Colour Change

I have a Speed Yellow 02 C2. My wife hated the colour (though I love it)and I am contemplating taking the car to a garage to repray either in Silver, black or seal gray. Does anyone forsee any problem in such an exercise. As I have no such experience with repraying, what sort of things would I look for in choosing a grarage to respray.

In difficult times like this, the tried and true Solomon solution would seem to be called for. Except splitting a car in two would be difficult, so just keep the Speed Yellow C2 and buy the wife (and yourself) an 04 C2 in the color of your choice. Seriously though, if you are going to get your car resprayed, you know you're going to have to shell out quite a bit if you want it done right, right? The very first M3 I ever had was a '97 Techno Violet; loved the car but hated the color. Had no choice as it was only one on the dealer lot and I just had to have a new car that day (due to me abandoning my just died POS in my company parking lot that very same day). So a year after owning it, I had it repainted metallic blue. Problem was to do it right then had to paint in all the cracks, under hood, between door joints, remove front/rear bumpers, remove front/rear doors, remove sunroof, etc. I think it ended up costing me like $8-9k, but I was young and foolish and back in those days we lost/gained more money in a single day's stock blip, so it kinda made sense given my loathing of a purple car regardless of what fancy name BMW gave it. I did my research by first going to my dealer - I asked them who they referred people to for factory quality paint jobs; I had like 8-9 dealers in a 50 mile radius, and a couple referred the same place, so I ended up getting my paint done there. The guys at the shop seemed smart and asked all the right questions - did I want an external only paint job, or full car paint to new color. They let me know all the steps to doing a good paint job the right way, and I saw a bunch of other luxury brand cars in there. One guy was in the waiting room and it turned out it was his 3rd time with them, so I got the best info to pick a shop of all - opinion for a repeat customer. So the short version of this long winded reply would be to get a couple places to look at, actually go down there and see if you can get the real deal info from a repeat customer.

Factory paint is always prefered on a high end car like a 911. Unless you have some attachment to that pariticular car and plan on keeping it for a long time, I would consider trading it in.

trade it in and get the color you want. otherwise you will not be happy with the results. In order to properly change the paint color of a car, you will first have to strip the current paint off the car. If they just scuff up the paint in order for the new paint to stick to it you will have dual layered paint and if you ever get a chip in the paint (like a rock chip) your yellow will show up underneath your silver or seal grey which will clash like crazy. In order to paint the engine bay, the engine has to come out. In order to get into the door jambs and all the noticeable places, a lot of parts have to come out and a lot of man hours are involved. in the end, you will lose so much more than would've cost you to just sell it and get another one. plus, your resale value will not be as high if they don't do a good job and if they realize the car has been painted. If you had said you were going to paint it chameleon or some non-factory color then it might be different because this would be your only option. however, since you can easily find another car in the color of your choice, just sell it or swap it...

cost of paint work + cost of depreciation due to repaint probably more than equals the cost of trading it in for another color of car that is the same age as yours. For example, a SY '01 with 20k miles traded for a Silver '01 with ~20k miles would cost you less money than repainting your car and the loss you'd take later when selling. Personally, and no offense, but I think it's nuts to even consider painting it when there are so many decent pre-owned cars out there.

Thanks for all those very valuable advice. I shall keep away from changing colours.

lots of excellent advice from others here, and i have to agree. changing colors isn't a good idea on ANY car, especially high end cars. people want the factory paint when they're purchasing these vehicles! also, some of the original color will ALWAYS show through unless the body panels are pulled and the original paint stripped. but you never want to pull the body panels unless you absolutely have to because this ruins the factory seals and allows corrosive elements in. just adding my .02!