I have to admit, I'm not a fan of how much chrome is on Model S. Here's a pix from Design Studio: I particularly don't like the big chrome window surround, especially since the pillar between the front and doors is already "black chrome." A little bit of Photoshop and I get: Which I think is much better. It even makes the dark grey performance wheels work.
I think the chrome accents stick out a lot on those design studio pictures. But I don't think any of the real life photos make it look bad. I would have to see a car in real life to make a final judgement.
The chrome under the door bothered me, but the window trim is fine IMO. It looks *kinda* cool without it, but better with it IMO. That's something you can do aftermarket too.
FWIW, it was seeing the first black Model S beta that made me concerned. The black with the chrome looks like it was designed in the 1990s to my eye.
Google "justin bieber fisker" and then tell Tesla that the Model S has too much chrome. ;-) I think they struck a good balance. Chrome is a nice and fairly unusual touch these days.
+1 smorgasbord. I too dislike the exterior excess chrome (and the interior excess chrome for that matter). I do like the homogenous matte black around the windows, strip at the bottom. Makes the car look quite mean! The Red Perf with dark wheels is the configuration I'm leaning towards, but I guess the dechroming will have to be an aftermarket job.
I'm getting the Sig Red performance and ended up getting the silver wheels. I didn't even think about the aftermarket options for the chrome. I agree, your photoshop job looks much better. Maybe they could make that trip CF as well or maybe a matte black. The carbon wheels would look much better.
Agreed, the de-chroming will give a sportier edge to the performance. BMW has done this for a while now, called their "Shadowline trim", and reserved for sports/performance models.
I think dsm363 has the right idea. Because of the chrome we are getting Silver wheels on our Blue Performance. Without the chrome we would have gotten the grey wheels. Smorg, redo your design studio w/ silver wheels and the chrome blends in a lot better.
Any chrome is too much, in my opinion. It's a relic from the 1950s. I see cars all the time with chrome around the windows and they look so tacky--particularly black cars. About the best you can do is get silver so that it doesn't show as much.
I made this graphic to try to decide between silver and performance. Silver = flashy, Performance = sinister