Okay, well I know everyone is skeptical about Maaco, but after looking around in the DC area I found one that seemed pretty good and went with them. I've heard that Maaco's are privately owned.. so some will be terrible and some will be okay. This one did a very good job. My Mom's in Iraq and she wanted the car painted while she was gone.... Complete color change; white to Burgundy. Note: We have 2 cars... My Lancer and her Mom-mobile minivan. We got the paint with the 4 year guarantee... Oh, and note: I got in a car accident with the minivan in November, and the hood was dented and the grille was broken. We had the hood hammered back... We had Maaco install a new hood and grille.

 

more pics

 

the rest of the pics

 

why we lookin at this? LOLOL does the van have a 4g63 in it? lol jokin man looks nice for maaco work. how much u pay?

 

like 1700... but includes a new grille and a new headlight

 

the reason some people are skeptical of maaco is not the quality of the initial paint job, but how long it will last. I've heard some peopel get maaco repaints and it lasts them a long time, while others claim that the paint started to look bad within a year. As with any paint job, as long as it's cleaned and waxed on a regular basis, the paint will last a while.

My question, though, is how was the quality? Was there any orange peel? I can already see that they didn't spray the door jambs (i'm from the school of thought that you should hit as much of the car as possible when you change a color), so I can assume they didn't hit the engine bay either.

 

N1te, is your mom in the military?

 

yeah.... Army. She's a fullbird Colonel

 

I'll bet she has a few stories.

 

a couple... but she's really busy so i don't get to speak with her much.. I'm sure I'll hear them when she gets back. Has anyone else ever had a paintjob by maaco?

 

not a full paint job but i had them paint a hood for me. did a great job with it.

 

Cool man, tell her thanks for what she's doing over there- She probably had a big mess to clean up at that place.

 

don't wax it for 3 months!!! Once you seal the paint by waxing it can't cure properly and that's a major cause of flaws. Wash it, use a good glaze, pamper it all you want but no wax. And then, for the first few waxes you'll want something that doesn't contain silicone (so a pure carnuba is what you're looking for). After that it's pretty much waterver you're used to using.
I followed these instructions and get lots of compliments on the depth of color and overall look of my car.

 

Back in the day we had our old civic done by them... they do a great job, but the paint's ability to... remain... sucks, they had to replace it under the warranty 4 times within 2 years... then they just gave us our money back and said "you know what, it's not gonna work" but I think that was the salty crappy Utah weather

 

Maaco also have those cheap $200 paintjob deals that looks like an 8 year old repainted the car with spray paint. Nice job with the repaint