Took my 06 C2 in for detailing yesterday. Mind you this is my first P car so I'm a total neophite. Anyway first he gives me the good news with is readily apparent. The car looks amazing. Very nice job. He says "Your car came out well. They did a great job on the repaint. You can tell they did a very good job" Say what? "It looks like your car was probably totally repainted." He then pointed out all the little tiny imperfections . WTF I was aware of one incident reported in CarFax. It was a replaced R/F headlight and bumper cover. Why would the whole car be repainted for that? I would assume, the bumper, RF fender and hood but not whole car. So now I'm wondering what else may have happened. Is there anyway to find out the reported incident history on a car beside carfax. I understand that alot of stuff doesn't get reported to the insurance co. I really bummed. The car itself mechanically seems very solid. It's loaded and very pretty, arctic silver with full coco brown interior. I bought it from a well known SFV Porsche import dealer moves mainly P cars. Of course there was no disclosure of a full repaint!!

 

I would go back and ask them why they didn't disclose it. You may ask for some money back but it is unlikely they will do it. Sorry

Always use a paint meter when buying cars.. well with steel bodies.

 

if what u say is true, yur car has now sustained irreplaceble diminished value. Selling yur car down the road will be tuff. hope u r planning on keeping it at least 10 years. sorry to hear yur story

 

Did a PPI at Auto Gallery and they said that two panels had been repainted which made sense. Is there a good body shop in the San Fernando Valley of LA that some one could recommend? I was thinking about bringing it in and having a close look. Perhaps get the paint issues corrected. BTW I really appreciate any suggestions that come in

Thanks

Gary

 

It depends on how long you plan on keeping the car.

If you plan on trading it in within 2-3 years, I would suggest not repainting it and just trade it in. Repainting it again and trading it in 2-3 years would just incur additional cost for you and would probably lower down the value even if you have it corrected.

If you plan to keep it for 10 years, then have it repainted and enjoy it. In 10 years, the hit is negligible.

Just my 5 cents.

 

A re-spray from a quality paint shop, if done well, does not diminish the value of your car unless the the paint was done due to significant damage. At lease that's my experience. I know quite a few enthusiasts who will repaint the whole car if a large panel needs to be painted depending on the age of the car. It's the body the damage that hurts value not the paint. My 6 cents - sorry.

 

The detailer said your car looked amazing, what paint issues are you talking about?

 

If your main concern is resale value you invested in a commodity that will continue to devalue until it becomes a classic (and don't count on that). Re-paint as a result of minor damage is not a concern in a 'commodity car' unless of course its done poorly. Your detail guy said it looked great and you never even noticed it so don't fret.

Drive it and enjoy!

 

Thanks very much for talking me back from the edge! I suppose I've fallen into the **** porsche owner trap. I notice every imperfection no matter how slight. In 54 years I've never been this crazy over a car before. Probably not such a bad thing. I do love the car and it does seem to purr just like it's supposed to. The arctic silver coco interior is really pretty cool looking. Anyway thanks again for the sage advice.

 

Sorry to hear about your troubles Gary! You did the right thing and got the PPI and you still got screwed.

I'd go back and complain to the place you bought the car from. They're required to disclose major items like that. Technically they only have to disclose it if they know about it, which you can't prove, but they certainly did know about it and maybe the threat of small claims action will get them to pony up some money. If it doesn't, you can always go to your local county offices and get the forms and file a case for under $50 and serve the paperwork on them yourself. That'll probably get their attention.

I'd go back to Auto Gallery and tell them you want your money back for the PPI. You definitely didn't get what you paid for. Anybody would be able to tell the repaint in two seconds with one of the paint thickness magnet tools.


This definitely isn't true. A complete repaint indicates immediately to a potential buyer the car was in some sort of major accident, so that immediately drops its value. If it weren't for the repaint, a buyer may never have known the car had major repairs. So yes you're technically correct that only major repairs lower the value, but without the repaint they're a lot less likely to be found.

The repaint also lowers the value because no respray will ever be as uniform as what's done at the factory, nor will it be as high quality in terms of coverage. Yes, there are plenty of paint shops that can produce a quality paint job that looks better than factory, but they'll never be able to produce the uniformity of what robots and computers can do, nor can they reach all the crevices the factory does when they put a current through the car and electrically attract paint particles into every nook and cranny. It means the car is much more likely to have issues with paint down the road where the hand painter wasn't able to reach everywhere.

 

There are many great points on this thread . In my opinion one takes the risk with any used car that one can get screwed by a dishonest seller .

The amont of time, expense, and headache to jump through the legal red tape to find out /prove/ seek damages for dimished value / etc .. is just not worth it !!!
On the other hand . when trust is broken it raises the question of if the car's safety along with all the other emotional blimishes of knowing it wasn;t what you thought it was.

As of yersterday (before the detailer) you had a car that you loved . An 06 C2 is probably worth about 45K or so at this point in time . even if you traded it in today you'd get in the 30's .

My feeling is that the moment a car leaves a bad taste in ones mouth or reveals any doubt .., it's no longer fun . That's what one saves for a rainy day for . When you trade in the car the used car dept will tell you exactly how bad the repair was but when you drive off in a new car all the negative doubts about the 06 car will be replaced with joy .

Good luck.

 

If I didn't have two blood sucking heathens in college I'd dump it and buy a new one (or at least damn near new) but alas the ugly reality of college tuition makes this unlikely. I just took it out for a short spin to pick up a mag and have a little fun. Still puts a big dodo eating grin on my face and it does look pretty damn good. So I guess I'll enjoy it for a while. But I am absolutely going to run it past a body shop and have them take a look. I've not seen any obvious signs of damage, nor did Auto Gallery for what ever that is worth. Does anyone know of a reliable body shop in West San Fernando Valley? Once again thanks.

Gary

 

Judging by the NADA values this is right. Maybe high 30k's. So figure you drive it for, let's say, three years before trading it in. At that point it's 9 years old, another 10k-30k on the odo, and meanwhile the 991 has been out for a couple years. So now it trades in for maybe $25k. If at that point it still looks and runs great, how much could the respray possibly still harm trade-in value at that point, a couple k?
Anyway at that point other factors like how strong or weak the market is and what time of year you trade in will together be as much of a factor anyway, IMO.

Frustrating at first yeah, but not worth stressing over it and relatively insignificant compared to what you paid for it. Sure, get it checked out by another body shop and make some noise with the seller and PPI, but don't let it ruin the ownership for what sounds like a beautiful and strong car. You bought it to enjoy driving it, right, not to worry about whether its worth $25k or $28k in 3 years, so don't let this change that.

 

I would just enjoy the car. You didn't even notice until he pointed it out. Life is way too short to make yourself nuts over this.The car looked amazing right? In fact, the more paint chips I get happier I am!

 

Not necessarily. I re-spray, especially on the nose of a 911 is very common and not always indicative of an accident. Care to venture how may 911's have the front end re-sprayed? A lot. And I have seen more than just a few 'restored' or re-conditioned old 911's that look amazing with a non-factory paint job. Manufacturers do a good job of getting into every cranny, as you say, on a pre-build body, the paint quality has really diminished in the last decade or so.

Anyway, like someone said earlier, the OP isn't driving a classic. His car will develop imperfections if it's driven on the open road. I really wouldn't worry about re-sale.