When Paint Jobs Lasted Forever: The Lost Art Of Single Stage
*Before reading this I am going to put my usual disclaimer. This is not a fact based article. My automotive articles are always geared towards stories about my personal life in the form of a blog, and the incidences I personally run into as a first time owner who is a non professional. About the frustrations I have personally felt owning cars as a consumer. Your experience may completely differ from mine. This article is purely subjective to my own personal taste you may disagree with. This is not an article giving professional advice or suggestions. It’s not to be taken as history or fact. This is a total opinion piece just to give a fair warning. So without further ado, let’s jump into the world of the Single Stage.
I’m going to talk to you about a controversial but interesting part of American automotive history that is seldom talked about. We often drool over engine specs, maybe car design, but no one really ever talks about chemicals and what that really means to the average man or woman. What were the chemicals used in automotive paints throughout the 20th century, and what does that have to do with working at the car wash blues? For starters to expose and introduce myself, I am a new automotive painter. I went to my local trade high school where I majored in auto body, and from their, I went on to Nashua Community College in New Hampshire where I participated in the Associate’s Degree program for collision repair in years past. I was motivated to enter this industry and help others because of an industry that is dominated by a car insurance mindset. The rules have been rewritten. I was tired of reaching dead ends until one day I came across the answer I had been searching for and it finally all made sense.
I was getting frustrated with my own classic car collection. When I was in high school I paid a body shop to spray my 1974 Mercedes 240D with clear coat. After years of driving it the paint started to fail, and I said to myself I could do a better job for half the price in my own backyard. So that is the career choice I moved towards. Today I am constantly learning new things every day from the people I talk to, and today I want to share with you why I feel the industry has moved away from quality paint jobs when insurance companies began to dominate the dialog, right around the time it went from being called autobody to collision repair. This is purely my own biased opinion and you may very well disagree with it. You may say everything in this article is completely wrong, but thank you for taking the time to read. So just as a disclaimer this is not a fact based article but it is my own personal preference. There are also cons to single stage which you may not like which I will be explaining further down. Also as a disclaimer, this article is not recommending lacquer or enamel paint jobs and in fact I hope to be discouraging them by writing this. This article also won’t be discussing metallic paints either. In essence, this is why I believe there is nothing more that beats those single stage paint jobs of the past.
Beginning Of Automotive Paints:
In the beginning, there were cars, and cars created smog and expensive repair bills. One interesting aspect of automotive history that is seldom talked about is the history of industrial paint. The first automotive paints were nitrocellulose lacquer like what is still used today to paint guitars. Brands such as Dupont 44S, Lucite, Delux, and Duracryl. They produced vibrant colors. They were originally painted on with brushes made of badger hair bristles. This method of painting was popular throughout the early half of the 20th century. After WWII air compressors started becoming more popular as more shops could afford them, and we introduced the siphon feed gun. This is when metallic-based alkyd and acrylic enamels gained popularity in the 1940s and dried by a chemical reaction rather than waiting to air dry. We can remember Centarui, Delstar, Chief, Wizard, Marble, Effecto, and BPS. By the way, these brands were all American companies. Today PPG is the only domestic company left that is selling paint lines to bodyshops.
Commenter Bill Wilson below pointed out that Henry Ford had his labs develop a synthetic enamel made with soybean oil in an attempt to help out US farmers during the Depression. The US went to war with most everything painted with synthetic enamels with our vehicles, halftracks and tanks carrying a touch-up kit of paint and small brushes that were cleaned in gasoline. Part of their daily maintenance was to touch-up their paint job to prevent rusting. The white stars and letters were touched-up by the repair crews since that was a special paint that detected poison gases by turning shades of pink. The stars were made large so crewmen and foot soldiers could see their color change thru vision ports and from a distance. Fore most of our country’s history it was single stage paints we relied on for industrial use and still use to this day in industrial applications. On every airplane in the sky, every school bus on the road, every boat and train passing by. There is no contest for what stands the test of time.
