painting fastback
$329 a gallon?? Wtf... It can't possibly cost the manufacturers hundreds of dollars to produce that stuff. I guess it's like pharmaceuticals, they charge $200 for a pill that costs $1.00 to make..
You think $329 per gallon is expensive? I guess you either don't paint cars or haven't bought car paint for 25 years. 12 Years ago when I painted my Barracuda with TCP Base/Clear, I paid $200 per gallon for the base coat. At the time, PPG was about $400 per gallon. Now, the same paint from TCP Global is $439 per gallon and name brand paint is $700+. Some of the higher end paints are $1000 per gallon. And it IS very expensive to produce paint. Lots of chemistry, lots of research, VERY expensive equipment, very expensive to maintain EPA guidelines, and the price of their raw materials if very high. If you are going to paint your car yourself and do it right, plan on about $5,000 for materials alone for name brand paints and about $2500-$3,000 if you use a budget paint like TCP-Global. Ther are some cheap kits you can buy, and they are OK, but not great. In my opinion, to do it right, you need to strip it completely to bare metal; door jams, back of hood and decklid, etc. Then you need to spray the bare metal with epoxy primer. Then you need to do body work. Filler, sandpaper and spot filler is not cheap. Then you need to spray on about 3 coats of good high build primer and block sand it with guide coat. If there are any bad/low spots, you have to fix them and then spray on more primer and block sand again with guide coat. It sounds like a lot of primer, but you sand most of it off. Then you need to wet sand. Then you need to wipe the car down with a good wax and grease remover and then tack rag it. Then You spray the paint AFTER spraying on a coat of sealer. I would NEVER paint a car without sealer. If you do base/clear you will have to wet sand the clear and polish it out. By the time you buy epoxy primer + the hardener, body work supplies, High build primer, sandpaper (wet and dry), Sealer + the hardener, paint + hardener, Clear + hardener, assorted reducers for the different paints and primers, polishing compounds and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff, you are easily at $2500 - $5000. You might be able to save a little here and there, but your paint job is what everybody sees. It's not the place to cut corners.