TG’s rally car has been wrapped!

So less than a week on from announcing that the winner of the competition to design a livery for the Top Gear Hyundai i20 Rally car was Shabaz Bashir, things have moved on rather a lot.

As you might have read earlier this week, we've managed to get the 1.6-litre engine fitted and running, and now, largely thanks to the good people at materials specialist 3M and their nominated wrapping company, Joyce Design, we've got the car to here.

It's looking awesome. We've had to make a couple of small changes to Shabaz's original design, mainly because we needed it done so quickly, but his original design is translating very well on to the car. It's quite a process, wrapping. It'll take about 22 hours in total, and the attention to detail in lining up some fairly complex graphics and overlaying printed material with laminate to protect it, plus picking out the white in reflective so it'll shine brightly on Wales Rally GB's night stages, has kept three men very busy indeed.

Tomorrow is the launch event for Wales Rally GB, so that's where the car will be properly unveiled, but in the meantime have a look through this gallery of images to see what the chaps at Joyce Design have done to make our humbler Hyundai look like a proper rally weapon.