These older paints were in fact more durable than the paints we are using on modern cars today because they contained a catalyst, which means they had a chemical structure. In other words, they dried through a chemical reaction rather than mechanically by air. These paints could not scratch, they could not peel, they could not chip, and they went on in three or sometimes four layers or even way more. Single stage means you have more quality pigment on your car. The pigment defined your car. How do I know it was scratch proof? Scratching layers of paint off the car is how you bring back the shine of the car. That is why wool pads used to be the norm. The more you scratched off the more your paint would shine. This is where I will bring up the car wash as an example. Today they tell you not to bring your car through the car wash, they say a car wash will destroy your car and eat away at the paint. That used to be the point.
The old windmills worked by stripping off old layers of oxidized paint, so every time you would bring your car to the car wash it would come out looking glossier and cleaner every time. Zero scratches. It was like a giant buffing wheel that would make any paint shine like new. Starting in the year 1994 these windmill car washes were phased out for touch-less jets because the industry made the move away from single stage to bc/cc. Even lacquer paints were immune to scratching and peeling because they too were one chemical structure. Even though they contained no catalyst. They may have faded more easily than enamel but they were a stable structure, which meant the coat itself could never fail from separation since it was not two separate chemical bonds. The first clears were even made of lacquer, so you had a chemically bonded structure as the pigment with UV protection, and an outer shell that was mechanically bonded by air so it never truly cured. In other words, it was very easy to maintain and this was even true for enamel as well and never posed a problem.
They were also more cosmetically pleasing not only because they did not suffer from scratches, but also because they did not suffer from excess orange peel like urethane clear coat. When we switched over to gravity-feed guns we invented the orange peel asset on cars which I will talk about further down. Let me talk about the beauty of lacquer paints. If you chip your paint job, you can do spot repairs and the paint will melt back into the existing layer. With enamels, if you scratch your paint job, you can buff the scratch out without repainting. Over time as the older layer of enamel thins, you can either buff it back to a shine or you can even add an extra layer of new paint every few decades and it will blend right in. It is simply a stronger design for your vehicle. You never have to repaint the entire car back to primer. With single stage paint the function was designed to last indefinitely. That is why today many restoration enthusiasts still insist on using single stage for their jobs, especially for solid colors where benefits outweigh the cons. Also, please do not confuse fading with failure. Single stage paints may fade faster, but that can easily be maintained and brought back to a high gloss.
Three misconceptions I would like to bring up. First is that a single stage paint job will fade in sunlight. This is incorrect. Single stage paint is no different in makeup from clear coat. The only difference is that it is one chemical structure rather than two. There is still UV protection built into single stage paint, and acrylic urethane single stage is very resilient to sun. Lacquer paints will fade if you use your classic as a daily driver but it can be maintained correctly. Also many enamel jobs faded quickly if they were painted at discount bodyshops like the old Earl Scheib or Maaco who always would leave out the optional hardener. They would get it dry and hard enough to work by air, but it wasn’t chemical resistant or very tough.
The second misconception is that lacquer paints crack. Yes, it will crack in cold weather if it is applied in too thick of coats. They will also crack if you use spot putty underneath that is prone to shrinking over time. Or if your bodywork is not very flat. Or if you used a primer underneath that does not like lacquer. Also if you park it out in the sun every day. Since lacquer is more brittle it is more temperamental to the elements. Nitrocellulose was even more brittle. Some people to this day insist on lacquer for show cars for its depth of color since it can be maintained enough for trailer queens. However, all single stage will have a greater depth than clear coat.
