The 'E' Type Forum

I took my car into the body shop for a small paintwork area which I was not happy with. When I came to pick up the car someone had managed to back into the nose cone and dint it. As it was still in the body shops custody they are going to fix it. Bit annoying though and something I could do without as you can never get a perfect match on red cars. I shall have to wait and see how it turns out?

Hi Tony.....sorry to hear the bad news......may be worth contacting your insurance just incase it doesent work out quite right in the body shop.....all the best ..Steve

I feel your pain. My brand new F Type was in the dealer for an electrical fault last week and they somehow managed to reverse it into a post in the workshop - despite it having a reverse camera and proximity alarms.

Our Porsche 993 went in for its annual service at the Offical Porsche Centre and their ace test driver managed to spin it on a roundabout and into a people carrier. Excuse - "they are not used to driving cars without traction control"

Play hard; that's why you have insurance. Don't let them get away with any repair that you're not happy with.
I would treat this like any other accident. Get your insurance company involved; they can sort it out with the shop's insurers just like any other crash.

I'm just wondering what would be preferable (assuming that the paint is just a tiny bit "off" in colour and tone matching) ... would it be better to have a very well done 'spot repair' that is carefully blended out into the rest of the bonnet (tricking the eye, not being able to see the fade out) ... or would it be better to have an entire section (say either the bonnet center, or actually the entire bonnet) repainted, but then giving a crisp and distinct change between the ever so slightly different reds at the shut lines to the cowl panel.

This is assuming the insurers / body shop is coughing up, and for them it's irrelevant how much gets repainted.

My money is on the spot repair being the one that would be least visible. Again, this is all assuming a worst-case scenario of there being a slight colour / tone difference in the new paint.

The body shop have repaired the damage to a reasonable standard. It is not perfect and they re did the work three times to get the colour match. While I can give them full marks for trying I think It is the best I can get when trying to blend in reds without repainting the whole bonnet. As you say this could cause more problems if a whole panel is a slightly different colour.
It will have to wait now untill the whole car needs reprinting which will not be in the near future.