Thx everyone for your input.
...If you do the prep work, or have someone do some good prep work, the paint they put on will be fine.
Yeah, I thought about that, but I don't think I have the skills or facility to do the prep work myself. My situation is that I live in a 4th floor condo in the inner city, and I have one parking space in our basement garage. Even if our parking garage wasn't dark and lacking electrical outlets, the condo assoc. rules prohibit us from working on our vehicles in the garage. Kind of a sucky situation. And no way can I afford a house in Seattle. I figure if I have someone else do the prep work it may as well be whoever paints it.
Yellow :'(
Well, that's not set in stone. I am also considering copper orange, dark red, or light blue.
I suggest finding out where all the Import tuners get their paint work done, these are your best shops for good quality, custom work.
Good suggestion! I'll research that.
A good quality color change job done at a shop should cost around $2000 - $3000.
I was hoping to get away with $1,500 or less. I'm not sure that anything more than that would be a worthwhile investment. I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep the X-90. I've been thinking about getting a Jeep Patriot, a Suzuki SX4, or a Kia Soul (
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/25/officially-official-kia-soul-coming-to-u-s-in-april-2009/).
Too bad Suzuki doesn't still make the Samurai. If I paint the X-90 I'll probably end up keeping it for at least a few years.
I would suggest getting it wrapped in a camo vinyl. I think about 300 will do a tracker/x90. Im going to do mine this winter. There is a place in fife that does it for a reasonable price.
Yeah, Jalopnik had an article about that recently:
http://jalopnik.com/399961/bmw-owner-changes-his-3+series-color-from-black-to-white-with-tape.
I can't help thinking that it would scratch easily. If you end up getting yours done please let us know how it turns out.
And - yeah, the x90 SUCKS for cargo storage. Slap on a hitch, and get a small trailer.
Another unfortunate aspect of living in a city condo: you can't have all those cool garage toys. I'm going camping tomorrow morning, but we are taking my hiking buddy's Subaru.
If you are planning on going off-road, the paint job won't matter much, since its gonna get some "trail stripes" on it anyway.
The closest I do to off-roading is old unpaved logging roads in the Cascade mountains; nothing serious.
Here is my Tracker with the "I can't believe its a rattle can" paint job (as others have said, its all in the prep) and the matching '66 Apache Buffalo.
Looks pretty good if you ask me.