Early Shelby - Original Paint

[Mach1FatherFigure]

At the show I attended on 7th March this year I was chatting to the Mustang Section Chairman of the VCCWA and he was expalining why the front and rear panels of his Shelby were different tint (metalic paint).
As we all know the angle of the gun, direction of travel and distance from the work can all affect the 'coulour' of a metalic paint.
It seems that the cars ordered with Shelby options were delivered to the Shelby factory without bonnet, front clip, and boot lid. Much as the 262 Volvos were delivered to the Bertone factory for modification - double deck train.
The Shelby parts were sprayed off the car with no thought as to their interface. Bonnets sprayed along the length, nose cone across from side to side etc.
Once fitted to the shell the result is a patchwork of 'tints' that give the inpression of a poor accident repair - but it is factory!
To emulate this the chairman's Shelby was sprayed on two different days from several directions - Result? Factory appearance.

[Steven Harris]

And here I am worried about the paint quality on my son's Maverick.

[Mustangmike]

That is an interesting fact to know and is one of the problems with using metallic paint. In the event you have to repair a panel and re-spray it is often difficult to match up the paint perfectly to the other panels as you described.

Thank you for sharing!

[Mustangmike]

Personally, I don't think spraying the whole car at one time would decrease the car's value and as a matter of fact I would prefer it especially with metallic paint.

However depending on the rareness of the car people often try to replicate it as exact as possible to the factory and understandably so. For example, I installed torque boxes on my 66 Mustang to reduce flexing as Ford did with the Mustangs in the later years. However, if it was a 65/66 Shelby I definitely would not have installed torque boxes since the early Shelby's did not come with them and it would have devalue the car some.

I often do wonder how many non-survivor Shelby's out there that have gone through total restoration including body panel replacement and still sell above $100k. So aren't you really just buying the VIN if all the panels have been replaced even it went through a concourse restoration? If I was spending that kind of money I would want the car to be all original or at least mostly original.

By the way, that is a damn good looking Mach 1 in the picture!