The third and final misconception is that single stage lacquers and enamels were bad for the environment. The truth is that the urethane paints we use today are far more toxic to both our lungs and the environment than the single stage products that were used at the first half of the 20th century. This is because single stage lacquer did not contain a catalyst, which means they contained no isocyanates. Just look at some legends such as custom painter Bill Hines who lived to age of 94, George Barris who lived to age 90, and Darryl Starbird and Gene Winfield who are living past their 90s or close to it. All while painting with a cigar in their mouth. Please don’t mistake me for condoning you go out and paint without a mask, but not is all as it seems. This is why we can no longer paint cars out on the shop floor. You can read up on literature about what breathing in isocyanates does to your lungs. It was once common to see guys painting cars with no masks on in the 50s and 60s. Say what you want, they were not breathing in isocyanates that act like a glue in your lungs. Therefore you cannot say we made the switch because of environmental or health concerns. Lacquer, and enamels that were commonly mixed without the optional hardener were much safer to spray even though it is commonly told otherwise.
If you’re going to spray single stage I would also recommend that you get a siphon feed gun and put marbles in the cup which is an old school trick. Siphon guns will allow you to spray upside down too and reach into tighter corners. Your pigment will flow out more consistently, because you have to remember with single stage it is all about pigment dispersion. Gravity feed guns tend to bottleneck like ketchup in a glass bottle. Don’t think you are shooting lacquer or enamel with an HVLP gravity Iwata.
The Switch To BC/CC:
Sometime around the early 80s two new technologies were emerging. There were lacquer clears and then urethane clears hit the market for body shops. They were gravity feed spray guns and a new paint line that would be applied in two parts. A base coat which was your color, and a clear which was supposed to make painting easier. The Mini Cooper would be the last consumer-level production car painted with single stage paint from the factory in 2005. Volvo 240 was the second to last European model painted in single stage black which ended in 1993. Today unless you order a custom paint job at a bodyshop, it is almost near impossible to request a single stage paint option at the dealership, and there was a very real reason why this happened. Before we get into that we have to get more common misconceptions out of the way to separate the confusion.
Let’s throw away some misconceptions first. The industry did not make the switch because bc/cc is a superior product. BC/CC is both more fragile and can become less attractive to the eye than a single stage job. Likewise, a siphon feed spray gun can give you the same quality job as a gravity feed gun if not better in the hand of a professional. It’s the only way to spray lacquer. The second misconception is that the industry made the switch because the EPA “made them” do it which is another thing you commonly here. In reality, there is no federal law that exists banning the use of siphon feed guns. I live in the liberal state of Massachusetts and I can still buy siphon-feed guns at my local Walmart, and you can still do so in California as well. In fact any HVLP gun can simply be taken out of compliance by increasing air pressure. The industry is now even moving towards water based paints. That is also a sailor’s tale, because you still are using solvent-based clear coat. There is no difference when it comes to the environment.
The truth is that the industry made the switch because it saves body shops on material of pigment. You barely need any pigment product, because the clear coat will do all of the work for you. Water-based paint simply makes it supposedly easier to match, but that’s only because insurance companies don’t give painters enough time to blend. Number two is that a gravity feed gun cuts down on materials used both saving body shops money and producing fewer VOCs which makes the EPA happy. It’s considered a win-win for men in black suits and the workers bought it up. If you take a closer look it’s also allowed paint companies to double the amount of paint they make sales on by forcing shop owners to buy two products instead of one. In the long run, could this be increasing costs to the industry?
There are many arguable drawbacks to what happened. First, as we moved into this system we started requiring shops to set up expensive booths and complicated mixing systems. The industrial paint booth industry has turned into a multi billion dollar empire, with top American companies such as Garmat, ETL, and Global Finishing Solutions warning customers with a sales pitch about the real dangers of building your own booths and why you should only trust a professional company to build a bodyshop for you. Like a car salesman on a sunny day, a bodyshop owner has the option for gold-lined trim, diamond-encased filters, robotic doors, and even BluTooth radio speakers built right inside. We are told that this is supposed to produce “better” jobs, and the more money you spend on a more powerful compressor the better quality job you will get. After all the best body shops have top-of-the-line downdraft filtration, you wouldn’t be caught dead with a booth that was older than three decades old. Let alone if they last that long. For the shop owner, the advent of the paint booth costs tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance and electric bills every year, and they are impossible to repair yourself. Parts are increasingly becoming proprietary and can only be serviced by qualified repair technicians who just so happen to charge a premium. Often a jobber will convince a new shop owner to put on a down payment, only to have the booth break down before you are even done paying it off.
