Do you like jigsaw puzzles? What if only half the pieces were there, and you had to make your own pieces to fill in the missing spots? What if some of the pieces that are there are corroded beyond recognition, or a little thin, or got dented by a Hyundai Genesis GV80 3.5T Prestige AWD? Thatâs basically what being a bodyshop is like.
When you buy a new car, chances are that the body shop can get new parts for it. Theyâll call up the dealership, order some fenders. For really nasty jobs, theyâll call up the dealership and order repair panels. These are basically the chunks of metal that your car was originally made out of, and all the bodyshop has to do is cut out some spot welds (or glue) and slap that thing together with the new parts, after giving the rest of the car a few ugga-duggas with the frame machine.
When you have an old, shitty car like all of mine, you canât do that. In some (most) cases, the company that made them no longer exists. At best, maybe you can get some ill-fitting reproduction panel from whatever Luxembourger holding company is currently producing quasi-legal clones of the car for the Chinese market, and spend a few weeks getting it to fit. In the end, no matter what, youâre going to end up fabricating your own panels.
This is one of those skills that looks very easy on YouTube, like brain surgery, but is in fact incredibly difficult, like making an omelet. While your carâs doors may look flat to you, each and every one of them have hundreds of subtle curves that need to be reproduced, or things will look super weird. You will dip into a sort of makersâ mania in the months it will take you travelling through the hell of making a replica panel. Piles of cardboard, razor-sharp chunks of unused steel, and elaborate new metal-cutting tools will fill your work area. And when itâs all done, you will get your reward: having to fill, sand, and paint your great work, hopefully only once.
All of this is a huge pain in the ass, so Iâve chosen a third option, between âdevelop a spectrum of artisanâs skills and a lifetime of experienceâ and âbuy a new car.â Itâs called Bondo, and you can slather that shit on all day. If you put on a couple inches of it and cut it back, your car will look pretty much identical to one that was repaired properly. At least for a couple years.
Sure, body shop technicians will know, but their curse is to know everything about every car. Plus, the skill set for sculpting an entire car out of Bondo is more transferrable: art galleries are not full of precision-cut quarter panels for a 1988 Mercury Topaz.
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