Oh Oh, better get Maaco

The cheapie advertised paint jobs are crap, with little to no surface prep. The finished product will be nowhere near the quality of a factory job. A good quality job starts with good surface prep, which is very labor intensive on an assembled vehicle, and since paint shops charge by the hour...

Some Maaco shops are better than others, and a few can probably do as well as custom hot rod shops. The bottom line is that any excellent paint job, from any shop qualified to do it, can run many thousands of dollars.

This is one of those "can I convert my 2wd truck to 4wd" questions. It's possible, but it's ridiculously expensive.

Another poster also mentioned that a repaint will scare a prospective buyer if you ever decide to sell it. Unless we're talking about a totally custom car, a new paint job leaves that dangling question of "why?"

Hey, Uh, BW, I'm beginning to wonder if you're for real. A paint job on a new car? From Maaco? I have a 20 year old Corolla and a 17 year old Supra and I would bring either one of them to Maaco, and I really don't want to repaint them unless really necessary. )In the Corolla's case, it is.)

You could go to home depot and get a gallon of oil and roll it on even cheaper. But a factory qualty job will cost you a few thousand, gee get the color you want and quit nitpicking.

UH is right, I think B_W is stringing some one along and you pegged him right as being for real, look at some of his earlier posts in Dec.

dont think you are all there. get a georgetown ky camry in the color you want. it will last you many many years.what if you spend $3000.00 to get that paint job and it gets totaled on the way home from the paint shop? thats $3000,00 down the drain. your taking this car stuff way to serious.

Thanks for the information to avoid Maaco. It really was a serious question. Unfortunately, I'm not a car expert, but I've learned a lot about cars the past 3 months from this newsgroup.

With my '95 Tercel I didn't have to be a car expert. I put the key in, and it went. Never a complaint or a problem. Other than follow the maintenance schedule, the only thing I ever did to that ten-year old car was replace the battery after

Otherwise, that car would have been good for at least another 10 years. But now that I gotta buy a replacement, it's going to be a Camry, not a Corolla. Originally I was looking at Corollas, but the Camrys are so much nicer.

I had a old car painted by MAACO once. This was probably in 1977 when they were just opening up. I removed all the chrome and bumpers myself and sanded bad spots. It came out pretty decent.

Yeah, Maaco's probably great for older cars. I'll be sure not to take my new one there, though, even though I'm not crazy about the '06 colors.

My red Tercel never needed a paint job. I parked it outside 24/7 for 10 years--in the snow, the rain, the scorching sun--not a hint of rust anywhere. I look and look--no rust! What a pleasant surprise compared to the Ford Tempo and Dodge Colt I drove for about 3 years each before I stumbled upon the gods that are Toyota.

Before I bought Toyota, I thought regular car visits to the shop were normal. Now I know better, and will probably never buy anything else--not even Honda. Oh what a feeling!

Let's see -- you drove it off lot - $3k depreciation. Then you get it painted by cheapest place in town - another $5k depreciation. There is no difference between a US and a Japan built Camry.

LOL !!

Oh, and by the way, I meant I *WOULDN'T* bring either of those cars to Maaco.

I can paint better in my back yard with the wind kicking up a Dust Bowl...

I believe a 1st class paint job now costs at least $5000, and a decent one starts at around $2,000.. At least 80-90% of this is for body preparation, and the sandpaper alone can cost well over $100.

The only way to get a decent paint job cheaply is by either having an auto tech school do it or do all the prep work yourself and deliver the car to the body shop already masked (bring cleaning supplies for final prep -- some shops won't even remove accumulated mud).

A first class job removes all trim -- that takes time - hence the extra cost. When supplies cost $100 you can't expect much prep from MAACO for $259 can ya.

Remember "Earl Shibe, we paint any car for $99.95". They used to have a shop in Wichita years ago but not sure if they are still in business. Shibe was a chain simular to MAACO. The deluxe Earl Shibe paint job came with a box of razor blades to scrape off paint from windows and chrome. lol

Still around! (chuckle)

Hell, I remember them advertising $19.95 in the mid 60's. Big ugly sign that you could see a mile away.

This makes me feel old...

Scheibe painted my father's car for $39.95, Dad splurging on the extra $10 fee to have the factory color matched. My brother and I did the prep work and removed most of the body hardware, and after the car was at Scheibe we removed the mirror and tail lights and wiped the body with wax remover and tack rags. The paint job actually looked decent, and after it was color sanded to remove the dust and polished several months later (the enamel remained soft for an extended period), if you stood at least 2-3' away it looked as good as a factory finish.