New Vantage, same problems. I took my brand new (to me) 2016 V8 Vantage GTS in to get a couple of rock chips addressed ahead of PPF and unfortunately the touch up guy severely botched the job. I now have about 12 mismatched "freckles" (asked him to do about 3-4 spots) where he got the paint color completely wrong, a few large blobs where he tried and failed to add clear, and he sanded through the clear coat on the passenger side door.

I'm now needing a respray on the passenger side door and looking to have the bad touch up paint removed as much as possible.

I'm taking my car out of state to one of the closest Aston Martin dealers, which for me is either Denver or Las Vegas. I have another small issue I needed to have them scope so was already planning on the trip.

The AM dealer in Vegas wouldn't facilitate any paint work but referred me to Elite Audio Customs & Collision who they work with. Elite quoted $850 for repainting the door and $500 - $1,800 for removing the bad touch up paint and redoing any touch ups, likely on the higher side of that range. They said they would be using the layering technique for the touch up paint to help eliminate craters. They also are beating my local shop for PPF by about $1k. This price seems way too good to be true but they were recommended by the dealer and their Instagram features a good number of high end cars, overall their reviews on Google are positive.

The AM dealer in Denver can facilitate paintwork so that would be a one-stop shop for me. They said they do have a guy who does some minor work in house but they outsource for larger jobs. I don't have any indication of cost from them yet which I'm hoping to get soon if for no other reason than to compare to the low prices Elite gave. Having this done via the actual dealer is a little more appealing to me and I'm leaning towards using Denver for this.

Both shops seemed pretty confident they could remove the bad touch up from my description and the few pictures I shared, but haven't seen the car in person yet.

Has anyone here worked with either AM Denver or AM Las Vegas (/their preferred shop Elite) for paintwork? Would love to hear about anyones experiences and any recommendations you'd have.

 

I would lean towards dealing directly with the paint shop.

 

What would be your reasoning for that? Primarily cost?

My thought was going through Aston to help ensure a top tier level of quality but haven't worked with a dealer on this so unsure if that's a correct expectation. At this point quality matters to me above all else.

 

I get that. You'd rather point the finger at a franchise dealer than a paint shop should it not come out right.

If you want it perfect, is there an Aston certified auto body repair facility in either locale? They charge a banker's mint, but as you say "quality matters to me above all else".

 

There is an Aston certified shop in Denver, so another reason I'm leaning that way. Elite in Vegas is not an Aston certified shop but they do seem to work on a higher caliber of cars so seem trustworthy, but at the same time their quote was low enough to make me a little suspicious.

Waiting on a preliminary bid from Denver to see how bad we're talking for an Aston certified shop to work on it. Expecting pretty high costs as a paint correction alone was quoted at "a few grand", but that doesn't seem entirely unreasonable if that's also addressing the bad touch ups. Especially if I can get any money out of the painter who caused this situation then the higher price of Aston certified seems to be the right move.

 

I had a few paint chips on my Vantage and the Aston certified shop (2 miles from my house) wanted like 18K to fix. Tough choice, but I did not go that route.

 

Well that's unexpectedly horrible. What did that include? Were they wanting to refinish multiple panels as the solution for that?

My hope was that if a paint correction was "a few grand", or 3x what my local detail shop wanted, then was thinking the door and associated blending would be in the ballpark of $10k. That was based off my local Tesla and Audi approved shop wanting $3,500 for refinishing the quarter panel on my last Vantage.

 

Lab coats and clean rooms. Painting the basically the front end. The chips weren't even bad. People thought the car looked fantastic as is.

I have similar chips on the Rapide and a local shop said about $3500. Not glaring enough. Car looks great. I rather leave that decision to the next owner than paint the car.

 

Ok that's really helpful to know, that is more in line with what I'd expect for a full front end refinish (from an Aston Certified shop). At least gives me a little hope this door won't ruin me haha. Of course, that is assuming I don't need a full front end refinish myself. Sounds like the butcher did a fair amount of sanding up front too, and while not through the clear there, didn't leave a lot of room for others to try and correct things.

Yeah most often I'd opt for not touching the original paint either, but I had a few small chips down to bare metal that showed bright against the Meteorite Silver paint. Wanted those to at least have some color in there before being sealed in with PPF. Figured it's just touch up paint, can only screw up so much, man was I wrong...

 

Updating this thread just in case anyone comes across it in the future.

Now editing this again to remove my prior endorsement of the shop I worked with.

 

Panel painting just doesn’t work. I’m surprised they even tried.

 

Yeah ultimately it didn’t but the quality of the match to the naked eye was fantastic. Looked perfect until you took a picture of it, then it looked like they glued together two different cars. In the end worked out just fine though. I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking it over and it’s like my paint issues never happened.