I'm calling bullshit on that. I've lately become my now fiance's daughters chief auto body/paint guy. They are both in their early 20's and can't help but bang, hit, blow tires and do other young girl calamities to their two older cars. One daughter blew a tire on her 2000 pontiac (great story BTW). The tire blow out did about $3500 worth of damage to the car due to breaking and damaging so many parts. The insurance company wanted to scrap it. I ended up fixing it by visiting junk yards for the NLA parts that were needed. I had to match the 17 year old paint that was not in the best shape from the Arizona sun.Amskeptic wrote:
Biggest problem according the guy is the paint match.
ColinInTennessee
I took the old fender to the auto body paint shop I use. Now, this shop has mainly kids in their early 20's working there, not 20 year paint mixing veterans. I bought the paint code in from the car as well. He mixed some paint up with the code then tweaked it a bit to account for the age of the original paint on the rest of the car. He NAILED it on the first try. After I painted the replacement panels, I busted out the electric buffer and compound on the rest of her car and you could not tell what panels had been repainted.
My 6 vodka tonic rambling point? Body shops and paint mixing houses are pretty damn good these days in matching old paint and their colors with all the technology. Good auto painters can also do a really good job of matching original orange peel as well, that the VW's came with from the factory. It's a single stage paint too which makes it easier as well.