A little more info on how I went about getting the Eldorado painted.
As I previously wrote, when I took the car cover off this Spring, the paint looked really terrible. Flaking off the trunk, rough on the hood. In short, the car was getting the wrong kind of attention and it was kind of embarrassing driving around.
So, I surfed the net a bit and took it to several body/auto restoration shops over the course of a couple of weekends. One day, I easily put a hundred miles on the Caddy because one of the shops was way north of the city, and the other was way south. The car ran well on the highway.
The estimates I got ranged from $8,000 to $28,000, with the work taking between 6 and 18 months. I was kind of surprised about how long the work would take, so I considered putting it off until the winter when I don't drive the car much. But, I really didn't want to drive a cruddy looking car over the summer.
I wasn't too shocked about the $8k estimates, as a conversation I had with a body shop a couple of years ago indicated that I should expect to pay that much. The $28,000 kind of floored me though, but they wanted to do a full exterior restoration, replacing the taillights, chrome, etc.
After some consideration, I decided even $8k was too much. While I'm pretty confident in the mechanical integrity of the car, you never know when something major is going to blow up. I just couldn't see spending that much money when there is a possibility of having the car turning into a 5,000 lb. paperweight.
I should mention that I got to see the current projects these shops were working on. There was some amazing work. Everything from a '57 Chevy to an Aston Martin to a '76 Eldorado. It looked like all these shops did excellent work, but I am not really looking to make a show-car out of my Eldorado.
So, I went to Maaco. The Internet intelligentsia seemed to indicate that Maaco quality depended on the shop. Some shops are good, some are horrible. I took some time to talk to a local Maaco shop, saw some cars they were working on. They had a couple of 60's era cars on the lot and the work seemed pretty good - even paint, no over spray.
The Maaco estimate was way less than half of any other shop, even for Maaco's premium paint job with clear coat.
So, what's the difference between Maaco and the other shops? The other shops take the time to take off all the body panels and all the chrome. They realign all the panels, the hood, and trunk so all the gaps are even. The body on my Caddy is pretty straight, but the trunk is misaligned a bit.
Maaco doesn't do auto restorations. They don't align the panels and they tape the chrome rather than removing it.
Also, you save some money at Maaco by not repainting the door jambs, and the underside of the hood and trunk, whereas the other shops include that in the price. The estimate included sanding and primer and some body work. They estimated the work would take 2-4 weeks, which really appealed to me.
So, I felt pretty comfortable with the Maaco guys I talked to and dropped it off at the beginning of April.
It took them two months to finish, which was a little frustrating, but I think the results look good. The paint is smooth, no drips or orange peel. There is a little over spray, but not noticeable from a few feet away. They did take off some of the chrome, but mostly covered the chrome with tape. The metallic paint has a nice shine, and the color complements the chrome.
When they stripped the old paint, they found the body needed a little more work than they expected, so we went $520 over the estimate. The shop was pretty good at checking with me about that.
Anyway, the car is back to getting the right kind of attention. To paraphrase Jonathan Richman, "Girls turn the color of an avocado when I drive down their street in my Eldorado".
