Quote Originally Posted by stovens View Post
At the last car show here locally, a guy had a 57 Chevy 2 door in twotone green. He took it to Maaco and provided his own paint. They did a beautiful job and color sanded followed by clear coating. He said it was about 3500.00 Mind you he did all the prep and provided the paint. He said there was still a bit to do for around 1500.00 more. I think the comment of going to the cheap fast paced centers is valid. They may use cheap product, but they do know how to paint! For me I'll never pay 10k for paint, because I have way to many things that need to be done that I can't afford that for a weekend driver. But I can tell you summit is selling paint and clear coat, etc. that one of the hotrod magazines featured a few years ago. The paint isn't expensive, and it's suppose to be good quality. One of the guys at the Nevada store, showed me his car, that he painted with it. It looked fantastic to me. I bought their paint for when I paint my truck, but meanwhile the air quality laws changed in this part of California, to where it would be illegal to spray here. 45 minutes north of here it is still leagal! So I guess when the time comes, I'll go to a Maaco far enough north to get it sprayed!
I'm not advocating buying cheap stuff, or low quality, because in the end you will get what you pay for, but it depends on what you can afford and living within your means. Do the best you can with what you can. Many people on here have built some fine cars for reasonable budgets. Will they be featured in GOODGUYS, probably not, but who cares. As long as your happy with it, then it's good enough. In this economy it's a miracle people have 20k for a paintjob!
Amen to that, though I can understand it with some peoples show vehicles that I've seen. I would LOVE to go get myself a paint job done in a house of color paint or some of those PPG hughes, THAT I can understand paying a good amount of money to have done. I can also understand someone bringing in a rust bucket and needing a ton of body work, I can see this running 20 grand.

I cannot myself justify spending probably anymore than 5k on my paint job, I dont need awesome paint though I would like it. Im fairly young (28) and do not make a ton of money, its this kind of thing that scares my generation away from this hobby. That and they do not know much about it, hence the reason you see a kid with 15k in his motor in an eclipse, a car thats now worth 1000 bucks.