit Concept Car on display. These aren’t for sale but they do highlight upcoming trends. Favs at the show were Kia’s Soul Diva and Soul Burner models. 
Bling bling bling (white and gold) for the Soul Diva, and geekchic (matt black and firebox orange) for the Soul Burner model.
I’m excited by these cars because they tell me that car companies are realising that the same-old colours and dark grey interiors are not of interest to everyone. Some of us want a little bit of style with our colour, flair and function, rather than just form and function.
The matt black paint of the Kia Burner was also used by Brabus at the show. These paints are said to be undetectable by speed cameras – woohoo!! Not sure if it is true though.
Other cars of note were the graffiti Toyota Aygo,
and the pinked-out Suzuki Alto. Have a look at Fluffy Scenes, which one do you like?
Miss Fluffy 08/08/08
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