I recently bought a nice '74 3.0CS that I want to have painted. It only has 130,000 miles and was owned by one guy for the last 15 years. He had it painted about 5 years ago, but it needs doing again.

It is in great shape, but there is some rust appearing behind the rocker covers, in the trunk lid, the fenders, and in the fender seams under the hood, and the car is dull with some chipping in places, but not bad.

I took the car to three places for estimates, and the prices are so different as to be incredible.

First I called a local restorer who said he'd done these BMWs before. He actually came to look at my car! I thought that being a classic, maybe he would do the best job. He seemed very thorough, but quoted a STARTING price of $5000 for the paint and an estimate of $5000 for rust repair!! For that he would remove everything, including the glass and the doors, weld in new steel where needed, prep and prime the car, block sand it, apply sealer, then paint it with the best German "Glasserit" acrylic urethane. He quoted roughly 1 month to do the job. He says he lets the car sit with the primer for at least a week before sanding and that this is a "good" thing (I think he just tries to do more than one car at a time and lets cars sit around while he's working on something else, personally).

Second I went to the local body shop, who has a good reputation and was recommended by my insurance company. He quoted $2500 for paint (urethane enamel), and said that the body work depended on what he found. He's never worked on a CS before, but thought $1000 would cover anything he found that needed patching. He said they could possibly have the car done in a week. He would pull the bumpers and the grilles, and mask the rest.

Lastly I went to Maaco. They quoted $600 for body work, and tried to move me to their "best" paint job, but admitted that the could do their Ambassador paint job for $189 as advertised. They said they charge extra for sanding the car, and adding hardener to the acrylic enamel paint was extra also. Nothing is removed from the car but they said they could mask off everything just fine. Total cost about $1000-1500.

How can the same result vary by 1000%?? I just bought my wife a new Kia Sephia and it cost under $8000 (and came with nice paint), so HOW can it be worth $10,000 just to paint my old BMW??

I am leaning toward Maaco by price alone, but some of the cars sitting in their lot didn't look that shiny (the paint had texture in it), and there was paint on the rubber parts. The manager told me that those were low margin insurance jobs and that mine would look much better when I pointed out the cars to him.

Help me understand why it could possibly cost so much to have a decent job done and what your experiences have been painting your coupes (including some prices you paid).

Thank-you,
Robert