A Question for Car Guys - High-end Repainting

Factual Questions
1

I’m seeking responses from posters who are knowledgeable or have experience in this area.

I don’t know if there are any car guys on the SDMB, but I’ve been researching my issue on another message board for a month or so and the responses have been less than informative, so I figure why not ask here as well.

I own a 2004 Porsche Boxster (986) that I purchased at the end of 2003. It currently has a little more than 30K miles and is in excellent condition, except for the paint, which has spider scratches over pretty much its entire surface, some pretty noticeable pocks and chips on the bumper and bonnet, and acid rain spots etched into most of the horizontal surfaces.

I’ve had the paint inspected by my dealer, 2 independent detailers, and a body shop. One of the detailers tried compounding it, but stopped after about 10 minutes when that turned out not to be a quick solution and he became concerned about burning through the clearcoat.

My Dealer and the body shop basically told me the same thing; that the only way to achieve the results I’m looking for, which is concours quality, is to have a full-body repaint, which would require removing all the panels from the vehicle, including the glass, and stripping, sanding, buffing, priming, and repainting, and could cost anywhere from $6K to $10K.

To be clear, I’m not looking forward to spending up to $10K on a paint job, but I am seriously considering it. I don’t drive the car very often, but have installed a few modifications to enhance its appeal, e.g., Litronic self-leveling headlamps, B&M short shifter, in-console spoiler raise switch, body-colored lower center console, body-colored ignition rosette, body-colored hard top, etc…, so when I drive it, I want it to look showroom new, and it doesn’t. Although I do get positive comments from passersby and other drivers on the road, I know the paint is scratched and that’s all that matters to me.

Here are a few photos of the vehicle: Front angle, side, rear angle. I was too far away from the vehicle when taking these photos, so you can’t see the scratches and pits here but, trust me, they’re there.

Questions

  1. Will any paint shop / body shop achieve factory-quality results on a respray paint job?

  2. Do you have a recommendation for a very good paint shop in the PA/NJ/Delaware/Maryland area with experience painting high-end vehicles, ideally Porsches?

  3. Is a full-body respray really the only solution?

  4. My resources on the 986 message board tell me that any repaint job will affect the resale value of the vehicle. I’m not sure I care about this. Should I? I have no plans to sell the vehicle.

2

This is out of my bailiwick (which is auto mechanical repair), but I’ve been tangentially exposed to body/paint shops. Here is my less than fully informed opinion:

1. Will any paint shop / body shop achieve factory-quality results on a respray paint job?

No. For example, Earl Scheib and Maaco seem to specialize in budget-priced paint jobs, with corresponding quality. I remember a high-end shop from 20+ years ago telling me a high-quality (but not necessarily concourse level) paint job could easily cost $4,000-6,000, as opposed to the few hundred that the aforementioned operations charged. I’m sure there are many shops that fit somewhere in the spectrum between these extremes. For your purposes, I’d suggest going with a top-level shop that routinely does first class work.

2. Do you have a recommendation for a very good paint shop in the PA/NJ/Delaware/Maryland area with experience painting high-end vehicles, ideally Porsches?

My suggestion would be to inquire at some top-level mechanical repair shops for references, likewise ask around at local car clubs, particularly those that deal with show-quality cars.

3. Is a full-body respray really the only solution?

I’m inclined to think yes. Pretty darn good results can be (and routinely are) achieved by less extreme measures, but it sounds like you want excellent rather than pretty darn good.

3

A full re-spray is the only solution for what you are wanting to do. However the problem you are going to run into is that you drive your car. Once you get your re-spray, short of putting the car in your garage with a glass cover over it you are going to end up right back where you are over time.

I am a Porsche guy, I love the cars. But in my opinion you are throwing $10k right out the window. You have a Boxter, a quick check of Kelly Blue Book for a 2004 Boxter in excellent condition shows a private resell value of $20,660. Are you really sure that you want to spend $10k on a paint job for a car valued at $20K? I would think that it would be better to sell your Boxter, take that $10k that you would spend on a paint job and buy a new one.