The real question for all of this would then be, if we have to go through all of this is there any benefit and is it worth it? The truth is that a paint booth is not only not doing anything for the quality of a paint job, but could it be making paint jobs worse? I used to hear this from my grandfather all the time who told me this advice when he would hang around his body shop buddies, never paint a car near a wall because walls attract dust like a magnet. There is actually a very real truth in that. If you consider what the job of a filter is doing, it’s designed to trap dust. So in consequence when you are spraying out of your gun, especially at higher pressures with old siphon feed setups, you are pushing all of that dust sticking to the wall around in the air and onto your paint job. For the ten years, I have since been working in body shops since I left trade school, there is not a paint job that goes by that doesn’t come out with dust nibs that have been removed. In extremely busy production shops that paint ten cars a day, I can tell you your car is not being painted in a sterile environment. Well, we remove dust out of paint by wet sanding and buffing, on the already conservative layers of paint applied to the car. This is compromising the integrity of the paint job even before it leaves the shop floor. I have produced great paint jobs in my backyard outside. How much your booth costs really has nothing to do with producing a quality paint job.
When it comes to painting single stage, many have told me you will get a lot less orange peel with a siphon. With base coat and clear coat systems the increased orange peel works to the advantage of modern paints, because the more orange peel you have the more UV protection your finish will obtain. When you buff and wet sand orange peel away on clear which most classic restoration shops do, you are reducing the life expectancy of your show car. That is why sanding the factory finish voids the warranty. With single stage it is a completely different ballgame. Now when it comes to metallics that is another topic entirely. I have been told before that when you are painting single stage metallic, you want to use a siphon feed because HVLP guns don’t have the pressure necessary to push out metallic flakes. You will get a much better finish out of a siphon, and in some cases this applies to solid colors as well because gravity-feed guns can clog. The words used to describe it to me were, they tend to bottleneck like a ketchup bottle and this is especially true with metallics. A lot of the old enamel paints would be too thick to spray through modern guns. An example would be Duralux and Centari line that is still made today (highly recommend by the way). Not really a problem if you’re using base and then you’ll be clearing over it, but you’re not going to get an even flow or finish with a gravity feed and HVLP will not be enough pressure. In other words, I am specifically speaking about single stage metallic in that regard.
The other sales pitch of switching to the clear coat system was that you need to shoot clear coat if you want to paint cars with metallics. Evidently, that is why most cars on the road today are no longer solid colors. Even though pearls and metallics cost more money for the body shop to obtain in materials, no that has nothing to do with what factors into paint jobbers making a sales pitch to sell you new systems (kidding folks). However, you can very much as shown above paint metallics with single stage paints, and unlike common belief they can be buffed like clear coat within reason. If it cannot be buffed it is because it was not applied correctly as taught to me by many old timers in the industry I have worked around. It is commonly but mistakenly told that when using single stage metallics you need to “fog” it after the last coat. Make your spray thin by cranking up the air and gun and backing away from the car. It’s called the cross hatch pattern but this is very wrong and will not produce a quality finish. Many painters in the past fogged multiple coats to level up the metallic and hide the banding from improperly applied first and second coats. The result was a low pigment and high solvent coat which oxidized quickly as there were no solids to cover the metallic particles, and because there were no solids covering the metallic it could easily bleed through and become damaged by buffing.
Now this can all be avoided by it takes a good painter with experience working with single stage paints, and so switching to clear really was a cost savings measure to increase efficiency. It doesn’t mean that a high quality single stage job cannot be done. The point of my explaining all of this is to showcase how the standards the industry has adopted in regards to using clear is saving on material and cost, and not necessarily to produce a better job. All things considered, a skilled tradesman (or woman) using a siphon feed gun outside in someone’s backyard, will produce a better result than a bad and inexperienced painter using a gravity feed clear set up in a million-dollar spray booth. You’re just going to waste more material. The trick with the old marbles still works. Maybe the old timers knew something after all?
