Me again,
Well you all have been such a great help that I have made every decision about my 06 MCS, except 1......THE COLOR.
It finally occurred to me today that for me the point of this car was to get something fun to drive that made me smile every time I see it. For me, that means an interesting, off the beaten path color. I have tried to love the colors offered but they all strike me as "well I could live with it" which is not what I want. As I said, the cool blue would be great and the yellow would be awesome, but neither is available on the MCS, grrrrr. I might see if my dealer can do a search for an '05 but I doubt he'll find one with everything else I want, ie Premium, Cold Weather, Sport and Convenience package with the HarmanKardon sound system.
Anyway, has anyone just bought a white or even unprimed and had it painted??? If so, any ballpark guess as to cost??? Also, since I don't plan on parting with this car maybe it's something I can do down the road, if so is white the best color to start with?
Thanks all for any input,
Annette

 

Best start with white. As far as cost to repaint it depends on too many variables to throw out a price. Paint prices vary # of coats? clear also? tape over trim... remove trim? interior? You gut the interior or the paint shop or a 3rd party? Buffed to a smooth finish or kind of wavy finish like OEM? Who is going to paint it or ruin it?


first find a shop within your budget with customers you can quiz on quality time additional costs... discuss various paint products prices for your car (see 1st paragraph) Bla,bla,bla. If you want to avoid the cost of doing the interior you might buy it painted a complimentary color or similar one. good luck!

Also PM SpiderX He is in Atlanta & is seriously thinking of respraying his car

 

as far as repaints go, you always start with a black car.

the engine bay will be black, along with the jambs, if you decide not to paint them.

 

Dont repaint, do a vinyl wrap. Its dramatically cheaper, and you can just peel it off if you want a change of color!

 

didnt think of that! great idea!!!!

 

Didn't I also hear someone here say you can get any of the colors BMW offers of their vehicles for an extra $1,000? Or was that just a silly rumor?

 

Repainting a brand new car will surely destroy your resale value. Not worth the time, effort and cost in my book. I would persue the vinyl wrap route that way you can preserve the original finish without affecting the value of your vehicle.

 

This option has never been available for USA MINI customers. I only know of one individual in the UK that managed to get a GREEN roof painted from the factory. Her car has a Chili Red body.

 

I hate to rain on your parade, but a total repaint will never look like a factory paint job. The car is painted at the factory before adding all the drivetrain, interior, etc, and short of completely dismantling the car to repaint, you could never get the same "level" of paint penetration from a body shop. Individual paint on a BMW is actually around $2500 to have anything in their color palette applied to any given model, but I don't think Mini offers that. I've never heard of vinyl wrapping but sounds like a compromise to me.
BTW, I once heard of an early Audi TT adopter that had his car painted yellow before it was officially offered. He paid somewhere in the vicinity of $20000 to have his car disassembled, painted, and reassembled, silly I think.

 

How much? No...question is how much do you want to pay?

and

you get what you pay for...and maybe less.

Earl will paint it for u for a few hundred. I (over) paid that for just a bonnet repaint. (On the Mi not the MI...I went custom and learned a lesson)

1 thing 4 sure. If you change the body color and don't do a total tear down, it will be a) obvious and b) not look very good.

A wrap? Hey, there are companies that will pay you to let them wrap your car - u just need to agree to be a rolling billboard.
http://www.adsonwheels.com/Car_Wrap_Main.asp

Well, ur car is unique.

A guy here just did a compromise you might consider. He sprayed his top...his CR now sports an international orange top. Unique to say the least. And not out of character for the car.... A fairly straight forward task actually (but I'm not suggesting you do it yourself unless you know what you are doing and have the right stuff) ... of course this also brings us to the wrap again and just a custom roof graphic.....

 

I agree about the available colors-- where, is a citrus orange, (hey, orange soda, not burnt orange), purple, (1972 Plymouth Roadrunner purple, not "Chrysler minivan" purple that BMW went with,) or, what I really want, Lime Green, (and NOT metallic!!!)

Also agree that a total repait is risky- I'd be afraid that you could not dup. the overall leveling and durability of a factory job. Good luck!

 

I'm planning on having my car resprayed (same color, IB) in the not terribly distant future (year or 2) at my uncles body shop. He quoted me $3500 for the body -- I'm not bothering with the roof.


He has resprayed one of my doors and, as far as quality, his paint guy was upset that he would have to do a sub-par job just to match the orange peely look of the rest of my car. The door looks fantastic, and I'd challenge anyone to pick it out as re-painted.


And if you are hanging on to it, who cares about resale? Cars are (almost) always going to depreciate -- however slowly. May as well have some fun with them.

 

When I had a Mazda MX-6 in at a dealership's body shop about 5 years ago to replace a door (after a guy backed into me in a parking lot), I was given a guesstimate of $7000 to repaint the entire car.

 

Well, you can all pat yourselves on the back, you have given me sound and useful advice and I think I'll skip the paintjob
The vinyl wrap thing is sounding like a viable option.
Of course the dealership has unearthed an '05 MCS LY/W. It has everything I want except the convenience package and the interior is black, which isn't my fave. I'm going to think on it for a day and see how I feel about that.
Now to pull out the yellow pages and get some ideas on the vinyl wrapping!
Thanks much again,
Annette

Lime green..........

 

Glad to hear that some owners have been able to get this done well. That's reassuring. I had some body work done by the shop that does all the dealers' BMW's (so you are talking, for example, $80K cars... ), and it was a very good job, but yes, I could tell the work had been done. So, congrats and good luck to OmToast and others, its good to hear that you did so well.

 

It is very difficult to replicate a high quality factory paint job. Body shop work is always noticeable, no matter how good the final result is. Used car appraisers and auctioners are trained to look for non-factory paint jobs when inspecting cars. There are areas in the car and the sheetmetal that are not reproducible outside the factory environment.

 

where the heck are emis and tuls?

everyone i know has asked me why i didn't "get" a pink mini (as if i could go to the dealership and just pick one up) since i am *obsessed* with having everything pink. Maybe sometime in the future i'll end up repainting mine... but i was just talking with battle cattle about this last night... i'm not sure if i'll trade up for an S down the road... and i really wanted an EB, but i'd rather have a pink one

Maybe when i pay off my mini (and my resale value is dirt because i drive SO freaking much) i'll start hunting for a black S and go all pink/black. But if my mileage does get TOOOOO high (i have an 04, and i'm sitting at 29,010 miles) i may trade before i pay off the car. We'll see

I tried not to bring it up, but i couldn't contain myself... i was going to repaint my miata in April with my dad in our garage, but i ended up wrecking and selling it in march, so that didn't happen. Maybe we'll be able to do the MINI together