Community Forums:

My only experience with the Earl Schieb type paint jobs was on the family Buick in HS. A fender bender (mother driving...) initiated a repaint of the two left doors and left rear render. The entire front end and right doors were repainted at a local shop at the ~$2000/car quality level three years prior. A year after the Earl Schieb job, all of the paint they applied was scratched (from the poly brushes in the car wash my father used) cracking and faded to not match either the remaining factory paint or the very slightly deeper red prior repaint. Rust blisters started within a couple years. The Quality Auto (name of shop...) paint job looked good until the day he sold it, about 10 years after the repaint.

I've painted a few things and if I had the choice of a $400 paint job and doing it myself, knowing that I would end up with a lower-quality finish, I would do it myself. It is really a paint job you get when you want to sell the car, not keep it.