30K paint job???

Link

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/cla...etail.php?id=1256378

Says it all "the hours in the restoration easily exceed common sense"

After watching American Restoration I feel assured that the economy is back on track.  I mean %650 to repaint a 1950 US Mail cast iron postal box when $20 worth of sand paper and Rustoleum would have been perfect. Seems everyone bills "lawyer's fees" now days.

I think I could have my home and all my cars painted for thirty large and still have money for lunch.... for a week at least.

That just seems goofy. 

 Yup your right, but remember thats a tv show, Just as the storage wars is.And it's riged.(dave hester let the big cat out of the bag). If you get a lot of people used to seeing other guys paying that kind of price for something...they want to join right in.

    Hmm lets see I charge you $5000.on camera, But since your on camera Ill pay you $2000. So you net cost is $3000 on a $1800 job. Thanks and comeback soon!!!

     Making a fair&honest wage seems to fo gone the way of our government in a awafull lot of places, But it dosent trickel down to the worker in most cases,  If it does it's usualy just that a trickel.

 I do have a friend that has a $30000.00 paint job on his dodge demon. Single color other than the stripes. I just dont get it. and watch the "car shows where theyn take a rusted out pos and in a week or 3 have it at auction selling for 8x what it is worth, yes some guys fix them good and some dont.Bondo covers a multitude of sins..and also blends good well done replaced pannels. so where is the line drawn?? it isant....or is the thickness of a single too thick wallet the fine line, And that sets what the rest pay. Ive seen some real **** go for way too much and some stuff go so cheep I cry & would cut off a nut for it.

It really depends on what is included in that $30k paint job. If you're talking teardown, stripping, repair, paint, sanding, buffing, reassembly, trim and all on shop hours that wouldn't really surprise me. Farming out car restorations is expensive.

Hey I live in California where the EPA takes a huge bite out of any body shops revenue, not to mention the quality of that paint job. It looks flawless, and because of the rarity of that car, it is justified. Would you put a $20,000 dollar paint job on a real speedster worth over 150k, and then install all the parts. If you did I would say your out of your mind. I guess a better way to put it would be, would you have Picasso paint you a picture on rice paper or a high quality canvas.....

Kevin,

Citing Picasso as a analogy to justify a 30K application of paint still leaves me flabbergasted!

With an artist you're paying for his/her vision... not easel time. It seems to me that with an auto retoration shop you're paying for a quality/quantity of paint and the experience/skill of a technician to apply it plus spray booth time ...There's no technician in the world who's skill with a frigg'n spray gun is realistically worth 30K...regardless of EPA's bite!!!! 

Read this sentence out loud to yourself:

"I spent $30,000 to paint my volkswagen bug."

Nice paint is so yesterday...

I painted my L-13B replica Military Olive Drab 14 years ago with a Walmart quality spray gun. It still looks the same and I'm happy with that.

Ok Carl, maybe my analogy was a little over your head so lets put it another way.

High quality Paint, high quality body sealer,

high quality primer, sand paper, body filler,

high quality masking tape, masking paper,

polishing compounds, and wheels.....................................$4-6k

Labor hours to prep and paint body  

I'm guessing they wanted everything

perfect so that pricing the car at $150K

would be fair. This means every part was painted

apart from the main body then assembled

so 200 hours @ $105 and hour (shop rate for quality shop)......$21,000

Thats $27k off the top of my head.

So that you know I do not do paint and body because it sucks and is almost always a loosing investment of time as a custom / restoration shop. However I do now what it takes to do High Quality jobs on cars. One day you may understand the difference in quality and crap.......... When you do you'll understand why people pay so much for the good stuff.

If you don't believe me check around for known painters and see what they get for perfect jobs. You'll find out $30k is nothing when some get over a $100k  

Shyt...good explanation and I'll sleep better tonight knowing I've got less than $12K in my whole rig. About 30 odd thousand miles in the last 2 years or so and still a smile on my face. I'll live what some people call patina......coolrydes stuff still rocks big time....

David is hands down the "bang for the buck" champion of the SOC!  Shows what can happen when brains meet skill.

12 large in the whole rig---amazing. 

Kevin,

Your cost breakdown, and explanation, on what's required for a quality paint job is a real eye opener. I'm no longer flabbergasted...merely astonished at little I appreciated what's involved.

Since you'll soon be painting, or having painted, your magnificent Ghia it would be a great opportunity for you to educate the SOC members that might be considering a premier quality paint job on their pride and joy so they can better evaluate quotes.

