To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Car Restoration, JDM, and Automotive History Aug 26, 2025

From Honda Civic Dreams to Custom Paint Empire: The NSX Hunt and Color Secrets

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Term

Tiptronic

Tiptronic is a feature in some automatic cars that lets you change gears manually if you want to. It gives you more control over how the car drives, similar to a manual transmission but easier to use.

Car

Delorean DMC-12

The DeLorean DMC-12 is a car that looks really different because it has doors that open up like wings. It's famous for being in movies and is loved for its cool design.

Car

Mitsubishi Mirage

The Mitsubishi Mirage is a small, budget-friendly car that is easy to drive and saves on gas. It's a good choice for city driving because it's compact and affordable.

Term

automobile painter

An automobile painter is someone who paints cars. They make sure the car looks good after it's been repaired or restored by applying paint in the right way.

Car

Porsche 911

The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that looks really cool and goes super fast. It's been around for a long time and is loved by many people because it's fun to drive and has a unique shape.

Concept

wide body

A wide body means that the sides of a car are made wider so it can have bigger tires. This helps the car handle better and look more aggressive.

Car

Honda Civic

Car

Honda 2000 Honda

The Honda Civic is a small car that many people like because it's dependable and gets good gas mileage. The 2000 version is known for being fun to drive and has a sporty look.

Company

Spoon

Spoon is a company in Japan that makes parts to make Honda cars go faster and perform better. They are famous for their upgrades and modifications.

Part

carbon fiber wing

A carbon fiber wing is a part on the back of a car that helps it stay stable when going fast. It's made from a light material that helps the car perform better.

Part

carbon fiber hood

A carbon fiber hood is a part of a car that is lighter than regular metal hoods. It helps the car go faster and handle better because it weighs less.

Term

horsepower

Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful a car's engine is. More horsepower usually means the car can go faster or accelerate quicker.

Car

Toyota Corolla

The Toyota Corolla is a small car that many people buy because it's dependable and doesn't use much gas. It's a common choice for new drivers.

Car

Ford Mustang

The Mustang is a popular sports car made by Ford. The 40th anniversary version is a special model that celebrates 40 years of the Mustang's existence.

Term

road race car

A road race car is a car that's been changed to go faster and handle better for racing. It often has special parts to keep the driver safe and make the car perform well.

Part

roll cage

A roll cage is a strong metal frame inside a car that helps protect people if the car flips over or crashes. It keeps the car from collapsing during an accident.

Term

individual throttle bodies

Individual throttle bodies are special parts in an engine that help control how much air goes in. They make the engine work better and faster, especially in racing cars.

Term

final drive

The final drive is a part of the car that helps send power from the engine to the wheels. It affects how fast the car can go and how quickly it can speed up.

Term

rpm

RPM means how many times the engine spins in one minute. When the number is high, it usually means the engine is working hard and can go faster.

Car

Acura Nsx

The Acura NSX is a really fast and stylish sports car that was made in the 1990s. It's special because it combines luxury and speed, making it a dream car for many people.

Car

Honda Integra Type R

The Honda Integra Type R is a sporty version of the Honda Integra that is known for being fast and fun to drive. It has a powerful engine and is popular among car fans.

Car

Honda NSX

The Honda NSX is a famous sports car from Honda that is known for being fast and fun to drive. It has a unique design and was one of the first cars to use a lot of modern technology in its construction.

Term

V6 engine

A V6 engine has six cylinders arranged in a V shape. It's a common type of engine that offers a mix of power and fuel efficiency.

Term

Laguna Blue

Laguna Blue is a bright blue color that was used for the Acura NSX. It's one of the original colors that makes the car stand out.

Car

DeLorean

The DeLorean is a unique car famous for its shiny metal body and doors that open upwards. It's well-known because of its role in a popular movie series.

Car

Cybertruck

The Cybertruck is a futuristic electric truck made by Tesla. It has a very unique shape and is made from strong metal, making it look different from regular trucks.

Term

metallic paint

Metallic paint is a special kind of paint that has tiny bits of metal in it. These bits make the paint sparkle and shine, making the car look more attractive.

Term

flake

Flake is the tiny bits added to car paint that make it sparkle. They help the paint look shiny and interesting, rather than just flat.

Term

aluminum

Aluminum is a light metal that is often used in car paint to make it shiny. It helps give the paint a special sparkle that looks nice on cars.

