pologuy

Hey guys,

I have an '86 944 NA with 54,000 miles on it - the car is in excellent condition inside and out. In fact when I bring it in to get serviced there is always someone there who tells me they cant beleive the car is an '86. I have had several people ask me what kind of wax I use when they find out its and '86 because of how good the paint still looks. However, like every car, mine has gotten some minor paint chips in the header from gravel. I wanted to take the header and front valance off and have them professionally painted, but was told that it is better (for resale value) if I kept the paint original. There is some guy that supposedly can "touch up" the chips and you will never be able to tell that they were there. He works for a dealership and several people have vouched for his work.

My question is: Does it really matter if the paint is original or not?

Thanks

Carl Nall

What color is it?

Not saying is impossible, but I've never seen touchup that looks as good as a quality respray. I recommend you find a good painter that will properly prep & spray some urethane base coat/clear coat on that nose/valence. It might affect your car's resale value... but if the color is matched well, only in a positive way, I'd guess.

Porsche-O-Phile

Not really - just keep the paint color original and nobody will ever know the difference. It's not like someone's going to do a spectrographic paint analysis to determine the paint composition or anything to see if it's authentic. . . It's a car, not a Rembrandt!

I think there have even been Concours winners with repainted cars, but they're high quality repaints. As a general rule it seems (and there are exceptions) you get what you pay for. A $200 paint job will look like a $200 paint job; a $2,000 paint job will look like it, etc.

Peckster

If it looks OK I'd leave it original. Ask the touch up guy for some references. Keep what you save to replace bits that break, and they will!

pologuy

The color is black on black.

Why would you have a clear coat sprayed on the header and valance when the car had no clear coat originally from the factory? Just to help prevent the stone chips?



Thanks as usual

Carl Nall

I asked about the color for that reason... response assumed you had a clear coat. Some colors did, some didn't. Presumably, your basic black will be much easier to color match than a metallic color.

Good luck.

xsboost90

spray it!

Geo

I would never mess with the original paint unless I had to. Too many things to go wrong with a repaint unless you totally strip the car, dip it, and then have a quality respray. As long as the original paint is in good shape, work with that. And I don't mean only for collector value.

First of all, a respray will always bring questions and doubts unless it's a full resto. Whatever the condition, at least with original paint you know what you are dealing with. With a respray you can never be sure (as a potential buyer).

There are ways of filling chips and matching the paint and finishing to make the chip invisible. I'd go that route if the rest of the paint is good or better.

Little Porsche Boy

It seems that I'm always in the market for another Porsche. Speaking from my experience, original paint is something for which I look. That said, on my current car I did have the front valance on my NA repainted for esthetic reasons. In retrospect, I wish that I had left it original. After so many years now, the paint on the valance fades differently from the rest of the car. Worse still, the shop apparently did not add anything to the paint to increase its resilience so to speak. Since it's on a flexible plastic valance, its prone to chipping and cracking. So, at this point I'm ready to strip and re-paint the valance.

Dave

IIRC, concours is often broken down into restoration and preservation classes. Restoration classes are for cars that have been repainted, preservation is for original paint. That said, a 944's resale value will not be greatly affected by respraying the nose panel. How bad is it? A $2000 paint job is still low end when you consider that doing it right starts around $4K.

Geo

All good points Dave.

You're right about the fact the resale price on a 944 will probably not be affected (well not a lot), but it certainly could be the difference between getting your asking price or not, or even selling it or not (NAs sometimes being hard to sell).