Progress photos and total shop time involved would be of immense value in evaluating these quotes...along with an itemized cost breakdown of required top line quality preparation items such as sand paper, masking tape and paper, filler, primer, and of course the paint itself.

This effort on your part would be a great sevice to those who will be estimating budgets...Thanks

Gramma' Meyer always said, "it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round".

Paint is priced pretty much like everything else. Quality improves along with price on a pretty linear scale for the first 80% of what's possible-- paying a bit more means you get a bit more. At about 80%, the price curve takes a pretty hard turn north-- a guy has to pay 50% more for 1/2 as much improvement. This is why a Ferrari costs about $300K, or roughly 10x the price of a "normal" car. At the 95% mark, the return for money takes a turn straight up. The price doubles for every 1% improvement. At 99% you can spend how ever much you have trying to get the last 1%, and there may be no discernible difference.

Some guys with a pile of money will spend whatever it takes to get 99.9% perfection. Most of us can't even see the difference between 80% and 99.9%. The real value is between 20% and 80%, depending on how picky you are. Factory paint falls in this range (Big 3 paint on the bottom, European car paint towards the top). After that, it gets pretty nuts. I've crossed that line on a lot of stuff (I pay for TIG welding in a union shop. It costs a freakish amount, but the welds are works of art. I can weld, but not like that.). IM factory paint is better than European factory, but not a $30K show-car job.

A $30K paint job means never driving your car. Ever. It means it lives under a thick cover in a climate controlled space, leaving only to roll on and off your enclosed trailer, and onto a stage or lawn to sit behind ropes so nobody can touch is with their oily hands.

I want to drive. The front of my car looks like somebody shot it with a 12 ga loaded with rock-salt. Someday I'll repaint, and I'll probably spend what it takes to get to 80%- 95% (depending on how much cash I've got laying around in the fun-account), but I can't (and won't) spend so much that I refuse to drive the car. Cars are meant to drive.

Well said!

I give.

I think Stan caught a good deal of what I was trying to say. I might buy a car that had a $30k paint job, but I wouldn't want to know it because it would limit my willingness to use it and fully enjoy it. 

Secondly, I get the rarity and all of this car, but, as a matter of personal preference, and given the fact that the car appears to have been brought back to a basically stock configuration, I'd have given it a stock paint job as well, which, correct me if I am wrong, wouldn't be $30k.

Beautiful as a bug can be. Clearly done to the highest standard, good for whomever owns it.

I'll be over here polishing my replica speedster.

$30K is not "nothing". It's $30K. That's a lot of groceries. You may need to spend $30K to get a show-quality paint-job, but there's not 1 guy in 1000 who would make the choice to spend $30K in that manner. I'm glad there are guys that do. I'm not one of them, and it's not because I can't see the difference (I can)-- it's because I want to drive.

Drive 'em.

Kevin:

I think Carl was making the point that Picasso, and other great artists in any form bring an intangible something to their work in the form of vision and ideas that would be hard to capture in an auto paint job. Clearly there are plenty of artistically inclined auto painters going back to the likes of George Barris and others.

Your retort only addressed the costs of labor, parts and materials, which are crucial to the process. With all due respect, those elements don't, by themselves and in the hands of event a great technician, necessarily raise a car paint job to the level of a Picasso painting, sculpture or ceramic.

That doesn't diminish the work of auto body and paint guys, but it doesn't elevate them to the likes of a Picasso.

 I think it's kinda like food. Good food dosent have to be expensive, and expensive food usualy isant all that  good, but it sure looks pretty. so do you want to pay for some good food and have a good time or pay for some neet looking food that dosent taste all that good and have the owner of the restraunt have fun in his new porsche collection parked by one of his water front homes all the while your thinking your realy somebody eating that crap with more real somebodys trying to convince themselvs they are somebody.......and the list go's on.

    I do have a friend that decided to paint his buggy before the last cruze. I think he said he decided to about 4 days before.it was one of the best paint jobs I have ever seen,and running the division 2,3&4 nhra races for a few years Ive seen a lot of realy nice work&paint,and being in this industery for most all of my life from one end of this nation to another and over seas.it was possiably the nicest application&body work Ive seen.and it was on an old glass body that he had to do repairs on. 4 days.I dont know how many hours he worked on it or if any body in his shop helped or what.but when it comes time to paint my **** I know too who Im looking to do it if I dont do it my self.