Reply to "My Pantera Got Wrecked"

Adams,

I think I have something in common to share with you ...

I too, when looking for a car to purchase, wanted an original car with original paint. Exactly, " Let's see - I coulda bought a car repainted 27 times, but I didn't. I bought original " in 1990. I still have the factory orange today. To us, original paint is very valuable - one look at an original painted car will tell you the condition of the car. A repainted car means that some other work most probably was done to the body.

There are challenges: I cannot get lacquer paint to match the car to fix the stone chips. It is very difficult to get lacquer in the first place. I took the car to a number of auto paint suppliers (eg PPG). They all put an optical machine to it. The best I could do was to get enamel that is a close match. When I use the enamel for stone chips etc. I realize that I will not be able to feather the paint in without having a hard edge.

Usually, insurance companies will want to get away with paying out the minimum. They will want to restore the damaged area only. I would push them to "match the paint" with no hard edges. This would likely mean that they would have to repaint the entire car.

The question becomes what type of paint do you want? I would go with enamel. Personally, I would not like the base coat/clear coat system for my DeTomaso. It has long term durability and maintainablility issues. When chipped or scratched you have to deal with the clear coat and the base coat. My 1998 Jeep (base/clear) has the clear pealing off in places - It needs a repaint.

I am sure that there will come a time where I will be in a position like yours and I will need to do something about the paint.

Thank-you for your post and the responses. I am following this thread with great interest.

B.G