Car

Geo Prism

The Geo Prism is a small car from the 1990s that is known for being affordable and good on gas. It's a simple and reliable car that many people used for everyday driving.

Term

chameleon paint jobs

Chameleon paint jobs are special car paints that look different from different angles. They use unique colors and materials to create this effect, making the car appear to change color as you move around it.

Car

Ferrari 365 Ferrari

The Ferrari 365 GTB/4 is a classic sports car from the late 1960s that is known for being very fast and stylish. It's a favorite among car collectors because of its beautiful design and powerful engine.

Car

Ford Bronco

The Ford Bronco is a tough SUV that can handle rough roads and off-roading adventures. It's been around for a long time and is popular for people who love outdoor activities.

LIVE

Welcome back to all the cars I've loved before your authoritative podcast on automotive nostalgia where

Every car tells a story

Every car has a culture

And hey, it's time to plug in dust off and get a little grease under the nails. Oh my favorite part

Let's get to this real quick before we toss it over to Doug here

We have some new listeners welcome if you're in Paris

Paris France

No, not Paris, Georgia or Paris, Mississippi. Although there's nothing wrong with those places the real deal Paris Paris France welcome Rome Italy

Welcome San Diego

That's uh, let's look at the numbers. Yeah, that's a new and welcome San Diego rest in virginia

Who else?

Sometimes oh in stock home stock home. So again internationally. I love checking out the stats. I love seeing that

Oh when we wanted to before we

Pivot to the merch master Doug. He's got magnets. He's got a t-shirt. He had a hat until I stole it

We're gonna we're gonna do something a little different today. We're we continue to rack up the reviews

Where on apple pod?

Thank you for writing and

So let us know what you think

I'm just gonna read one because I think it's lovely and it doesn't say that I talk too much

Which is rare in these but how about this?

December 26 2024 from vince

Room love the name better than a day of test driving cars. So here's the review. He says I like cars

I am a car enthusiast not just new cars not just old cars not just nice cars

I like all cars each has its own flavor

The thing that makes this podcast fantastic is the scriptless format

Someone say we could use one he continues each guest brings their own car

story

And passion to the table the hosts aren't interviewing or working from a script

It's a conversation with someone about something they love

The kind of excitement that can't be scripted or purchased the variety of guests stories and flavors is incredible

You won't regret listening to it

If you're lucky, you'll have a chance to share your story and passion too. I can't wait to hear

Well, thank you vince. Love that and appreciate

Appreciate that review. Do we know who that is dog or is he gonna is this person gonna remain?

Anonymous, what do you think? They are anonymous on apple. So just one of our listeners and wow that took

You know, it only takes a few minutes to write it, but that means a lot, right?

For for our listeners. So please if you like what you're hearing

Drop us a review

If you just want to say hi

Feel free to do that

uh, you can send us a text via the

Sorry via via the podcast platform of choice is the link at the top. Yep

Go to our website carslove.com. It's going to be updated soon

And of course, there's the youtube instagram and facebook

Yeah, and and share tell a friend download

review and follow

Check out our link tree linktr.ee slash carslove and

You know reach out and tell us if you like what we're doing if you have suggestions

If you don't like let us know if you need a hat

And you can't find one and you just want to steal one from dog. It's fine. He has a never-ending supply

Um, oh the real quick though. I like that shirt

Yeah, let's talk about the shirt. Let's talk about the magnet. So the shirt has

Yeah, he's a 9 11 alum. Oh, why'd you get rid of that car?

Uh, because because uh, it was a tip it was a tiptronic and it was my mistake for buying it

Okay, great shirt that 9 11 that he bought from five below for I think five dollars

Not necessary below. I think it was right at five

So what about the magnets? Let's talk about the magnets. Okay, so

Wonderful shutter fly was having a great deal normally eight or nine dollars each the 20 magnets a dollar each

Can't go wrong with that. So instead of 200 dollars cost me 20 bucks

So we have this wonderful magnet. Yep, which is also our lead magnet

So we are going to be setting up

But this is trying to

If you want a magnet shoot us a note

Uh, we'll have a newsletter if you give us your uh name and email

We'll send you a magnet. Uh magnet is magnet has a delorean with our logo on it

Uh cars loved uh link and

And a qr code so just to make it so super easy

The first 10 people to either email dug at carslove.com or christian at carslove.com get a magnet

So hey reach out and let us know what you think

Is it do we have anything else on the merch front or can we move on? Uh, just um

New website, uh, should be going live pretty soon. Um, depending on when people hear this

It will probably already be up by that time, but it's gonna be new and improved you saw a preview of it christian

What did you think of it?

