Body work and paint

I do some body work and painting. After all the metal work is done, if it was done half right, I cannot see 8 months as a reality if they are working on the car on a daily basis. The issue, as stated above, is that these are busy shops and your car can sit for days or weeks before someone works on it a day or two, and then it sits again, and then they work on it a bit, and this just keeps on going. Assuming that the car was fully disassembled, and if you have a car were ALL the metal work is correctly done, and they did good work (which is the big if), and someone is working on it of 8 hours a day, I cannot see it going on for more than month just to get it laser straight, into primer and ready for paint. the paint process cutting and buffing another month at the most, again if you have someone working on it 8 hours a day.

Most body shops that I have encountered make money by taking as many long difficult projects, including restoration projects, as they can keep under the roof, and getting money constantly from the owners of these cars as the projects advance. They basically live off the regular collision jobs that go in and out on a daily basis, and are paid by insurance. Those jobs have to be done fast, you cannot keep someone's daily driver in there for months fixing a fender and a bumper. When the collision/insurance jobs are slow, they work on the long term project cars to keep their guys busy, and when the collision/insurance jobs are heavy, the long term projects just sit.