KT and Doug, you both make good points. For me leaving a car to be painted without a firm price and timeframe is an invitation for trouble. If the panel beaters are serious about quoting on a 5-15k job they should be able to spend a few hours going over the car and seeing what is needed.

 

....And this is the problem right now with these cars. A decent paint job (which almost all of them will need at this point in their life) costs at least $5k or more. Add in some basic body work on rear quarters or door dings and you are looking at a $7k bill. Searches on bringatrailer.com show most of the "nice" cars (condition -2 to maybe a 3) selling for about $7 to $9k. This makes the math pretty tough to justify doing. Its a shame as they are beautiful cars but we need values to be $15k to $18k average in order to make it worthwhile to do a real restoration.

I've got 2 right now and I'm cleaning them up as best I can. One needs quarters, the other has the top surfaces' clearcoat failing. My hope is that I can drive them for a few years and maybe values will increase enough to tackle the paint. I'm sure others are in this same boat. We need a group buy on jaguar repaints!

 

When I first purchased my XJS In thought I would do a quick flip. Years ago I used to make a few bucks that way. I hadn't done my research and I've long given up on that plan. Now I just want a sunday driver I can be proud of.

 

I know this would not be everyone's cup of tea. If I were faced with this "issue" I would do all the prep work myself, not including panel welding/replacement, including taking off door handles etc.

I would then negotiate a price for a respray with a large low cost franchise to use quality paint.

At least one person somewhere on here has done that with apparently good results.

I have done the whole thing myself in a garage I set up as a spray booth in converting a brown XJS to white.

It required a lot of final smoothing down orange peel but even if I do say so myself the result was pretty good.

 

Good on you!!