Been binge watching “Counting Cars” lately, and can’t seem to wrap my head around some of the prices they’re talking about.
The cheapest projects I’ve seen them do so far ran at least 15k, and that was mostly paint and redoing the interior.
In another episode, they paid 5k for bare metal motorcycle frame with an engine.
Since they don’t seem the sort to overcharge their customers, I must be missing something.
On a related note, for the bike guys: why would somebody prefer a frame without rear suspension (a “hardtail” AIUI), over one with rear suspension? If I were buying a bike, I’d want some shock absorption on the wheel closest to the seat.
note: I know very little about cars. I’m more a techie than the wrench-jockey/DIY’er type.
those custom cars involve a lot of manual labor, stuff like hand-shaping body panels and manually machining hard parts. A lot of hand fitting and tweaking.
The car you buy from a dealer, whether it’s a Honda Civic, Ford Fusion, Kia whatever, is the result of a lot of manual labor but the parts to build them came from very tightly controlled production tools. Stuff like stamping dies, casting dies, CNC machining centers.
“Hardtail” bikes had springs under the seat. they weren’t the most comfortable ride, but they weren’t threatening to drive your spine up through your skull.
Yeah, the labor hours are the key. TV shows are not good at showing the just mind numbing amount of hours that go into a proper paint job, not to mention suspension, interior, drive train etc.
A simple paint job where the body is in perfect shape still takes 80-100 hours. At $50/hour (which would be a low shop rate) that’s already $4,000-$5,000. That doesn’t include the materials which will be another $1,500 for quality stuff.
Now old cars don’t have perfect bodies. Rust and fixing crappy old repairs easily add another several hundred hours.
I and one more fellow did a complete body restoration on an old car I own. I gave up on counting hours but I wouldn’t be surprised if we put over 1,000 hours into the thing between us.
I’ve restored three cars, but none in the last 15 years. As one would expect, all costs have risen, but none more than paint. Not only is it very labor-intensive, the paint itself is outrageously expensive. Circa 1992 I paid about $5K for a two-tone paint job on my '56 Chevy. No body work, just paint. No exaggeration, today that same job would be somewhere between $23K and $25K. It’s not just the cost of the paint, but also numerous regulations regarding where and how it is applied.
The question, perhaps, isn’t why is one-off car reconstruction so expensive, but why is commercial production of new cars so cheap? The answer, of course, is massive economies of scale. If every car was built by hand, they would cost in the hundreds of thousands per.
I enjoy watching the show, and have a great deal of respect for the skill of their employees.
TV shows are great at compressing several months of time into 45 minutes. Most of that time is probably going to be rather boring such as welding or repairing body panels or pulling cable and adding connectors, etc.
this, and the age old technique of interchangeable parts/mass production. A brand new car gets built in about a day and a half, including the paint drying.
It’s not just cars; anything handmade, almost without exception, is going to be more expensive than a comparable product made in an assembly-line.
Clothing is probably a good analogy to cars (both are purchased for aspirational as much as practical purposes). I can pick up an acceptable ready to wear wool suit online for around $200 to $300. If I want a bespoke suit, made exactly to my specifications, it’s going to cost me at least ten times as much. Why? labor and time:
Your average econobox takes about 18-20 man hours to build, that is add up all the time people actually have their hands on a car it totals 18-20 hours. All the rest is of the assembly is done by machine.
Twenty hours won’t even get a fender ready to paint on a lot of cars.
Prices are also set by what people are willing to pay. Nobody has a problem paying $100k or more for a Ferrari so that’s the price , at least for a basic Ferrari.
As always, a vendor’s costs just set a floor under their price, not a ceiling. Their price is whatever they can get somebody to pay for your product. Some folks have more money than they need and are content to waste some of it by overpaying for whatever.
Thanks for all the replies so far. It sounds like the general consensus is that most of that cost is in labor hours*. What is it that makes these paint jobs so labor/time intensive? By comparison, I, as an unpracticed, untrained amateur can paint the entire exterior of a house** in less than 40 hours (though the quality is nothing like what these guys do). Is there a lot more prep and cleanup time with a car/bike? Do they just paint way slower***?
The closest thing I can think of to the work they do is collision repair, which averages around 1-3k. (Cite)
*Note: As with all GQ questions (in theory) I’m just trying to understand. I’m not judging or in any way suggesting it should be different. *
I’m pretty sure the high-end aftermarket parts they use also add their own premium, but not as much as the custom work.
** this was a tudor-style house, so we had color edges every 4-6 feet.
*** Obviously, being pros, they’d have a good reason for why they do things a particular way.
it’s generally done by hand, with several coats of primer, wet sanded in between coats. Then several coats of paint, again with wet sanding between each coat. Then clear, which is wet sanded then buffed smooth.
Your average production car is dipped in the primer coat, painted and cleared by robots, and only buffed/sanded if there are any defects.
That’s not completely fair. The economies of scale talked about don’t work as well for Ferrari or other exotics. Bear in mind the Bugatti Veyron, even with its million dollar price tag, was still sold at a loss. I’m not saying Ferrari only makes a much profit per car as Toyota or Ford, but production costs/profit aren’t upside down. Porsche outdoes them thanks to similar market but better economy of scale, averaging $20k/car while the big three gets about a tenth of that.
If it cost Ferrari $100k to make a car and people will pay $1 mil then they will charge $1 mil.
If it cost Honda $10k to make a car and people will pay $50k then they will charge that. Of course they could choose to sell it for $20k so they can sell more of them. BTW, Honda had the Acura NSX which was priced about $80k, they are going to bring it back next year. I assume it cost them more to make than an Accord. But Honda does have economies of scale since they are so big.
Go look at a brand average brand new car (black is best) look at the paint from an angle. See how it isn’t quite smooth? Not bad, just not quite perfectly smooth?
Now go to a hot rod show and do the same. Smooth as glass.
Try getting your house that smooth and shiny.
The actual painting of a car doesn’t take long. A few hours.
Getting a car *ready for paint *can take forever if you’re looking for show quality finish.
Look at a new car with the factory paint job. Look at an angle so you see reflections. Notice the surface isn’t even, it has what is called “orange peel”. Higher end car have less orange peel, but still some
Next go to a car show and look at a high end custom car. Notice how the finish is like a mirror. No orange peel at all. The paint is a mile deep.
Polishing the paint (called “cut & buff”, or “color sanding”) doesn’t take that long, a couple of days. The problem is that unless the surface the paint was applied to was absolutely perfect, it will look like crap. The orange peel hides minor imperfections. Remove it and everything is now visible.
Getting the surface to that level of perfection takes time. Lots of it. You also want to improve an old mass produced body to a level of quality it never had. Door gaps an even 3/16" all around. Sharp edges. Straight body line going from fender, across door, to quarter. All matching. Cars from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s were sloppy.
The cheapest econo box today will have a level of body quality a 1969 Camaro (or any other muscle car) could only dream off. It would cost much less to do show quality paint on, say, a new Ford Fusion than an old muscle car. It would still probably cost as much as the car though.
I worked for Ford in the 1980s in barrier test analysis. The cars that they used for crash tests were, out of necessity, pre-production prototypes. They were virtually handmade and indeed cost hundreds of thousands to build. And then we towed them into a concrete wall at 35 MPH.