If you drive your car, no matter how well you take care of it, dings and paint damage will occur. You will be fighting a never ending battle that you can’t win. FWIW, I have a 2004 Mazda RX7 GSL-SE that I lovingly restored and modified. I love this car and I spent $2200 on paint work for the car. Prior to having it towed to the paint shop I removed all the trim myself, all the lights etc… The panels stayed on the car and I have to say that the results were amazing. It looks great, but I don’t drive it often and it is garaged. You can get a great paint job for well less than 10K, but it won’t be perfect. The guy who did mine is a neighbor and paints for the local Ferrari dealer. He “buffed” out the paint after the re-spray and you can read a book in the reflection.

Anyway, I am rambling on now. Sorry, the kids, dog and TV are distracting me. I understand your love with your car, but it is still that. Throwing big dollars at a depreciating asset that will never stay in the condition you want is probably not the best use of your money. No matter your decision I wish you the best of luck with it. Nice looking car btw.

4

I worked at a high end body shop that specialized in high end cars like Porsches, Jags, Audis, Ferraris etc.

1. Will any paint shop / body shop achieve factory-quality results on a respray paint job?

The shop I worked at did, or at least that was the goal. You can almost always find evidence that a car had been repainted, especially if you start taking things off and looking in places that aren’t normally visible, but a good shop’s goal is to be indistinguishable from factory, and you and 99% of the people in the world should never be able to tell it’s been repainted. That’s a good shop though, a bad one will be obvious to a 5 year old.

4. My resources on the 986 message board tell me that any repaint job will affect the resale value of the vehicle. I’m not sure I care about this. Should I? I have no plans to sell the vehicle.

I don’t believe that is 100% accurate. If you’re selling a Honda Civic and say, ‘why no, it’s never been wrecked, but I did repaint it’, they’re going to immediately think it was wrecked and you’re lying. But if you tell them it’s your baby and love the car so much that you had it repainted to fix little nicks, well, people do that with Porsches. They keep them in the garage and drive them on weekends and keep them perfect.

But I agree with obbn somewhat. If you drive it much and don’t spend the time and effort to care for it, it may need repainted again in a couple of years. If you keep it in the garage, drive it one weekend a month, clean and polish it afterward and treat it like an investment that you’re going to have for many more years, it may be worth it. That is, until someone smashes into it in a parking lot. :slight_smile:

5

Assuming you want to go forward, check on the web for local car shows. You want the “cars & coffee”, “show and shine” type. Whenever you see a nice paint job on an old car ask who painted it and if the owner was happy with the shop. That’s really the best way to find good shops.

You also need to decide if you want a “factory” paint job or “show quality”. There’s a big difference between them. Factory would be what your car looked like on the showroom floor. It’s not bad, but will have orange peel (this is when the surface is not perfectly smooth, resembling the surface of an orange).

Show quality will be smooth as glass. It looks amazing, like no factory paint ever looks. Much deeper gloss. But it is much more work to achieve and the panels have to be perfect as any tiny little imperfection will show.

Here’s a detail shot on my car. It has a fairly high end paint job on it and you can see how the fence reflect in the quarter panel without orange peel:

6

Affect the resale value up or down?

To add on to what obbn said, the car is only worth so much. You can sink $10K into a paint job, take it for a Sunday drive and when I plow into you in my 1987 rustbucket you are going to have a hard time recovering more than $20,660 from me. And if the repaint reduces the value of the car, expect even less.

7

You can spend well over $20K on paint getting an old Ferrari to look Pebble-Beach-better-than-new, but you have to make them straight and deal with the original non-rustproofing first. If your car is already straight and un-rusty, you’d only need to pay for the prep/paint/detail part of the job, which I’d guess would be about 1/2 of the $20K…so say $10K. That’s for the best people out there. So a dealer - whether it’s Audi, Porsche, BMW, whatever - should have a collision/paint shop that can make a late model car look new paint-wise. I’d guess you’d be making a mistake to pay one of them more than $6-7K.

8

Thanks for the responses guys.

My dealer has an affiliated paint shop that quoted me $6K for the job, but that would not include removing the glass, and they told me up-front that they couldn’t promise showroom quality, so I passed.

