How to tell if a car is 'Premium'

  • Thread starter Thread starter acjy1985
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I noticed if you can see the rear view mirror though the windshield clearly it's more than likely modeled. The gallery is the only sure way to tell though.
 
You can also tell it by changing to interior view, but that of course forces you to buy the car.
 
The way I tell is that the glass in premium cars are more clear and easy to see through. Also the shutline details (the line separating doors, line separating the boot and bumper etc.) seems to pop on premiums while standards have more opaque glass and the shutlines appear flat on most of them.
 
Premium - gallery view available
Updated standard - gallery view unavailable, interior possibly darkened, but otherwise premium. Good "tells" are highly visible polygonation (well-updated standards won't have it) and whether the panel gaps are part of the mesh or just textured on (looking at them under a bright reflection might help but this isn't alwasy 100% reliable - note that textured-on panel gaps are often wider, darker, and more jagged than 3D panel gaps). Note that the quality of the updating seems to vary a lot - the AE86's seem to have had a bit of work done to them, but the Levin's headlights and the Trueno S.S.'s wheels still look standard. Lastly, you can just sort of tell by the look of them - standards will have a sort of "one-piece" look to them, and may have a brighter, almost chintzy-looking sheen to them.
 
Or just look at the model to see if it even has an interior modeled, if it's more than just the wing and you see a colored interior, you got a premium. In convertibles it's easier to tell because the roof's down, so yay for the Miata/S2K fans out there I guess.
 
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