sammy-r

I want to have my front bumper repainted due to rock chips. Anybody know a good body shop in the Philly area?

Shark Attack

reading/birdsboro

One guy does it all. He may have one helper at any given time. He does lots of specialty work.

If you want it perfect. this is your guy. You will pay for it

Classic auto body in Birdsboro PA.

soverystout

Cavallo is the premier Luxury car body shop in the Philly area.
They have locations in Newtown Square (right off of Route 3 and 252) and West Chester on Rt 202.

They repainted the hood of my car did an amazing job.

http://www.cavalloautobody.com/ No affiliation.

sammy-r

Thanks for the info in Cavallo's. That's good to know. Their website is pretty impressive. I was actually thinking about going there since I work close to the West Chester location, but I never talked to anybody that has used them.

soverystout

They are not cheap but their work is top notch.

Darren

Ehh...Maaco (Frazer PA) painted mine and it looks excellent, like $150. They have painted several cars for me and despite the reputation they can make it as good as you are willing to pay for. A bumper in our area just gets chipped up anyway. The expensive shops will charge like $500 or something ridiculous like that to paint a bumper -- it will look perfect until you get behind a dump truck, so for like a week.

VGM911

One of the best in the area is Karosserie.

http://www.karosserie.com
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

They specialize in high line cars.

Darren

Karosserie is awesome, they fixed an e46 325i I had back a few years ago and the damage was basically undetectable. The do a fair amount of Ferrari's there...

sammy-r

Took my car to Cavallo's. I guess the scratches under the bumper from a parking curb by the PO are worse than I thought. $1500 to repair & paint. $1800 for a new bumper & paint. At this point, I might consider doing the aero bumper.

Darren

That's what I'm saying -- the high end shops rape you over stuff like that. Take it over to the Maaco in Frazer, for $200 they'll repaint it and it will look 95% as good as a high end shop. You can't really see the bumper up close unless you get down and look at it, no one will ever notice.

My 2 cents....spend them money instead on go-fast parts

soverystout

That is really steep but I still wouldn't go to Maaco. There has to be a good "inbetween" shop that uses Standox or Spies Hecker paint and does a nice job.

Darren

The Maaco reputation is built on their $400 paint jobs, which of course are terrible. There is a lot of variation between shops because they are franchises and so individually owned.

This specific Maaco has painted several cars for me -- all of which have come out very nice.

1991 BMW 318is that I'm building as a street car that they painted:


1992 Acura Integra Race Car that they painted:


They also painted parts of my 996 race car.

spiderv6

I have used D & A Auto Body in Levittown. It's where Princeton Porsche sends work. The lot is full of Porsche, BMW, Merc. They know what they are doing.