Behind the Wrap: Turning a White Ski Gondola Red

Why we don’t repaint

The Ski Gondola display prop isn’t a replica. It’s a genuine 4-seater cabin that ran on the Grand Massif slopes above Samoëns in Haute-Savoie and later at Courchevel, built in the 1970s and restored by our team in 2025. Its original white and alpine grey livery is part of what makes it read as authentic the moment someone walks up to it.

Painting it red would have solved one client’s brief and permanently altered a piece of ski history. So our standing approach to any custom colour request on a heritage prop is the same: the change has to be completely reversible.

That means vinyl. For this project we specified Avery Dennison Supreme Wrapping Film in Gloss Cardinal Red – O [BP114001] — a cast film with the conformability needed for deep compound curves, and a clean-removal adhesive that lifts off without pulling gelcoat or leaving residue behind.

Days 1–2: the part nobody photographs

Here’s the thing most people get wrong about wrapping — the wrap is only ever as good as what happens before it.

We spent two days on preparation before a single roll came out. The gondola was broken down into its individual panels and sections: door skins, roof, window surrounds, body shell. Every component was cleaned, degreased and inspected. On a fifty-year-old fibreglass shell that means dealing with decades of micro-texture, old fixing points, and edges that were never designed with vinyl in mind.

Wrapping a prop in situ is possible. Wrapping it properly is not. Disassembly is what lets you take the film around an edge and terminate it out of sight, which is the difference between a finish that looks factory-applied and one that looks like a sticker.

Preparation is also where you decide where the film will fail if it’s going to. Every tight radius, every recess, every point where two panels meet got assessed and planned before application began.

Days 3–5: heat, tension, patience

A 1970s gondola shell is about as demanding as vehicle wrapping gets. Modern car panels are engineered with relatively predictable curvature. This cabin has bulbous fibreglass forms, pronounced door apertures and window surrounds that curve in two directions at once.

Each section was wrapped by hand — heated, stretched into the contour, worked down, then post-heated to lock the film’s memory so it wouldn’t creep back and lift on the tight radii days later. That post-heat step is the one people skip, and it’s the one that decides whether a wrap survives an eight-hour install day under venue lighting.

Three days of application. Then reassembly, and a cabin that read as a factory-red gondola from every angle.