Thanks for the inputs guys, I gave this decision months of thought and research before I pulled the trigger on the skids, and even then I was a little unsure. It's good to see that our membership seems to share my conflictions.

A couple of quick thoughts:
  • I don't have my roof rack mounted most of the time, and since the plates go on the front and back rather than on the sides, the matching/contrasting effect to the roof rack and Borbets is not as big as you might think.
  • I generally aim for my mods to be subtle and have a factory accessory quality/look to them. I want my plates to "pop" in the sense that they look great, but not so much as to be gaudy or detract from the VX's already beautiful lines/look.
  • I've given a lot of thought to powder coating the rack, my OEM rims, etc., but I worry about being a little too "matchy-match" by having everything so tightly coordinated. Some contrast is a good thing, although paint v. cladding v. silver rack v. chrome rims is way too much. Hence the reason the Borbets haven't come off the truck since I put them on a year ago.

Here are a few pics that I studied in trying to make a decision:

Gene's matching skid plate looks great:


Then again so does John's:


But this pic was probably the deciding factor. Granted it's not entirely fair to try and compare anybody's VX against Gene's, but this pic at least helped me to determine that I did not want the strong contrast of a light "Silvertone" even if it did match my rims and roof rack. (Also note how much more the faux studs stand-out on a dark-colored plate.)


Personally I think that a darker silver/gray or paint-match will look best on a Foxfire in general, but since the darker gray wouldn't match my rims, I decided to go paint-matched instead. One of the frustrations that I had with this site early on was that for all the amazing pictures of mods that are in our galleries, very few of them had ever been attempted (or at least photographed) on a Foxfire. So this thread (and hopefully Sue's once she gets her's installed) should help others to make the decision in the future. Here are consecutive pics to make the comparison easier (keep in mind the lighting is different in the two pics).