FWIW, the windows say "minimum 70% VLT" which means of course it could be higher. And maybe are?
When the out-of-state dealership I bought my car from included (required) doing the window tinting pre-delivery, I was leery of failing my state inspection which requires 70% VLT in the front (even for rear passenger windows) and told them to make sure whatever tint the did would be at 70% in the end, but to put 35% tint film on the rear hatch and the pillar cutout windows.
Since you guys said it was 70% from the factory, I assumed this meant they'd left my passenger windows alone.
When I got the car, I thought my passenger windows looked a little tinted, but figured "I guess that's what 70% looks like?" Since in the past I've tinted to "darker than legal but not
that dark" in the front (adding 50% tint film), until two years ago when I got ticketed and failed inspection for that (had to remove it).
Anyway, after passing inspection, I went to a local tint shop last week to add a 20% glare strip "eyebrow" tint to my windshield, and to see if I could get away with darkening my passenger windows after inspection to around, say, 50% net by adding 70% film (70% x 70% = 49%). But he immediately said, "well, it looks like it's 50% already to me". And indeed, they measured to 56% VLT.
So the factory tint on my car must have been around 80% and the dealership just used 70% tint film (instead of "ending on 70%" as I'd asked), because 70% film x 80% stock = 56%.
That, or it was 70% from the factory and they had some 80% film which is the same math in reverse. Most shops carry a lineup of 90% / 70% / 50% / 20% / 5%, but I think 3M film does come in 80% too?
But my best guess is, they wrote down "passenger windows to 70%" and handed it off to someone else for tinting who just slapped 70% tint on (probably thinking it was pointlessly light, too), which would mean the factory tint is more like 80% VLT.
Anyway I had passed inspection with this setup despite being "technically illegal", probably because the car was brand new from the dealership and looked stock (so lightly tinted) so they probably didn't do the actual measurement. Heh. Gonna remember where I went to for that.
And you know what? I like it. It looks perfectly nice in shadow, on a cloudy day, or at night. It's only in direct daylight that the windows look clear. And it's not like I live in a sunny desert!
Parked in the shade in the daytime:
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And street parked in direct sunlight, after adding the windshield "eyebrow" and the sunroof shade pulled over, it's "tastefully darkened" (dare I say, "elegantly" darkened?):
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(BTW the six inches shaved off the car length in the hatchback vs. the sedan sure helps with the street parking in NYC. An Audi A4 struggled and then gave up trying to parallel park there, not me!)
