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As you all may know, 2nd Gen RX's suffer from the cracked dashboards.
The original owner of this vehicle did not bother to ask about a recall at the dealership. I bought the car with 33,000km (20,000 miles) exactly a year ago and I sometimes wondered to myself if they forgot that they even owned this thing for 14 years.
Given the fact that I live in the beautiful country of Lebanon, it's not that easy to trust any shop with reupholstery. We're all idiots and thieves here. Our dealership quoted me $1.5 grand for a full dash replacement. I found that pretty fair, but decided to shop around just for fun.
The most renowned shop, that mainly work on supercars, quoted around $2 grand for the job, with spot-on matching leather color.
Other average shops asked around $500, with no guarantee on the color being a 100% match. Few days later I found some that quoted me $300!
Then, an epiphany struck. Think of it as a TopGear challenge inspired experiment: How low can I go, completely disregarding the quality of the job, maybe butchering the resale value of the car? - What's the worst that can happen?
I began browsing through Google Places & Facebook, trying to find the lowest rated shop I could find. After a few phone calls with rather interesting fellows, one led me to a shop in a sketchy area known for car theft, militia, and god knows what. Beautiful.
I called my insurance, made sure that my car is covered for theft, left my wallet at home and followed the GPS coordinates that I was sent.
This "shop" literally quoted me $40! That's $40 for what I assume would be a 6 hour + job, INCLUDING the new "leather" that they'll use.
When I arrived, a man with an abundance of chest hair wearing an undergarment claimed that this was his shop, and repeatedly told me to hand him the keys. I told him that he sounded different on the phone but hey sure, have my keys!
He got in my car and parked it on the right, slammed my door, left the window open, and walked off yelling on his phone with a cigarette in his hand. Awesome. I ordered my Uber and left.
Halfway home, the gentleman I was initially speaking to calls and says that he arrived to the shop and is waiting for me. That's when my heart dropped. Holy *****, I literally handed my car to a thief on a golden platter. I deserve a medal for this.
I frantically headed back there, only to receive a call saying that the hairy Sasquatch that I handed my keys to was actually his neighbor, and all's good.
That night at around 2AM, I start getting a ton of pictures of the progress. Of course, he then calls me and wakes me up at around 2:30AM wondering why I'm not replying to the pictures. 5 stars for customer service lol.
I'll leave it up to all of you to be the judge. I was dumbfounded by how good of a job they've done. Color is perfect, the dash fitment is perfect, they even heat stamped the "SRS Airbag" logo! There are imperfections here and there but hey, I fixed my dash for the price of a full tank of gas.
In the event the passenger side air bag is triggered, will the leather allow it to inflate and expand??
I actually completely did not think of that.. Damn I guess that is the game changer. I'l give it a few more months before installing an OEM dash I guess
Wow, I'm impressed.......awesome job which can't be touched at that price.......Just the time & materials.....And you find a '06 gen2 w/ only 20k...
Exactly. The main reason why it was so cheap is due to the fact that my country is going through a major economic crisis. Our currency is being devalued every single day.
They charged me 300,000 LL (Lebanese Liras) for the job, which would equate to $200 before the economic criss.
Today, 300,000 LL = $38 as I'm writing this.
EDIT: I forgot to add, that all other shops / and the dealership require payments in US Dollars. This shop charged me in LL which was absolutely insane.
And yes, I struck gold with this car. The dealership confirmed that it's the lowest mileage example in the country!
Last edited by crz95; 09-25-20 at 12:17 AM.
Reason: Additional Information
[QUOTE=crz95;10900311]Exactly. The main reason why it was so cheap is due to the fact that my country is going through a major economic crisis. Our currency is being devalued every single day.
They charged me 300,000 LL (Lebanese Liras) for the job, which would equate to $200 before the economic criss.
Today, 300,000 LL = $38 as I'm writing this.
EDIT: I forgot to add, that all other shops / and the dealership require payments in US Dollars. This shop charged me in LL which was absolutely insane.
And yes, I struck gold with this car. The dealership confirmed that it's the lowest mileage example in the country!
Hopefully your hanging in there & doing ok, (prefer to say ''great'') but IDK.
09-24-20, 11:12 AM
I Upholstered My Dashboard for $40 + Labor?!
