Substitute for paint.

I've been reading a fair bit lately about the Ferdinand GT3 RSX, the world's most eco friendly car created in Austria by artist Hennes Langeder. The body is not painted but is wrapped in gold tape instead. This helps to reduce pollution as paint contains "certain volatile organic compounds which get released into the atmosphere and not only lead to air pollution but also is harmful to one's health".

Wrapping cars is what Simon Wills does with V8 SuperCars and the like in Adelaide and Neville Cooper does as an artform in Auckland. The graphics are created on the computer of course and turned out on sheets of vinyl from giant printers in the same manner that the Bolwell calendars are produced on the Motown printer. The resultant vinyl sheets are then applied to the entire car body. Here are some examples of these wrapped race cars.

I believe it is cheaper by a reasonable amount than painting the car white and stickering it and more detail can be put into it. Body wrap is lighter than paint in the long run. Body repairers in the old days would find paint up to 5mm thick as panels would get a light rub back and painted over the top, "which looked OK from a distance".