Love it looks really good sharp

It looks like a uh, a 14 year old made it. It no longer looks like a 12 year old made it. So that's that's improvement

We're moving forward. We're moving forward speaking of moving forward. It's time to introduce today's guest

really excited

To introduce our pal matt of top coat garage. How you doing today matt?

Good man. How are you guys?

Excellent and thank you so much for for joining the show, you know, uh

That there's nothing quite like seeing a beautiful unique a really distinctive paint job

On on an automobile van

truck

But I didn't really think about it a whole lot until I visited the hunday plant

in, uh, montgomery, alabama

You can tour used to be able to tour. This was like thing before cove. It's two in the whole plant and

It in somebody said, you know, it it takes six

16 hours to make a car but nine of the hours are spent in paint and I thought wow

I never thought of it that way and you get everybody on the tour was

Thinking what that much time? Yeah, it's it's really such an investment in the exterior of the automobile

And that's what top coat garage does. So could you please tell us a little bit about yourself in your business?

Well, yeah, I've been uh in the cars forever. I mean as long as I could think and then um

Eventually having the opportunity to work on them at such a young age

You know working on my own cars and then working, you know, just to make money

You know and then um and then finally

you know

kind of like

Randomly getting the opportunity to just open up my own shop and

now this is what I come here and

do every day and um

It's different whenever you're in your place, you know, you're not really doing it for a boss. You're just kind of

Doing it for yourself. It almost doesn't feel like a job anymore if that makes sense. So um

Now you just got this challenge and then that's what we're, you know, that's what I come here and do every day

Just, you know, kind of like knock out this challenge. So yeah

And one of the biggest challenges is, you know, like you said takes nine hours to

You know get these cars painted those cars are brand new, you know what I mean?

You're talking about fresh metal fresh substrates and everything and now we just have to make it shiny

How the heck does it, you know, you know take nine hours to do that, you know, and it's just like I understand it all

You know, so

But yeah, and this is just what I do every day, you know

We pretty much just make stuff shiny

Make it beautiful. Yeah, you're you're kind of Picasso or Rembrandt

Which just did a little bit of a different canvas a little bit different paint

So so what was the first thing car you ever painted? What was that like? How did that work and what what bug bit you?

Well, I um

I mean it goes back to like

Before I could even drive, you know, we used to take

Waternel what we call vintage minibikes, you know, and we all wanted a different looking one than you know, our friends

So we would take them apart and buy some cans of spray paint from

Wherever you would get them and we would spray paint on different colors and

You'd have some friends that would spray paint them and half of the paint landed on the ground, you know

And so it was always who had the nicest paint job who had the best color scheme and all that and then eventually

You know being a getting old enough to purchase your own car now you want a different color from your friends, you know and

um, I was uh in in high school ended up taking a vocational program

and uh

I was actually supposed to take a welding class

But the welding class was filled up and they're like well try out this auto collision

You know auto you know collision and auto refinishing class and see what you think with that and

I got in there. I I was real good with the teacher. I mean the teacher hit it off real well and

Then I started realizing, you know, um

What it took to paint a car

you know

How you could you know your coordination and

Knowing of the chemicals could create the biggest difference in these paint jobs from a good looking paint job to a bad paint job and

You know in school. I was hooked. I think I painted a

It was a Mitsubishi mirage. Um, the color it was a dark color. It was a black

It had a little bit of flake in there

and uh

I don't know. I just listened. I I didn't listen much in school. But when it came to that teacher talking about painting cars

Um, I'll tell you what the first thing I did was you know, everything that he said every step that he said, um

I followed and my paint job came out so much nicer than everyone else's

And you know, you get pumped off of that you get hooked. You just did something really good, you know

And you want to do it again and again and again, you know, and then here we are

Yeah, so go in uh, yeah 20 plus years later, right?

Yeah, and um

you were telling us before the show started that um

Before covid you were working for somebody else and that's what you'd been doing and then because of covid and

Basically people weren't driving their cars. They weren't smashing them up, right? People were buying cars

car market was going kind of crazy, but uh, including restoration, but

You um, you made a big life decision. Can you just tell us about that and

where you are today?

