A few days ago I saw a car in my apartment complex completely covered in transparent plastic film. Probably static cling film, not heat-shrink. The wheels were missing and the car was sitting on jack stands. This morning the film was removed and the wheels were back on, but I saw the steering wheel was covered with film. Why would someone do this? If it’s for long-term storage, why remove the wheels in the apartment parking lot? If it’s a prank, why go to the trouble of covering the steering wheel?
I understand that people used to put their cars ‘on blocks’ for long-term storage. I think the idea was to avoid flat spots on the tires.
But they wouldn’t remove the wheels, would they? Even if they did, I think they would do it at the storage facility, not at the apartment. (The car definitely wasn’t being stored in the apartment parking lot - the car wasn’t there a week ago, or at least it wasn’t wrapped, and now it’s already unwrapped.)
In Practical Sailor magazine, this practice has come up (for winter storage of boats.) The editors did not recommend it, as it seals in moisture. That would seem to be a bad thing for car storage, too.
It is a hi tech version of TPing a guys car. Wrap the damn thing in shrink wrap. Brilliant! 
I read an article in a classic car magazine that, while not mentioning shrink wrap, advised putting pouches of dessicant in the footwells.
Have you by any chance seen Christo lurking around your apartment building? It sounds like the kind of thing he would do. Stay calm, don’t panic, you’ll be fine. Unless gigantic umbrellas suddenly start appearing later this week–those things are dangerous if it gets windy!
[Hijack]A car in shrink wrap huh? Sounds kinda fetishy to me. I once saw a vehicle in downtown Phoenix that I presume was from the nearby GM test facility and it was apparently disguised. Have you seen a car bra? Those black vinyl things that cover the nose of a car to prevent stone chips in the paint. Now imagine a large SUV with every square inch of sheet metal covered in shiny black naugahyde and zippers with only openings for windows, lights and a mesh cover for the grill. It looked like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction*.
Has this car been on the lot before? One reason to shrink wrap a car is if you are having it shipped. Shipping companies charge a lot more to put a car in a covered carrier, so you can save yourself a bundle if you wrap the car up and ship it in an uncovered carrier. Maybe someone had the car wrapped (and maybe stored for a while), shipped to your location, then got around to unwrapping it a few days later.
The only other reason I can think of to shrink wrap a car is that some sort of crime occured, and the police wanted to seal the car. Usually they cart the car off to the crime lab after wrapping it though. I can’t imagine them leaving it wrapped up in the parking lot.
At the Indiana State Fair last year, there was a booth from a firm that sells spray-on linings for pickup truck beds. They had a truck that looked a little odd from fifteen feet away. Up close, you could see that the entire body had been coated with the spray-on liner stuff.
There’s a local Rhino Liner distributor in town. They added two horns to the bonnet of a VW Beetle, ears on the hard top, and a little tail on the deck lid, and sprayed the whole thing with dark grey Rhino Liner. It’s really cute. 
[sub]FWIW, the car appears to be just a shell and wheels.[/sub]
Maybe it was a newborn car, still in the bag? Did you notice a largish metallic placenta nearby?
I don’t know if it was there before - it’s not exactly a distinctive or fancy car. A 4-door Honda Civic, I believe. I suppose it could have been shipped, but why remove the wheel, and why not re-attach the wheel before unloading?
I’m leaning towards the prank theory.
The car looked to be a few years old. It did have a Jesus fish on it though, maybe it was born again.
Maybe it’s a really big Matchbox car. They always come wrapped in plastic.
It was not me this time.
I have on a few occasions wrapped a car in clear wrappings. I have done so in the huntsville city limits.
Originally I did this to a co-workers car, since he closed the bar down, then sat around and drank till dawn. Nothing worse that having D— greet you at the door drunk as a skunk. So, one night I took the super large resturant sized roll of saran wrap and wrapped his car up.
Everyone at the resturant thought it was fun so we did it again to someone elses car.
I am glad to see someone is carrying on the tradition.
It was a creative way of messing with someone without doing damage.
So, considering the geographical location and such there is a strong chance I had something to do with it.
Leather and zippers, huh? That must have been the high-class version. Coming south on the 101 from Scottsdale evenings, I used to see about once a week a smallish SUV-oid shape covered not with naugahyde, but burlap. It had Michigan mfr plates on it so, like you, I figured it was a fugitive from the test facility. The burlap looked like it was glued directly to the sheetmetal, and some of the leading edges had lifted a little. Not fancy at all.
DD
:eek:
Did you ever remove the wheels as well?
Not at the same time. Once we did jack up his car. take the tires off then rest the car down on top of them.
This is the same poor soul whom I tormented by going by his house every day, unlock his car, adjust his rear view mirror then lock the car back.
After a month he was parinoid about his rear view mirror and would constantly check it
Ok so I am a bastard.
When Vancouver (Canada) bought a bunch of new cars for the Skytrain transit extension a few years ago, they arrived neatly gift-wrapped in nice blue plastic. I rode the train right by every day on my way to work; for months there were usually one or two parked outside.