Auto Body Repairs on Lexus with 3-Stage Pearl Paint

A brand new Lexus ES300h came to us for collision repairs. We replaced the hood, bumper, headlamps, radiator, A/C condenser, cooling fan, collision avoidance sensor and damaged structural components. The car has a beautiful 3-stage "candy" paint job (also called tri-coat paint.) These type paints look dramatic because 3 different paint processes are used to add depth, shimmer and highlights. The extra paint steps also mean that the paint is much more difficult to match and takes a very skilled painter.

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Toyota Prius Bumper & Tailgate Repair

We fixed a dent in the tailgate, replaced the bumper and repaired the rear body on this 2013 Toyota Prius. A tricky element is the 3-stage pearl white paint. 3-stage paints achieve special shimmer and highlight effects by stacking translucent color layers on top of each other. Minor variations in color or thickness of a layer can result in poor color match. For this reason all good body shops will tell you that color matching on a 3-stage paint is difficult or impossible and that blending (or fading) paint onto the adjacent panels is required for the repair to look less noticeable. Even with blending, there can be differences between paint applied to plastic vs. metal. So most insurance companies will not cover blending for bumpers and you may notice that the bumper color does not exactly match the rest of the car.

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1970s Datsun (Nissan) 240Z Race Car

Almost Everything's Car of the Day is an historic restoration project that we took on for our good friend and racing legend Larry Oka. Larry runs Larry Oka Racing based at Sonoma Raceway (Sears Point) with race schools at Sonoma, Laguna Seca and Thunderhill. Some of Larry's racing experience began under Peter Brock racing the BRE 510 Datsuns in the original Trans Am series in the early 1970s.

This car began life as a stock 1972 Datsun 240Z. It was converted to a race car and campaigned in the 1970s and 1980s. Larry brought it to our shop to prepare for the 2015 Monterey Historic Races. (And he brought it back immediately after the races to fix the parts that he damaged during the race. Gotta love race drivers!)

The photos below chronicle the progression from shell to race car.