Question for those who've had their cars repainted...
 

Last night some douchebag in an F-150 backed straight into the side of my '97 GLE. He caught it right in the B-Pillar between the passenger side front and back doors. Now the front passenger door doesnt open and the rear door is mangled enough to need to be reskinned.
I'm trying to think of what good I can get to come out of the situation, the car is in otherwise really good shape for 110k miles and I'm worried about paint blending when the bodyshop reskins the door.
My question for you guys is: for those of you who've had your 4th gen (or any gen for that matter) repainted your factory color (no wild paint schemes or color changes) how much did it cost?
I'd like to try to push for his insurance company to pay for as much of it as I can (the car is almost 8 years old and the paint might be hard to match.) If its not too much extra, however, I can swing it.
What do you guys suggest?
Thanks,
Derek

My 5th gen got smacked in the driver's door and got the B pillar, also. It was a very low speed hit, but did quite a bit of damage. The bill was around $6000. My car is black, but they had to do a lot of blending (no matching problems). With the damage you've got, it might not be that much more to paint the whole car if you don't change colors. See if you can work out something with the body shop and definitely push the insurance company. Good luck and sorry to hear about the accident.

A friend of mine hit my rear passenger door at a low speed and caused a fairly decent sized dent in the door. The shop I brought it to pulled out the dent and smoothed out the imperfections and painted just the door and a little bit of the front passenger door for blending. No one noticed that it had been blended, and in all it only cost my friend $500 to fix it.

Paint jobs vary in price based on quality. You can get a Maaco paint job for a few hundred I think, but a good paint job would be over $1,000. It is also more expensive if you change the color because they have to jamb it (paint the door jambs).

Thanks for the responses guys. 2K1, I'm hoping that you're right, and a repaint won't cost too much more than the blending work that they'll have to do. I'll definitely push it with the insurance company to at least help pay for part of a full-repaint if I go that route. The summer before my sophomore year in college I worked at a bodyshop for a Ford dealership that also did Nissans too (the owner also owned a Nissan dealership.) We worked on alot of them and the guys always told me if I got smashed to come back. So hopefully they can work something out with me. They use Sikkens but their paint guy is pretty good, hopefully he can match the paint closely enough so that if I do a full repaint they won't need to jamb it.

Thanks again, hopefully I'll have the car looking better than ever when this whole situation is finished.

I got my dents and dings repaired and a full repaint for $800. Shop around.

I was actually going to say your better off going to the junk yard and finding 2 doors on your own... then getting the entire car repainted. You can always change the interior part of your door from your old one...

Painting your car entirely you can have a very very good quality spray.. depending on who.. for about $1k but it depends on your color..

what color do you have? Any pearl paint will cost significantly more.

Ant, the color is kind of a light gold. I'm not sure what the official name for it was, and I'm not sure if there was more than one offering of gold for '97. I'm hoping that the front passenger door can be repaired with a slide hammer. The rear door will most likely need to be skinned. The impact hopefully wasn't hard enough to damage the entire door, only the sheetmetal. Otherwise it'll be junkyard scavenging time, looking for a new door.

Pebble Beige...