As far as not having the car repainted and upgrading it for something newer, I’ve thought about that, but I’ve spent a lot of time, sweat and money in custom modifications and have grown, perhaps, a little more attached to the vehicle than makes sense. Also, I prefer the interior of the 986 much more than the chromier and harder-edged look of the 987 that came out in 2005.

As I stated, I don’t drive it much; perhaps twice a month, and only in Summer, and keep it garaged, tarp-covered, and on a trickler for most of the year. When I do drive it, I never park anywhere potential mishaps could occur, like parking lots, etc… I guess someone could ram into me as I’m on the road, however, if that’s going to deter me from keeping the vehicle in as pristine condition as I’m willing to spend, then I should just sell it and be done.

I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a paint job, I really don’t, but my enjoyment of the vehicle has diminished as a direct result of my close examination of the paint and the horror upon the realization that the entire surface of the vehicle consists pretty much of a network of hairline scratches.

9

Classic Coach Works outside Philadelphia in the 610 area code.

They only handle high end cars. Yours qualifies because it is a Porsche.

Resale: You don’t own a classic, and there is no reason to see it will ever be a classic. It’s a fairly common Porsche that would be better off being repainted and looking good for resale. If it were a survivor car someday, yeah, then patina would be good.

That would matter to someone a few generations down the road, long after you’re gone.

10

The chips and pockmarks are easy and cheap to deal with. The need for a repaint seems to be because of the acid rain spots and spider scratches.

Given that the car is clean and garaged seventy percent of the time, your car needs a repaint because of the way you are caring for it and you would need to modify those habits in addition to getting a repaint. Water spots are caused by incomplete drying (usually sun-drying) and spider scratches by dirty towels and polishing cloths, or those that aren’t 100% cotton (including edging). I’m not implying that you are careless or lazy, probably ninety-nine percent of car owners are guilty of these things.

You would need to speak to classic car owners and find out what their methods are. The Duesenberg guys, not the 1957 Chevy ones. White Post Restorations in White Post Virginia is about 50 miles from Washington DC. They would know how to put you in contact with classic car owners in your area.

My personal opinion is that a repaint is not economically prudent. It’s almost always cheaper to buy a car that someone else has restored than to do it yourself.
Selling your car and taking the 6-10k you would have spent on it will buy you another of the same year in better condition. If you’re able to hold yours until after you get the new one, you can swap out all of the personalization that you’ve done.

11

Porsches? Vacations to Hawaii? Dude, I am totally moving in! I will bring beer!

12

Heh. I don’t drink beer, but bring over a bag of jalapeno-flavored potato chips and a bottle of club soda and you’ve got a deal. :slight_smile:

ETA: Hawaii exceeded all my expectations, by the way. Absolutely amazing. If I didn’t have to work I’d move there.

13

I think your Boxter and my Mustang GT would be a good race. Er, provided we avoided any curvy roads!

14

As far as locating a reputable paint shop, I would suggest making contact with a few local car clubs. You’ll find that a few names will continually come up in conversations.

Anecdotally, and due to continuing CAL-OSHA regulations, the cost of painting has skyrocketed in California. So much so that several of my fellow car guys have taken their cars to Arizona shops for the work. The cost of paint has also gone through the roof, several hundred dollars a gallon.

15

That would be “value line” paint. When I painted my Corvette 2 years ago the base (red) and clear, plus activator & reducer was $1100 (a gallon of red and a gallon of clear). Note that the $1100 did not include primer, that was another $200.

This was PPG paint which is considered a good, solid paint, but is not really high-end. If you want some special metal-flake paint from a high end supplier it is easy to push $5k+ just for materials.

16

Something else to consider is how much disassembly is required. Assuming it’s a nice car, which it appears to be, you want as much as possible removed from car as possible. While the difference won’t be as noticeable if you are repainting the same color, it’s still highly advisable to spend the money on good prep. Nothing worse than taped off trim, bumpers, emblems, etc.

17

Yep, all body shops and paint shops I contacted quoted prices which included removal and reassembly of all panels.