A decent paintjob requires disassembly of the car. I paid $3000 for a good paintjob on my daily driven Honda.
I paid $12,000 for the paintjob on my old Ford, but that included a bunch of bodywork, and the materials alone were $2500.
Paint was PPG on both cars...
I think you should budget at least $5K for a halfway decent paint job. If you have any rust to repair or start customizing things, it will only go up.
Don't cheap out on materials like primer, paint and clear either. You won't save very much money cutting corners on materials. The bodywork / labor is where you spend all the money.
Quick replay my self in the garage, cost about $750. Other car is being done at a shop, and it is coming up to be in $10k range(most of the car apart and color change). For a daily driver to refresh at a glance, garage paint job worked just fine.
Depends a lot on where you live, but if anyone quotes you any less than $3k it's probably inferior work and materials.
I've painted several of my own, and using budget materials alone the cost was over $1k for just the paint and supplies. I wouldn't use any lower cost materials than that, and labor is your biggest cost anyway.
The new paintjob plus bodywork and new rims for my trans am costed me $3,500 all in.....I got the car for $500 which was mechanically decent but definitely got rust problems especially the pillars. See what I got for my money in the video below.
I had mine done by a guy who does $30k paint jobs. He is booked for showcar and collector car work over 1 year out...
I got a deal because of connections from when I used to work in Autobody. He said it would have been a $10k job but I paid significantly less. He said if I paid cash and bought all the parts, decals, etc he’d give me a deal.
It looks factory fresh and correct with no overspray, tape lines and no texture issues you see on cars they people get resprayed cheaply. If anything I feel like they did too good a job because it’s obviously better than factory paint and it has serious clearcoat on it...
My car was already pretty mint and didn’t need any bodywork. When I got the car it had 29.9k miles and just had chips on the front end and hood and some spider cracks on the lower spoiler... I was just going to do the front clip but he thought the car was really nice and talked me into restoring the exterior. He calls what he does “restoration” not just painting. He said “you can get a paint job for $2k, I restore cars”
Most people would not have painted my car... the original paint was fine... I worked for years detailing cars and I like perfect paint. I wanted perfection over originality to be able to enjoy this car. It could have been more like $15k if I had rust and needed bodywork...
They were able to save the original emblems and left the jams alone with the Factory decals...
I had mine done by a guy who does $30k paint jobs. He is booked for showcar and collector car work over 1 year out...
I got a deal because of connections from when I used to work in Autobody. He said it would have been a $10k job but I paid significantly less. He said if I paid cash and bought all the parts, decals, etc he’d give me a deal.
It looks factory fresh and correct with no overspray, tape lines and no texture issues you see on cars they people get resprayed cheaply. If anything I feel like they did too good a job because it’s obviously better than factory paint and it has serious clearcoat on it...
My car was already pretty mint and didn’t need any bodywork. When I got the car it had 29.9k miles and just had chips on the front end and hood and some spider cracks on the lower spoiler... I was just going to do the front clip but he thought the car was really nice and talked me into restoring the exterior. He calls what he does “restoration” not just painting. He said “you can get a paint job for $2k, I restore cars”
Most people would not have painted my car... the original paint was fine... I worked for years detailing cars and I like perfect paint. I wanted perfection over originality to be able to enjoy this car. It could have been more like $15k if I had rust and needed bodywork...
They were able to save the original emblems and left the jams alone with the Factory decals...
The term "decent paint job" is a bit subjective. What is your expectation? Do you want a like new paint job or something that looks good to 80% of the general population?
The term "decent paint job" is a bit subjective. What is your expectation? Do you want a like new paint job or something that looks good to 80% of the general population?
That’s big question
for $2k you have paint that looks good in pictures. For $5-10k (not including bodywork) you can have paint that looks like factory and walk right up to it and it has that brand new showroom look.
for $20k+ you can get some crazy House of Kolor with layers of paint and clear and have flawless glass candy paint with other custom touches or metal flake light effects...
you can pay a detailer $1k to make a cheap
paint job look like glass, but you can’t hide a bad tape/prep job completely...
finding a shop that will paint a classic car is a challenge too... They get so busy with insurance work, be prepared to wait to get the car done. Also make a document with pictures on how you expect everything to turn out and how you want emblems, decals, moldings, headlight buckets etc... Don’t assume anyone at the shop is an expert on these cars...
I’ve gotten quotes of around 5k to respray my car at the 2 shops near me who will work on old cars. Most shops in my area wouldn’t even look at it(all they do is insurance work). I’m going to budget 6-7k for mine as the car is pretty clean but has a few bubbles here and there but the original paint cleans up nice. This is in Northern NY too, location and labor costs can vary quite a bit across the country.
For someone with a little know how/time if you can do a majority of disassembly and prep you could save a significant amount of $. I’ve seen a few nice cars done like that and sprayed by a GOOD Maaco with the better quality paint.
I’ve gotten quotes of around 5k to respray my car at the 2 shops near me who will work on old cars. Most shops in my area wouldn’t even look at it(all they do is insurance work). I’m going to budget 6-7k for mine as the car is pretty clean but has a few bubbles here and there but the original paint cleans up nice. This is in Northern NY too, location and labor costs can vary quite a bit across the country.
For someone with a little know how/time if you can do a majority of disassembly and prep you could save a significant amount of $. I’ve seen a few nice cars done like that and sprayed by a GOOD Maaco with the better quality paint.
I’ve heard of people disassembling their car and doing all the prep and getting it sprayed at Maaco with good results. Some of those guys can also wetsand and buff paint too so they are able to get showcar results.
As long as everything is done right it doesn’t matter who does it or how much it costs...
I am a fan of the self prep MAACO paint job. I have had 2 vehicles painted that way with good results. They aren't showroom quality but they look 100X better than they did before. I know the one near me uses NASON paint for their Acrylic Enamel, Urethane, and BC/CC.
