[HardcoreZ28]

Just a perfect example of the costs involved to paint a car the right way. While this may not be necessary on your beater or daily driver, this is an F-body site and I assume most owners want to take pride in the way their vehicles look.

I'm just about ready to paint this 68 Cuda that's been in the shop the last few months and I went to pick up the color and clear last night.

The color is a stock 1997 Ford color (customers choice). It has some pearl to it but other than that nothing exotic. My total price, wholesale, for 1 gallon of color, 1 gallon of clear, 1 gallon of reducer, and 1 bottle of hardener was $987. That is for top of the line PPG paint. Something of lesser quality would probably run around $600 but why skimp out a few hundred?

Beyond that almost $1,000 I've also got about $600 tied up in the car between epoxy primer and high build primer. Add in the $1,100 to have the car media blasted down to bare metal and another $200 for sand paper, masking supplies, body fillers, etc. The materials cost is now at just under $3,000. After that you still have to figure in the cost of wetsanding the clear, and polish and pads to buff it out.

As you can see....good paint materials are not cheap. I'm not saying there aren't deals out there to be had. And I'm not saying that all cars need the top shelf paints, but if you have a show car or high quality daily driver don't expect to be only paying a few hundred dollars for a good paint job.

Just thought I'd put this out there given the recent number of questions I've seen on here about cheap paint.