Yeah, so pretty much I did really well in votec and I became an automobile painter

automotive painter in a collision shop at a really young age and 19 years old

And um, you know, usually when you start out you become a helper

And I was helping but I was able to paint I was able to spray and every chance they gave me I was spraying and

The opportunity came up. It became a painter at a really young age and I mean, that's where the big money was at

So 19 year olds. I'm I'm doing great. I

I love those those years, you know, um

And uh, and that's kind of like how I built my life, you know, I was just painting cars every single day and eventually

I became the head painter

I was even making more money

And I had a great life

Um, I mean, I had a nice house. We had property. I had cars

I even had my own hobby shop at home

You know, I built a pole barn and I put a paint booth in it

So I was I was, you know, working during the day doing collision jobs and I was coming home and I was

Working on my own personal cars in my own shop, you know, um even started a youtube out of it and everything

um, well eventually coveted it

and

Body shop, you know life came to like kind of zero. No one was driving, you know

Um, no one was on the roads. It was like the first time ever getting like a zero on my paycheck, you know

And I'll tell you what I wasn't good at. I wasn't good at saving money

So now I had to figure out how to make money

And thank god that hobby shop that I had that had a paint booth out of I was able to do my own little, you know

side gig out of

You know, um, of course throughout the years when you're building cars and people like your cars

You know people want you to build their cars too, you know, so I always had like kind of like a little bit of

um, you know

Fly and tell on the side that wanted me to do personal stuff for them

And then during the whole covet situation, you're kind of panicking like what am I going to do for money?

Well, you just kind of answer those calls and bring that work in a little bit more, you know, and

And then you get things rolling, you know, um, that's kind of how I met, you know, um our mutual friend Jason Miller

He needed a car done

So we talked, you know, and I eventually started painting cars for him and then I started painting cars for all of his friends

and so on and

And then all of a sudden, you know, you got your little hobby shop, you know

1200 square foot place with a with a paint booth and now you have 20 cars sitting outside of it

You know, and then you have these other business owners that need cars done and they're looking at you and they're like

What are you doing like in your yard?

With all these cars and I'm like, I don't know I'm making a living, you know, and right it's kind of like, you know

go where the wind blows, you know, and eventually

Expand, you know, you kind of know what you you know what you can produce out of a 1200 square foot shop

I don't know. Maybe if the math is right. I can do a little bit better if I had a

You know, seven dials a square foot shop, you know, and it just grew from there, you know, so

That's kind of how it went

and and

Really, you've grown from a word of mouth. You do some insurance work, but you also do custom work, right?

Yes, yeah

We do like custom we do

restoration

Um, we do like a lot of like high-end repairs, you know

Like we have a Bentley sitting outside right now and had a little fender bender

So you just needed their fender repainted, you know repaired and painted and so on so a lot of people come to us

You know, there's actually like a hunt valley area

around here, um

Where a lot of high-end expensive cars are at, you know, and and we're surrounded by corporate body shops

We're surrounded by body shops that are just trying to get you in get you out, you know, so

It's kind of good. Um

That we have like a specialty shop like ours. We spray a certain paint like a more

A high-end paint and everything. So like people flock to us, you know, um, and then all of a sudden the higher end

You know shops that sell these higher-end cars, you know, they want they want, you know, send their

Customers to the best body shop they know about, you know, that specializes in higher-end cars

You know and just word just gets out

You know

Yeah, well, that's but but he does more than paint his shop does more than paints full body shop

So he can do all kinds of things including including our mutual friend Jason

I mean, I think you turned his skinny 9-11 into a wide body, right? Just oh, yeah

That's beautiful work. Yeah. Yeah, he had a narrow body horsesha and um

We ended up putting a wide body on it

That was actually one of the jobs I was doing out of my house

And um, you know, he would bring me this bumper

He's like, man, I got this old race car bumper and I'm looking at it and this bumper does not fit that car whatsoever and

But luckily we got great experience with like, you know, fiberglass work and you know

The bumper was actually made out of fiberglass and I'm cutting it apart. I'm widening the bumper

I'm making it fit the fenders, you know and

Giving it extra mounts to make it more sturdy, you know, and then and then he brings me these

Side skirts and this rocker panel and I'm just like, where did you get this from?

