Another Expensive Paintjob

A while back I made a post about a pearl white paint job and why they’re so much work. Today I did a Mazda in Soul Red that is a 3-stage candy color. Similar to a pearl job except opposite, where you put down a coarse metallic base and then add costs of translucent candy to achieve the color. It’s a beautiful color but so much work and uses a ton of material. This is what the two steps look like mixed in the cups.

Oct 23, 2026

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Replies (17)

· 1w

Usually, I prefer to paint bolt on parts off the car because it’s less masking and cleaner edges, but this is one color where I make an exception. Jambing out the parts and assembling is much safer with a color like this to minimize the chance of having color differences between panels. The fender and front door are new, and believe it or not, that is actually the correct base color on there. I know, it looks awful, like it could never possibly match.

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· 1w

The first step is to completely cover the entire painted area with blending clear before starting to put the metallic base on. This lets the end of your blends melt in better, without the metallic standing up and causing a “halo”. Again, the first coats look awful, and it makes you question what you’re doing. The blend areas are the biggest areas of concern and it’s wise to put the blends in places on the car where they’re less noticeable. In this case, I lost the blends on the curve of the quarter panel just before the rear bumper and on the opposite side of the hood where there’s a contour. It’s all about creating an illusion.

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· 1w

It took a good six coats of base color to cover the primer spots because reds are very transparent. Even when the final base blend is done and everything is covered, you can still see the color difference. But watch what happens when you put the very first coat of candy over it. Huge difference.

· 1w

The same principal as a pearl, you’re covering everywhere that you put base color with candy and fading it out just a bit further into the existing color. To achieve the best match on this car, four coats of candy did the trick. So that’s ten coats of color. Because of this, I stopped and baked the car halfway through to get some of the solvents out before continuing. This helps keep the gloss level of the finished product from dying back as it cures. Here are the final blends as they look right before clear coat.

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· 1w

And here is the finished product after two coats of clear.

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· 1w

That is amazing!

· 1w

Travis, what are you paying for a gallon of that paint?

Great job btw.

· 1w

Gorgeous!

· 1w

Thanks. This color is especially expensive because there’s a special candy dye and mixing clear that are needed to get the correct look. I think it’s around $1200/gal. at wholesale price. Retail paint price for a job this size is around $2k. Lots of extra labor too. This car had a repair on the left rocker panel too, so that had to be done ahead of time before putting the doors back on. An ordinary color, I would have just painted it in pieces so I could have done it all at once. Now I just need to get the insurance company to understand this.

· 1w

A buddy is painting a 67 Mustang and 4 gallons of black paint came to 8k! Guys don't realize how expensive paint is these days.

Is this an insurance job?

· 1w

It’s kind of absurd where paint prices have gone. I buy this stuff every week and I still get sticker shock sometimes. The trouble is, it makes people shop around and do dumb things like put cheap paint on a restoration project. If there even is a place to skimp on a restoration, the paint is the last place you want to do it. I’ve been using Glasurit 55-line for almost 30 years and it’s NOT cheap, but I know it’s a bulletproof system.

This is an insurance job. So painting the car is half the work. The other half is documenting and presenting it to the insurance company in such a way that they actually pay you for what you did.

· 1w

With costs the way they are I would think a lot more cars are being totaled then in the past.

· 1w

They certainly are but it’s not generally the paint and materials that are doing it. Parts are the biggest culprit. There are so many f-ing pieces on these things now and they all break when they get hit. I don’t know how many pounds of broken plastic I throw in the dumpster every month, but it’s a lot. It’s deeply concerning that everything in the world is disposable plastic junk now.

· 1w

That looks fabulous! The reflection is very tight on that car across panels.
The color reminds me of the recent Alfa Romeo color Rosso Competizione Tricoat. When I was shopping 505 hp I really wanted that but my wife nixed it in favor of their more subdued metallic Vulcano Black.
If I need work done I'll have to give you a call. I already found more scratches on my daughter's car last month *sigh*.

· 1w

Thanks. It is a similar color to the Alfa red. There are several brands that have a nice tricoat red now. The older three stages never had quite the “pop” that they’re getting with the newer colors. I think it’s because they’ve gone to more modern bright aluminum flake and using actual candy dye, which years ago was only a custom paint thing.

· 1w

I love that red. Mazda (I think) has an "antifreeze green" that has a similar "pop".
I don't normally like green but an autobody guy I know has a '67 Eldorado painted that colour and it looks amazing.

· 1w

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a Mazda color, they have a great color palette.