I want to relate to you all a really sad story in the hopes that you will learn from my mistakes and that at you will not fall into the same trap that I did.
The bottom line is this week I had the county Sheriff raid the shop back in Oklahoma where my car was supposedly being stored after it received a complete paint job and some other work like subframe connectors and a new headliner. The only positive news I got today is that my car is still there in the shop. The Sheriff’s deputy told me that my car basically still looks exactly like the photos I took before I drove the car down get the work started.
The other day I read an article on digital Hemmings about how and why a nice paint job on a classic car today is $40,000. Basically it’s the amount of time involved and high shop rates. We hobbyists with full time jobs, families, and mortgages usually can’t afford that kind of money. So we rely on each other in the hobby to be fair and honest with each other as we, on a regular basis, do transactions for parts and perhaps services that are all on the honor/faith system in order to maximize the precious funds we have for this hobby.
Sometimes we need services beyond our expertise and again, because we do not have money to burn, are on the lookout for another hobbyist that peddles auto related services as either a side job or perhaps full time out of their garage or small shop. As an example, my 1980 Turbo Trans Am received a flawless professional paint job in 1996 for just the cost of shop supplies and paint. The tradeoff was that my car was in the shop for 9 months as it was used as “filler†work to keep the shop employees occupied during down times and slow seasons.
In 2015, while still trying to scrape together an estimated $10,000 to even begin looking for a painter, I ran into a fellow muscle car enthusiast at work. He showed me the fantastic paintjob his 2nd Gen Camaro had received for less money than I had already saved up and he highly recommended this guy’s work. Despite this personal endorsement, I still vetted this guy myself by traveling down to rural central OK several times to talk to this painter and view some more of his previous work. I actually had him also work on the interior of my daily driver pickup while I watched. He had his own ’67 Camaro that he had owned since he was a teenager and the black paint job on that car was miles deep and flawless. He said he had gotten into painting because he was just that picky and nobody could deliver what he wanted. I saw a fussy guy with skills and deep knowledge of 1st Generation F-bodys.
So in January, 2016, I dropped my Firebird off at this painter’s house/shop. After that, I got extremely detailed “progress reports†via text messages but no photos. The later was my own fault for most this time as I was convinced smart phones were just plain ridiculous. So any photo sent to my old flip phone was pretty much useless as I could not transfer it to a computer or even make it big enough to see anything.
In the summer of 2017, I abruptly set in motion my 40 year retirement plan after being shafted just one too many times by my employer. My wife and I quickly sold our house in Oklahoma and relocated back to Arizona. The problem was that my car “wasn’t quite finishedâ€. This painter also graciously offered to hang onto my car for free while our new house in Arizona was under construction (and now we all know why).
Finally in March of 2018, I was ready to have my car shipped out. We were going to use the painter’s recommended independent car shipper because they were familiar with each other and he was a bit cheaper than the estimates I got from the professionals.
Then the excuses started rolling like boulders down a mountainside. The weather was bad on his end (believable in Oklahoma). Then my car refused to start and he had to dig into the wiring that I had all replaced. Then he found an earlier repair on my passenger side rocker panel that had gone bad after he painted it and (since it was a lifetime guarantee) he said he would just replace the entire rocker and repaint it. Then his dad had some extreme medical issues…
Finally we come to this past summer and it was just one problem after another with his preferred shipper. 6 weeks ago, my car was supposedly on the trailer (finally) and on its way to me via Dallas where the shipper lives. When the shipper gets to Dallas, there is suddenly a family medical emergency and a couple of days later my car is taken back to the painter.
This is when I said some really choice words and decided to get the professional shippers involved. Everything was set for an afternoon in early October with Passport Transport. After sweating it out at home waiting for conformation that my car is loaded, I get a phone call that there has been a “significant local power surge and outage at the shop.†The professional driver actually decided to overnight there in central OK to wait for the power to come back on, but then “the space saver lift my car is being stored on†had supposedly shorted out.
I was beside myself with frustration and reached back the 1100 miles to a friend and fellow car enthusiast who volunteered to go verify my car actually still existed. After my friend got the same run around, he decided to go check to see if there were any legal actions against the painter. Two weeks ago, my friend found 2 pending lawsuits since 2017 with similar circumstances to mine AND that the painter is on the verge of losing his house and his shop (same property) to a foreclosure.
The bizarre thing is about how this painter has been telling me for ages that my car has been completed and it was ready for pickup. Why would he just not keep stalling with “it’s not done yetâ€. It’s been like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football.
This weekend will be the last ultimatum – either this painter releases my car to my friend or I will have the Sheriff arrest him for auto theft.
Needless to say, I think I will be taking a bit of a break from my car hobby for a while the final part of this plays out and I try and figure out where I am going to go from here. Best case, the paint shop funds I spent years scraping together are lost, worst case is potentially 22 years of work down is the drain.
2012 Mustang Boss 302 #1918, Competition Orange. FGF replacement 2006 Mustang V6 Pony, Vista Blue. Factory ordered. 2019 BMW X3 (Titled to the wife, but I'm always driving it for her. So I'm claiming it) Old projects, gone but not forgotten: 1967 FB 400, original CA car. After 22 years of work, trashed by the guy who was supposed to paint it. I had to sell it. 1980 Turbo Trans Am 1970 Mustang fastback, 351C 4Bbl, auto 1988 Mustang GT, 5 speed 1983 F-150 4x4, built 302 1994 Chevy K2500 HD 4x4, 454 TBI