You know, and here I am, you know pie cutting it in places

So it fits the wide body and everything

So the wide the body kit on his car the bumper and side skirts is 100 of one off

You know, I made it out of custom gave me. Yeah

You know and and I and I tell you what man my guys here, you know

I'll bring in a job and they're scratching their head. How are we going to make this work?

and I kind of like map it out for them and show them and

You know, they uh, they follow my steps and they're they're even more skilled than me

They just don't know it. You know, I just have to like guide them that way

That's what's really good about my team here is like I have 100 confidence in them and

You know, we will talk about how to

Map out, you know repair or how we're going to make something fit and they follow the steps and you know, they're saying back like wow

I can't believe we did that, you know

And it's all based off of experience from, you know, of giving me something and I'm just kind of like

I guess I'll figure it out. You know, I'll let you know in the end, you know, so

And that's what makes you a great team. There's vision. There's creativity. There's the skill

There's the know-how and it all comes together. It's why you're a great team and before we go any further here

I do want to tell if

If you want to put a smile on your face go check out

top coat garage

Dot or the instagram page here. I know there's a little bit of rework on the website happened

It should be done by the time this is reaching your ears for top coat garage dot com

But go look at instagram top coat garage

In it it's just really it kind of kind of transcends automobiles and it just just looks like art

What you've done with a lot of these cars so creative

And just just just really beautiful here. So we definitely don't discriminate against cars

You know, we do them all from the older cars to the newer cars to the exotics like we just like them all, you know

Yeah

And but yeah personally right and I know where christian's going with this i'm jumping in

You like japanese cars, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, so so christian, where are we going?

In the wayback machine let's hop into the the time machine and go back

Let's talk about your first car. Where'd you get it? How did it drive and what did it mean to you?

Well, my first car was a 2000 honda civic hatchback

and uh

I remember playing

Gran Turismo on playstation

and uh

There was just spoon. There's a an automobile performance company in japan that specialized in hondas called spoon

And uh, they had this spoon civic hatchback. I mean it had a carbon fire hood a carbon fire wing

It looked plain

But for some reason the way they built that motor in the game

It had it was a high revvy motor

It had the lowest horsepower, but I tell you what it performed so well against these cars and and I fell in love

I was like, I can't believe you can do this with a honda civic hatchback. I mean my neighborhood

Um, if we want to talk about the influence of cars beforehand, I mean I had nothing but

guys with muscle cars

Big motors big blowers, you know, that's literally what I grew up working on

Um, but when it came time for me to purchase my own car, I wanted a honda. I wanted a civic

I was so impressed with the way those cars were balanced the

Performance aspect you could get out of it such a low horsepower number car

And it's such a lightweight car and and what people were doing with it. So yeah, I was all about, you know, the honda civic

and um, my father knew that

and uh

It's crazy back in the day. We'd be in the paper, you know, you're literally looking at these little tiny paper ads

and there was

a family that

Had the car. I think the brother owned the brother had possession of the car

The owner of the car actually ended up passing away

And they were selling this car like weirdly cheap like nowadays. We will call it a scam

You know, it would be a facebook scam, but we were like

There's something weird about the price of this car

my father called and

Um, they wanted that they were they were for real. They were like, yeah, we're just trying to get rid of it

We don't really know what it's worth

um, I think they wanted four thousand dollars for it, which was a lot of money

Back in a day in um, when I was, you know, 15 16 years old

Um, but my but I had a job. I was in a body shop. Um, I actually ended up working at that body shop for 20 years

and uh, yeah, I was there for a while and uh

Since my dad knew I had a job and I had to give my paychecks to him to put in the bank

He could charge me a weekly payment on that car

And that's what I did, you know, he he purchased a car for me and I had to pay him back

Yeah, you know kept you responsible smart dad

Yeah, what a great lesson. Wow. I don't know that we've ever heard that before but but what a great sense of of kind of responsibility

Yeah, my dad was really good at a budget. Um, I'll never forget that he had 25 cents of his name at the end of every month

I mean, he had giant books of budgets. He would write it out

You would think I would have learned from that

I definitely didn't but he definitely tried to teach me that I don't know I do okay in the business now

But I'll tell you what up to coven when I was making doing really well at 19 years old and up

I did not save a dime. I will tell you that

It was pretty much I just purchased cars car parts. That was pretty much my life, you know

Well fun fun isn't cheap fun isn't cheap. I know that but but great dad

Yeah, it's funny funny. You mentioned that because just last week

I bought my I got three sons my middle son. I bought him

Uh, his first kind of real car. He had a beat-up

Corolla that just died. He didn't have it very long but

we uh

We're going down the road right near where we live here in in Florida

And there was a cool 40th anniversary convertible Mustang

And with just, you know, the for sale little sign in the window and I said, oh

We got to make that happen

So two two days later and it was it was in really good shape my son is over the moon