I don’t mean to say it’s not possible to get a good finish out of an HVLP, and I think we would agree that any gun in the hand of a competent painter can produce good results. It further proves my point, that the guns we used in the past are just as good as the guns we use today in my opinion and the opinion from many I talk with. I was approaching this debate by asking the question, have we improved? Is it possible to lay down amazing paint jobs with older techniques? So by switching to a base and clear coat, the pigment was no longer the showcase. You no longer had to spray out a perfect job and dust was okay because you could just turn the heater on in the booth and dry the paint job within ten minutes and it’s ready for sanding and buffing. This both saved the shop money and time and allowed for more flexibility. Gone were the days of waiting for lacquer to air day. To get the same quality job out of single stage would take four to five coats plus higher pressure, whereas the new system required one or two coats and you are done. The newer guns significantly cut down on the amount of pigment thrown away. This did nothing to produce a better job like is advertised. On top of that, the quality of paint guns being sold to accommodate this change is no longer made in the United States and increasingly contains HVLP seals that often break down and have to be replaced. One of the worst offenders of leaking seals are Devilbiss Tekna line guns today, and it’s often from improperly cleaned guns because we are told we can no longer spray thinner out of the gun. Ironically I end up wasting more thinner than if I was allowed to spray for a few seconds. I’m sorry but the only way to properly clean a gun is by spraying thinner, and you avoid making a mess all over your hands.
With base coat any imperfection in the pigment will be less noticeable if not unnoticeable unless you are spraying silver metallic which is just a terrible color for any system any day of the week. However, I am not the only one who believes it takes more skill to shoot a single stage solid color and get a good finish than it does to shoot a bc/cc metallic or pearl. This cost savings and easier application has its tradeoffs. You are trading quality for convenience. That is the only reason the industry switched.
You see a clear coat is like a second color on top of urethane pigment. They call it clear coat but it is not really clear. It’s actually slightly yellow. It does have a cloudiness to it, and this fogging is noticeable even in the best clears. Today’s cars are not as vibrant as they used to be and it’s noticeable. It’s not just cosmetically inferior either, its durability is inferior as well. Clear coat is more fragile to handle and base coat is an inferior weaker pigment. Proof of that would be if you did not use clear coat over base coat, the base coat would fade within days. There is no UV protection built into base coat unlike in single stage. The UV protection is in the clear coat, and one of the problems clear coats have is they are prone to “hairline scratches” which opened up a new money making scheme.
What happens is eventually the owner wants their car to look nice again. You often send it off to get “detailed” to remove those scratches. Your detail shop will very gladly take your money and lots of it to make your car “look nice”. You will gaze at that mirror finish and believe you got your money’s worth. Then you are told to buff and apply wax to your car every year to protect it from the sun. This could not be a bigger misconception about modern paints. This is simply not even close to the truth, and by taking care of your paint on a modern vehicle are you causing more damage?
The truth is, every time you buff scratches away you are removing layers of the UV protection no matter how expensive your clear coat was. This is because the UV protection comes from orange peel. Cars from the factory are purposely painted with lots of orange peel for this very reason. They often say only a “real” painter can replicate a factory finish which takes a lot more skill. Some I have had this debate with have been quick to point out that single stage paints can scratch too, and that is very true but there is a difference. If a single stage paint job scratches it can be buffed out without repainting. So it’s not that single stage doesn’t scratch, but it’s a lot easier to remove scratches. Once your clear coat becomes scratched there is only so much sanding and buffing you can do before it makes your clear too thin and that is a fact. The nature of clear coat only allows you to build up your material so thick that you only have one or two layers of protection, versus the many more coats of lacquer or enamel you can pile on even though naysayers will claim you can’t.
