I had my saph 'painted' (I use that term very loosely) just before it came off the road 4 years ago and it's a fucking awful job and that cost me £1700. When I took it back to them because I wasn't happy with it, when they told me what they were going to do to rectify it, I just left, never went back and put it down to experience. And that was a guy that was recommended to me by a mate and all the work he ever had done by him was spot on.

My arches were not round and had straight bits where he replaced various sections (I asked for completely new arches either side) and all they were going to do was weld on new wheelarches over the top of the old ones and blend them in with filler, the sides are ripply as fuck, various runs here and there, the paint has sunk in various places due to the poor prep work (different layers of paint according to the guy I use now) and the arches are going rusty again (the car has done 400 miles since being painted 4 years ago and has been stored in a dry garage all that time) so as you can imagine, it looks a minter (munter more like!!)

The scary thing thing is my mate was impressed with what he done to mine and had his done by the same geezer and that turned out shit too!

The plan now is to have it done again by the guy that painted the side of my ST as that has come out well but until I can afford it, it'll be getting tiger striped like the old Turbosystems cars just to cover up the majority of the shit bits.

It seems bodyshops are a lottery, they seem to vary so much in price and quality and it doesn't always work that the more you pay, the better the job.