Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies #3

Everyone knows what a great paint job looks like, right? It's the one that's done by a master painter; the car gleams from a block away, and the paint looks to be 20 feet deep when you stare at the fender in the sunlight. But what if that master painter were to masterfully do a poor paint job?

This is that story.

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One afternoon many years ago, I stopped by a body shop that belonged to friends of mine. It was always a lot of fun to drop in and see what they were up to. Their specialty was hot rods, restorations, and customs, but like most body shops, their bread-and-butter business was repair work.

On this day, I arrived to find a late '80s Cadillac Coupe DeVille. It was obvious to anyone that this car had never been waxed, much less washed, and its light blue paint was shredded. "What's this in for?" I asked.

"We fixed the bodywork on it. The guy hit a guard rail," I was told.

A guardrail??? He must have just tapped it, right?

"No way - he wiped out the whole driver's side!"

"Impossible," I thought. "There's not a scratch on this old beater."

But sure enough, the driver had spun in the rain, smacked the guardrail with the entire left side of the car, and had came close to totaling the vehicle. The shop had replaced the bent sheet metal, and repainted the car. "What did you do, find used blue parts for it?"

I got an annoyed look. "No, dumbass. I painted it."

As it turned out, the same painting master who I had seen lay down some of the most beautiful laquers and acrylics (and the most gorgeous flames you'll ever see) had worked his magic on the old beater Caddy. He'd mixed the original blue color, then added some clear and silver into it. Then adjusted the nozzle on the paint sprayer, and stood four feet away from the car and "misted" the paint onto the body.

The result was a perfect impersonation of an unwaxed and unwashed old blue Cadillac. "If I'd have done it right, there would have been a shiny side, and this awful side. It would have looked like shit!"

And that's why he's a master.


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