Someone at mycar Tyre & Auto sat in a meeting and said: “What if we covered a car in human skin?” And apparently nobody left.
The result is the Sunburnt Car — unveiled at Sydney’s Circular Quay on March 31.
The entire interior has been reupholstered in UV-reactive synthetic skin.
Seats, panels, everything. It reddens under ultraviolet exposure. There are individually placed hairs, freckles, and moles — some deliberately resembling the kind a dermatologist would want a closer look at. It is, by any reasonable measure, a lot.
The fabrication went to ODD Studio, a Marrickville prosthetics outfit with Oscar and Bafta wins.
The science came from Dr Joanneke Maitz, a burns surgeon at Concord Hospital.
Her finding: standard car glass does nothing useful against UVA rays — the type that skips the visible burning and goes straight to DNA damage. You’re essentially just outside.
Why does a tyre shop care? Because mycar’s research found 70% of Australians think they’re protected from the sun inside a car. They’re not.
Some 39% didn’t know windows fail to block UV. Yet 92% consider themselves “sun safe.” Australia has the world’s highest melanoma rates.
Here’s where mycar Tyre & Auto plugs a product. It offers free Sun Spot UV-detecting stickers at 275-plus mycar locations across Australia.
Stranger things have been parked at Circular Quay. Few have had a point quite this hard to argue with.
