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Ah yes, the $2000 paint job on the $1000 car. I bet it had $3000 worth of booming subwoofers too. But no rear wing?
In '95 when I painted it that was a 3 year old truck, so I'm not sure where you get the "$1000 car" from. But hey, let's be as judgemental and closed minded as possible, like you always are.
As someone who did custom paint jobs for years, you get what you pay for. I'll never go to Maaco except as a base color for a race car that's probably going to get smashed anyway and only has to look good from 50 ft away.
A decent paint job costs money, and a lot of it is in materials cost. A pint of modern urethane paint can easily run over $100 and that doesn't include the catalyst and reducer, and if it's a typical base coast/clear coat metallic, you're going to double the materials cost. A typical car uses most of a gallon of raw paint (unless you're not doing the jambs, which you need to do for a color change), and then the catalyst and reducer, and clear and it's catalyst and reducer. Then there's the masking and often disassembly. And of course, any primer necessary, and of course the sandpaper necessary to prep the surface. And we haven't even touched the labor prep time to sand the car down, disassembling what's necessary. And then there's the labor of actually spraying the color evenly and laying down the clear, and then the time to reassemble and cut and buff the final paint. And the guys that do that aren't cheap. At $5k for a complete paint job, you're barely paying them anything to do that labor. Which is why a decent custom paint job will run $7-10k. And that's for one color. Add multiple colors and it can escalate. If you're only paying the painters and preppers $5-7 hr you,re gong to get crap work, Add in alkyd enamel that cost Maaco $10/gallon in 50 gallon drums and that paint is usually going to fail early, which is WHY you have to prep it yourself to get the best job from them.
^ not a $500 paint job. Retail, that would have been a $2000 job even in the early '90s. (the white is the factory color that everything else was laid down over)
I paid 2300 to have my truck painted. It was a regular body shop. It was in for some accident damage from a tire blowing out. The insurance would only pay for the fender and blend but the paint was faded. So it cost $900 more to paint the whole truck. Came out just fine. Even from a foot away there are no runs or fish eyes etc.
Of course doing a show quality paint job is gonna cost. But for a every day driver...I would never waste that kind of money in a car for something like that. Maaco did a absolutely fine job for the camper shell. It’s uniform, there are no runs, no overspray, no fish eyes and it matched the color of the truck 100%. For the money I paid I have absolutely no problem taking a daily driver in to have it painted.
Unless we’re talking some high end cars or some show car etc most people are not gonna dump 5-7k in a daily driver.
Wraps are great if you got the money or time. Personally I don’t have the attention span of a 10 year old so when I buy a car it’s usually a color I already like and I’m not gonna be tired of it three months into owning it. I wonder how many of those guys who paid 5k for a wrap are now thinking hhmmm that money sure would come in handy right about now.
Last edited by Electrician4you; 04-30-2020 at 02:55 PM..
Sometimes, you can get a really good price on an ugly color of a car that isn't selling. I've seen it many times lately where the unpopular color is discounted a few grand. I would get that and wrap it the color I want. A wrapped car is wayyy easier to wash.
As someone who did custom paint jobs for years, you get what you pay for. I'll never go to Maaco except as a base color for a race car that's probably going to get smashed anyway and only has to look good from 50 ft away.
A decent paint job costs money, and a lot of it is in materials cost. A pint of modern urethane paint can easily run over $100 and that doesn't include the catalyst and reducer, and if it's a typical base coast/clear coat metallic, you're going to double the materials cost. A typical car uses most of a gallon of raw paint (unless you're not doing the jambs, which you need to do for a color change), and then the catalyst and reducer, and clear and it's catalyst and reducer. Then there's the masking and often disassembly. And of course, any primer necessary, and of course the sandpaper necessary to prep the surface. And we haven't even touched the labor prep time to sand the car down, disassembling what's necessary. And then there's the labor of actually spraying the color evenly and laying down the clear, and then the time to reassemble and cut and buff the final paint. And the guys that do that aren't cheap. At $5k for a complete paint job, you're barely paying them anything to do that labor. Which is why a decent custom paint job will run $7-10k. And that's for one color. Add multiple colors and it can escalate. If you're only paying the painters and preppers $5-7 hr you,re gong to get crap work, Add in alkyd enamel that cost Maaco $10/gallon in 50 gallon drums and that paint is usually going to fail early, which is WHY you have to prep it yourself to get the best job from them.
^ not a $500 paint job. Retail, that would have been a $2000 job even in the early '90s. (the white is the factory color that everything else was laid down over)
You're not kidding that it's a lot of work to prep the car between disassembly, sanding and taping before even getting ready to paint it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DKM
Sometimes, you can get a really good price on an ugly color of a car that isn't selling. I've seen it many times lately where the unpopular color is discounted a few grand. I would get that and wrap it the color I want. A wrapped car is wayyy easier to wash.
By me it's hard to find a color other then shades of gray.
I was thinking of having a custom car wrap but after watching many videos. I gave up, it's too expensive and doesn't last as long as they claim.
So these car wraps cost from $2500-7000 depending on the kind of car you have and then the type of materials they use to wrap your crap with. The more exotic the car the more work to cut and wrap it.
Then watching some videos, after 2-3 months you may have bubbles or nicks that will require repairing the sections. But in order to remove the wrap it may cost $500-1500 to remove.
So basically the cost of wrapping the car is about the cost of a good paint job which avgs around $2-5k for 90% of cars and usually good paint jobs can last about 10 years with just nicks to repair with touchups.
Uh, what are they wrapping? Something like a Ferrari it makes sense. A 2,000 paint job is a good paint job for a 10 year old Civic. If you're wrapping a 100,000 car to protect the paint, makes some sense. Not a huge fan though, but for me the first door ding or scraped bumper is a relief. Now I can stop worrying about it.
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