I haven't seen him in a week. I assume he's having fun driving around

His friends go. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah

At least he's gonna get snow experience

He better not I better not see him come and run down my street in that thing with it with the ice

I was having real fun with the snow. Oh, but don't remind me don't remind me steer with the rear buddy steer

I can't wait to get my hands on it. But yeah, I've I've not seen him, but sorry dawg. I didn't mean to interrupt

That's okay. You know what I thought was pretty cool is um,

Matt, you still have this car, right? I still have this car. No way

I ended up I've

Listen, this car is transformed like crazy. Um

I ended up making it like, you know, my spoon dream car almost, you know

We made it into a road race car. We put a cage in it

The suspension was done, you know inside and out. I mean

We stiffened it up with every bar we possibly could the motor was completely built

We ended up putting a completely different motor in it

Little bit more displacement, but we wanted a high-revving motor just like them spoon motors. It had individual throttle bodies

49 final drive. I mean this thing was like a dirt bike. You literally

I mean to go like 40 mile an hour. You're probably in like, you know

third gear like if I was on the highway

Just try to try to travel at

You know 60 70 mile an hour keep up with traffic. I mean, I'm at like, you know, six and a half seven thousand rpms

Because it's a road race story. You want to stay in high rpms through turns, you know, so we really built it out

and

I ended up, um, you know, not making as much money

one year

And believe it or not the money that I was making would be a ton of money for some people

But for me in the way I saved money, I was like, man, I got to get rid of a car here

And uh, I ended up selling that car because I had a front line that wanted to purchase it

And it was the biggest regret ever. Um, I hated it. Um, I wanted that car back so bad and

I was actually fortunate enough for him to run into a little situation

Um, I think it was going to like throw a divorce or something and he was like, dude, if you want this car back

I never even titled it in my name. Just give me what we paid and I said, absolutely. I was like

Bring it over. I got the money for you. Let's go and um, and a purchase purchasing the car back and from then on

Um, I've outed myself

Any cars that I truly liked I was never ever selling again

Because there are a few other cars that I purchased down the road that I ended up selling and I'm like, man

Why did I even sell the car? I didn't even need to you know, I should have just kept it. So

Yeah, now I'm like 15 cars and the whole now

What I can't wait to see the collection. What what was the time period between the time you sold it and you bought it back

Um, I want to say maybe like two years went by

Okay, I want to say about two years went the purchase the person that purchased it

He was a friend of mine and he kind of had like a mini car collection

You know, so he would just kind of take his, um

Think he had like a dealer tag and if he wanted to take it out

He just put his dealer tag on and he'd go run around with it, you know

And you know and he would just kind of like had all these cars kind of like in limbo

Um, but he would just swap a tag on him, you know back and forth. So he never titled it

you know, so

But anyways, yeah, I was so happy to get that car back. It's in my garage right now

Um, I definitely have future plans for it. I do purchase parts for it every now and again the parts pile is collecting

Yep, um, but eventually when I get a hold of this shop

And we get it running smooth and I can get some free time. I definitely wanted to

That's one of the cars. I wanted to give some attention to later down the road

Gotcha. Gotcha. So you've owned that car over 20 years, right? Yes. Yep. Awesome. Yeah

And then your second car

Because you like japanese cars so much was a

It was another civic. Yeah another two-door coop

Um, that was back in the days when I was working at the body shop a car would get totaled

And it was before

they would

Um, force your car to have a salvage title

You had the choice if you wanted to pay for it out of your pocket, you wouldn't have a salvage title

Oh, you know your title got it. Yeah insurance could total it so like we would have these civics

They would have like a busted headlight and a an event radiator support

And um and like and it would need like a hood

And I mean we would have these parts floating around, you know

50 bucks here and there or whatever

But of course when it's going through insurance company want to purchase everything new

You know about like a new hood from honda. You could total a car easily

So what I would do is I would go out I'd see the customer taking their tags off

And I would walk out to the customer and say hey, you know, I really like this car

And of course they would tell me this was the best car ever

Barely any mileage on it can't believe a total now to find a new one and replace it and I would offer them

I said look, I could fix this car for you, you know on the side

Our way or um, I would offer you a couple hundred bucks more and um

Whatever you can buy that car back from the insurance company

I'll give you a couple hundred bucks more than that

And of course, you know, I tell them like I really like the car when you keep the car going and you know

they see the opportunity to make more money off of you know, just handing their title over to me