To better explain what I am getting at, you have to factor in that bodyshops have switched to gravity-feed guns, and today many are now using 4:1 clears. You want your clear to be at least 2.5 mils thick to provide adequate protection from the sun. Two coats of clear with 1.2–1.3 mm fluid tip on an HVLP gun will just get you in the ballpark of thick enough. However, now you’re taking that down with a buffing wheel. It just won’t last, and especially with how conservative shops run these days on cost of materials you don’t have much room to work with. If you own a classic car you restored this is bad news. A restoration shop often tries to give you a mirror or glass finish from the start. In other words, a restoration shop buffs away the good orange peel that would have come from the factory. Therefore if you own a show car with clear coat and you are constantly wet sanding and buffing away at it each year, chances are you have very little UV protection left. There is no other way to explain that. If you insist on using clear I would recommend at most three coats. The more durability you have with clear coat the more clarity you sacrifice, and put on too thick and you risk problems. So that is the real catch 22 about modern paints.
Over time after being exposed to buffing, sunlight, acid rain, and salt from the roads the clear coat will break down and get thinner. Especially these days the clear coming from the factory is applied by robots very conservatively. Since base coat is not a catalyst structure like single stage it will get chalky if exposed to sunlight, and then your clear will have nothing left to grip to as it breaks down from the outside elements. Clear coat fails by peeling apart as it separates in two because they are two separate chemical structures, so they don’t chemically bond to each other. When this happens you have to repaint the entire car. Below is a 1999 Accord that was donated to my local college. The owner gave it away before they even bothered to repaint. In essence we have created a throw away culture.
The average driver on the road will not care, because they will likely trade in their vehicle for a new car before the paint fails. It’s also a win for the average driver because the car really never has to be buffed because it’s the clear coat that gives the car it’s shine, not the pigment underneath. You only buff a car these days to remove scratches which I believe you should never do to begin with. Buffing equates to more damage. That is why I recommend that if you do own a collector with clear and want it to last, never buff your car at all. Only buff your car if it was painted with single stage paint. You are really destroying your paint every time you wax it.
Another common mistake that many car enthusiasts are seeking out are painting clear coat over single stage paint jobs, or mixing clear in with the last coat of a single stage paint job. That in the very sense of the word is sort of defeating the purpose of the benefits of single stage. Clear does not oxidize like single stage, so if you do have spots where you burned through or a really thin section over time you will always have a dull spot even if you attempted to buff it. If you used no clear, the single stage paint would oxidize all at once and you could sand it uniformly to bring back the shine. The only way to have a uniform gloss if clear coat was used is to reclear the entire panel or car. Otherwise, no matter how hard you try, you would always have dull spot where the color oxidizes with no clear to protect it. Single stage will never have as much gloss as clear so it will be noticeable. You can only sand or rub old paint if a clear coat is not used. In theory, adding clear to a single stage finish does add extra durability, in the sense that you could melt a new layer of clear back into layers of the single stage after sanding which you could not do with base coat without total failure. However, you won’t be getting the full benefits of a single stage finish because you will be adding those hairline scratches and yellowing that is a common problem with even the most expensive clears. It’s still a second-best option for those who want to wax their cars less frequently. Single stage does require more maintenance to keep a constant gloss. (I won’t even bring up ceramic coatings, $$$)
The final point I will address about clear coat is how toxic it is for anyone to be spraying it. As I mentioned above unlike single stage lacquer, these modern two part or sometimes three part paints contain catalysts such as isocyanates. Clear coat is so dangerous that half face respirators don’t work anymore to filter out the paint fumes today. In the bodyshop I have worked at, I have seen many young painters with COPD who believe a half face respirator and goggles are protecting them. Not only do you inhale isocyanates, it will be absorbed through your clothing and eyes and hair. Any painter in the modern age who does not want to develop lung cancer should get a full face-supplied air respirator along with Tyvek waterproof painting suits. You did not need any of those things with the lacquer and alkyd enamel paints of the past. Even single stage urethane does contain isocyanates. However for the nonprofessional it does say on 3M’s own website that their P100 carbon cartridges do filter out isocyanates, but they cannot be worn with facial hair and works better in a professional spray booth. The half-face masks are simply a pain to fit correctly every time, so I ended up purchasing a battery-powered supplied air mask for $800. It was worth my peace of mind. It’s so important that you do not let modern paints touch your skin or hair or shoes. Cover up like a mummy even if you do get laughs.
