Paint can make or break a vehicle’s value. I know, I’ve got two great examples in the yard: the Mustang and the Cougar. Outside of the damaged fender, the Cougar’s paint is looking really good for a factory job. It’s got a nice gleam to it and it’s obvious that someone took great care, almost irrational care, of the car before it had the accident that sidelined the car for years on end. A quick wash and the paint gleams. Then, there’s the Mustang. When I first saw the car, the paint was a ten-footer…not bad, decent for a car from 1980. But over the years, the paint has degraded so badly that from where I sit, there is no saving the current layer. We will have to paint the Mustang at some point, probably sooner than later. But if you park the two side-by-side, everyone will pick the Mustang as the $400 car.

The same could be said about the 1986 International that Welker Farms has been working on. The engine is a runner, and you’ve seen the work that has gone into making the rig a driver. But a looker, it was not. Aged paint that I’d be willing to bet was starting to dust off gave the appearance of a vehicle that had been left alone for years. The wheels and tanks needed to be polished up and they decided to go ahead and chosen to pay for a full respray just to bring the visuals up to par with the mechanical work they’ve done.