from bare metal up "material cost"

i had no idea materials alone would be this high.
High end low voc stuff is up there. DuPonts replacement for Chromabase is Cromax Mosaic. I've bought colors that were $140+ a quart. It mixes 2:1 with what they call a balancer. Really it's an activator/reducer @$115 a quart. 1.5 qts sprayable. About one pass around a car. Scale that out to a gallon and 2 quarts of balancer and you at, close to, or maybe over $800 just for basecoat and that not enough to get through the outside and the trimout. Metallic you need a little extra for drop coating. If the color calls for a tinted sealer mo money. I can come up with 3k pretty easily, but there are other ways.