And um, and and bam, I would get this car. I put a couple hundred bucks into it and I'd have a low mileage civic

which is what I had at the time and

that became my daily driver because

My first car ended up getting in a little crazy with the modification

drive, you know, and

You know that just for like daily driving, you know

So that might like little comfortable two-door, you know coop

Civic at the time, but then I ended up putting a motor in that and I started to get a little radical too for it

But but I ended up selling it

Gotcha, but till this day, I wish I would have kept that one too. Yeah, I bet I bet you're probably looking up the vin

See if you can find it somewhere

There are no secrets on the internet

No, there is it so I wanted to uh, I did want to ask you that again Japanese car and uh

One of the cars you put down is your dream car is one of my favorite cars

Acura nsx. I assume

the original

gen one

Oh, yeah, yeah, can you can you tell us why that's your dream car? Have you you've probably painted one or two over time?

I bet I have two in my shop. I'm staring at right now. Oh

Love those cars. Yeah, um, whoa

So he's coming from his shop by the way for anybody. Uh, if you're listening to it check out our youtube channel

Uh, we'll have some clips on there. Maybe the whole maybe the whole video with Matt

Yeah

So, yeah, um, I mean, you know, like I said growing up with Hondas

Just wanting every Honda out there and I've had a car. I've had like Integra type Rs. I've had s 2000s, you know

So I've had some like pretty awesome Hondas

Um, but the nsx is just I mean that is the top Honda, you know

Um, it's just it was it was ahead of the game with the technology back in the day. I mean full aluminum body

I mean, I think they based that

Chassis off of like the indy car, you know

And even in the game crayon turismo, it was such a good handling car

um, but you know there was a time when um,

You know, I mean the prices on them even on the brand new

Nsx is it's pretty out there and their technology is crazy

How they they've kind of like got hybrid electric motors in the front, you know, and they're still running that v6

You know in the back turbo now

It's just crazy to just just wear that cars that compared to other cars now, but yeah back in the day the

Older nsx is with the flip up lights, you know

Or even when you get to like the newer version like the o5s with the, you know

projector headlights and all like

I mean that is just a car. It's still dream to have I haven't owned one yet. I'm very close

I'm actually in negotiations with one now

um, maybe during spring i'm

He we're talking and it's good talk that we're having it's a fingers crossed really really rare one

So rare and I had I actually had the opportunity to purchase one too

Before I decided to um go with the shop

It was and i'm and i'm still in touch with this car too. I can talk about this one. It was um, it was an o5

nsx

With 47 000 miles on it. Um, it was it was painted laguna blue. I mean it came laguna blue original colors

That's one of 900. Um, but this one also had a comtech

Exhaust header package on it

It wasn't a supercharged one

But it was still a really rare one that made it like one of 300 of a super rare. Wow

Um, it was in florida and it was completely sunfated

The the sun was selling it the father. I think ended up passing away or not able to drive the car anymore

And it was uh, it was a hell of a deal

um, I could probably

A friend of mine purchased it and I think I was getting a little bit better deal than him

Just because I knew the guy that was in charge of selling it

Um, but it was it's probably worth now

You know probably in the 140 000 dollar range and I think I was I think it was like 80 90 000

Which we were kind of like talking about

but

you know

That was right about when

I needed to like do something with this opportunity of you know opening a shop

You know, I just had so much clientele so many cars coming in

I needed to do something with I needed employees. I was you know, I was working my butt to death just trying to keep up

and uh, so I had to say

All this money I made where do I want to put it don't want to put it into an nsx

You know, or do I want to put it into a shop to make you know, even bigger career move and

You know, obviously I took you know the shop move and ended up buying a paint booth

You know that would help me out with a couple months worth of rent while we built the shop and so on or whatever and

What's really good is that a friend of mine ended up purchasing the car too and he actually purchased it for his mother

It was um a car that she always wanted

and

It's at a it's at a shop now getting all the mechanical work done

And then the painted I do yeah

Yeah, I still get to live like through this car a little bit

You know, I get to do the paint job on it everything I wanted to do to it

I still get to do to it. So I'm really happy about that

But then like I said, I'm in a better position now and this other nsx opportunity popped up

And um, it's even more rare

That one we were talking about lower mileage

Um fingers crossed. You know, my fingers are crossed on that note

Um, can I can I come to your shop sometime in video?

