Paint options in southern Cal?

[TRBON8R]

Anyone in southern CA have anything good or bad to say about the local body shops? I need a repaint and some body work and have not been real impressed with anything I've seen so far. Filthy conditions, poor quality work on the cars I saw, some guys too lazy to write up an estimate. Then there was the one shop manager that I could tell had been sparking up the hippie lettuce right before I showed up. Not to mention the fact that I can't see paying 5k for a paint job for a street car. Add in new rubber, and other "minor" items and we are talking about 6k+ for a paint job? I mean come on, we're talking about painting a car, not the Mona Lisa. I'm at a loss here. Am I that "cheap" because I'm looking for a decent job in the 3k range? Anyone have any ideas as far as places I should check out that can do a quality job for reasonable?

 

[Racer X]

Hey Ben,

If you're gonna paint the car, get it flamed

You know, of all the paint shops that I know of in L.A., at least the good ones they are all in the 5-6K range. Good work ain't cheap and cheap work ain't good. Look for a paint shop that has some cool looking hot rods there, those show guys know where the good painters are.

Also something else to think about, what kinda prep are they gonna do to the car? That will have a lot to do with the price.

As for Mr. Hippie Lettuce, give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he just came out of the paint booth

 

[GNX]

I saw one that the Long Beach Buick dealer did. It looked nice. It was a daily driver, the job was about 95-97% show car paint job IMO. I don't know whether the trim was removed by the owner or whether it was removed at all. It was around 3-to thirty-five hundred from what I remember. This was about 3-4 years ago, so the same painter might not be there?

As I recall, he said he car was straight when he took it in and had only about 5 or 6 dings.