“OSHA has clarified its position on this issue in a letter dated July 18, 2000, in- dicating that air-purifying respirators may be used if all requirements of 1910.134 are met and other potential hazards are addressed.”
http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/219170O/osha-clarifies-resp-selection-for-diisocyanates.pdf
The fastest way for modern paints to do harm to you is through your clothes, hair, eyes, and hands. Make sure to buy some thick nitrile gloves. If you paint outside you also have access to more ventilation if you don’t have a professional booth. I laugh, but some of the best paint jobs I have seen were painted outside in the fresh air. It’s actually more dusty in a paint booth because in all reality a car should really not be painted close to a dusty wall surface. Paint booths just make the EPA happy.
My Take / Opinion
I don’t believe that modern paint is always a superior product for all scenarios. In some ways, it can be but in other ways, it has been shown not to hold up to the heat in the kitchen. In reality, the industry always loves saving money in an automotive world dominated by the insurance industry. In a production shop, it is always about quantity over quality and there is nothing wrong with that, but there are a large group of automotive enthusiasts and collectors who I believe are looking for something more. There is a good reason commercial planes, trains, ships, and even many trucks are still painted in single stage products. There is a reason you will still see autos painted in single stage jobs at Pebble Beach and Amelia Island. I know this is a controversial opinion and I know many will disagree or dislike what I am saying. Many will say it is flat out wrong. At the end of the day, I have never seen clear coat that still glows like a mirror seven decades after the fact.
There is a very good reason that single stage paint is still used on anything industrial. BC/CC is simply inferior in durability and appearance as it ages. Yes, modern paints require much less maintenance and won’t fade, yes it is easier to spray, and yes it will save you money, and your average customer will be trading in the car before the paint fails to begin with. With all of that said, if you truly want a paint job that you are not going to see fog up with scratches as soon as you put a car cover over it, if you own any show car that you want to preserve for decades, then single stage urethane or enamel may be something you would want to look go for the classic car enthusiast. That is if you don’t want to be repainting every five years. That may be the nature of the beast.
As part of my car series this month I asked readers to write in and showcase their original paint jobs. This is what they had to share.
“43 years. Original paint from the factory. — Bud Lopez (Monterey, CA)
“46 year old job. She is an original survivor.” — Dan Howe (Charolette, MI)
“I painted this 40+ yrs ago with Dupont Dulux enamel. It’s accumulated its insults over the years but still shines.” — Michael Danihlik (Franklin, WI)
“1968 Lancia Fulvia Coupe Rallye 1.3. All original enamel from factory. It’s my absolute pride and joy.” — Dan Quartarone (Hoschton,GA)
“I repainted her in 1973. White is original to the car except for skirts. Was not a great job either but still presentable.” — John Samulevich (Shickshinny, PA)
“My Nova was completely blasted, DP90'd and shot with Ditzler/PPG Delstar acrylic enamel/Delglow clear by a friend in the mid 80s. Still holding up strong.” — Denny G. (Oregon)
“Factory original, 49 year old AMX survivor I’ve owned for twelve years. You’ve got to love AMC.” — Mike Chambliss (Melbourne, FL)
“My dad’s ‘68 KR has the original enamel paint on it, 97k miles on it. Dad bought it in 1981. — Lance Tarnutzer (Lake Mills, WI)
“My 37' Cord, original 20K miles, 2nd owner family. All original lacquer paint and spare tire from the factory.” — Jim McCarthy (Brighton, MI)
I would love to see some of your single stage paint jobs. If you would like to contact me with any questions, my email is bennewillboston@aol.com
