srs244 said:
a decent paint job alone would be in the range of 6000 to 8000 assuming there is no glass work needed (seams, or damage repair, etc) and that's just the jumping off point.
steve
Steve, overall I agree with you 100% but sometimes you CAN get a good paintjob for significantly less if you look around carefully.
Right now my '78 is in the paint shop. I just dropped it off this week.
I've seen the guys work on other vettes and it's GREAT. A fellow vette club member also has a '78 that he had this painter paint his car in black and we all know how well black shows any flaws. His paint job is a perfect, pristine show quality job that is one of the nicest black paint jobs i've ever seen including the gold ghost flames that were added to it
When this painter looked at my '78 (a no-hit car that requires no fiberglass repairs at all) he quoted me only $2,500 for a complete paint job.
This includes a complete disassembly of the car (all lights, trim pieces, moldings, door handles, door windows removed, etc, etc), completely strip the old lacquer paint with chemical stripper (the only way I'll have a corvette stripped of paint), prep it, prime it, sand it, seal it, sand it, raint it with bc/cc paint, and reassemble the car.
He even said if I help out on the labor such as with the disassembly and reassembly the mose labor I save him from having to do he will take off that amount from the bill so I may be able to save $500-$1000 off the $2,500 quoted price!
As you can see, that is a VERY reasonable price but it's not a "cheapo, Maaco type paint job which would be a very basic, mask it, paint it, give it back to the customer paint job.
of course, it helps that I can recommended by one of his existing customers (who also has another car currently in his shop for a full body-off restoration), plus the guy just moved shop locations a few weeks back and he doesn't currently have too much work in the shop so I'm sure he offered a good price just to keep the shop working and busy.
point is that yes, most corvette paint jobs are going to be in the range you quoted for anything short of a full all-out show quality job, but it IS possible to find a good painter to do it for less if they aren't overly busy at the moment and the car doesn't need much other work.
Obviously, saving $4k-$5k on a paint job can make a big difference, especially on a later model car that has a somewhat limited top end value to begin with. It can easily be the make or break factor on deciding if a car is worth trying to restore or not.