Absolutely. Okay. All right. I'll see what we do for now. I'll show you around. Okay. It's pretty it's pretty impressive

The lineup of cars if you have yeah, if the weather is good and um

And I have my car back from the shop. I'll bring my DeLorean up there

Yeah, oh man, that would be awesome. Yeah, not much paint where we can do on that. But yeah, I know

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, but the bumper might need some painting. So I'm keep you

Hey, you you got the right guy right there

The big thing and we're seeing I'm seeing more and more cyber trucks down here speaking of stainless steel

And they're all wrapped. Yeah, I see more wrapped now

Then I see then I see without but I have the dumbest question in the world that I have to ask you Matt

I wanted this my whole life and it's led me right to you

So when we're talking about flake in a paint

And flake is that little

it's it what is it

That allows the paint to almost shimmer or glitter is that metal? Is it ceramic?

What is that little flake great question different material?

What is that? Is it gold? So now nowadays your average flake in your average metallic paint job

It's it's actually an aluminum

So that's what they use a little aluminum shavings, you know, they have coarser shavings they have

Finer shavings and all depends on the effect that you're looking for but paint is changing

More and more nowadays the technology is getting crazier. You have your pearl paint jobs

um, and they they use like a

Kind of like a certain type of metallic also, but they cut it a certain way

It's died a certain way to give you this look of a pearl paint job

It's kind of like a smoother like color change look

Okay

And it's it's getting crazier now. You'll start to see it on the internet. Um, now they got some colors that are

Not, you know, we've always had like chameleon style paint jobs

Where they'll take like a prism almost and it's a different color on each side

I mean now these colors are changing drastically

To where it's almost like at one angle the car is just one complete different color. Um at another angle

It is one completely different color instead of how

The um prism paint jobs were like the chameleon paint jobs where it was kind of like as you start turning certain panels

We're starting to change. I mean it's all about how to get the angle of that prism to immediately change

So is that flake?

That's or there's got to be some sort of tiny piece in there that's reflecting the light from different angles

I wonder if it's triangular or a little piece that's

Well, that's what i'm saying. You'll see like, um, you know, you'll have like some chameleon colors that will change three colors

You'll have some of the

chameleon or color change color that would change like five different colors

I mean, you gotta think there's five different sides of different colors there

Okay, it's a little tiny microscopic piece of flake, you know

So as you're walking by you're seeing different sides that somehow lay all at the same way

You know what I mean? So now it's pretty amazing what paint does

Do you have to have so your equipment? I assume you have very high tech sprayers

Do different paints with different size flakes or type flakes?

Can they all go through that nozzle? Do you have different nozzles? Do you have different equipment?

for the different

Liquids that must be oh, yeah aerosol eyes through there

Yeah, so we definitely have a bit different size tip guns

Um, typically all of your oem paint jobs that you see on the cars that you see around they're sprayed with a

You know 1.2 to 1.3 millimeter tip

And um, but then they get they get a lot bigger

So um, and it all depends on what kind of application of paint you're trying to do like

Sometimes we have to put on these

Heavy build primers, you know, we call them polyester primers

We're using a giant, you know 2.0 tip, which is I mean we call them super soakers, you know

And we're laying out as much material as we can sometimes

And they get bigger than that. Um, but yeah, some of these bigger flakes like, you know

You'll see your bass boat flake or your your big giant flake. You'll see when somebody's like low rider paint jobs, you know

Yeah, we're taking that primer tip gun, you know, technically our primer gun

And we're running big flake through there, you know, just so we can get that to spray out evenly

You know, so yeah, you definitely have to use different guns. I mean your typical painter

Um, he probably needs a good like three different types of guns

You know to spray but me I mean I have six different guns

Most of the painters that I spray with and painters that I know have like six to eight different spray

What they're spraying. Yeah

And these guns aren't cheap. I mean they're like six seven eight hundred dollars, you know, so

I bet and I bet um, they they definitely get up there, you know

But the good news is is that these guns the quality of these guns are amazing

I mean I have guns that I've had for 20 years, you know, some of my first guns, you know

I still use to this day if you take care of them they last

Yeah, yeah, I like that. So so when you're doing these prismatic paint jobs

About how many coats does it take case primer?

Obviously maybe a couple and then is there sort of a base coat and then is there

flake and then is there kind of a kind of

Another clear coat on top of that and then a final sort of top coat on top of that. Do you just build it up that way or no?

It can get tricky

Typically when you have a paint job

You want to start out with the smoothest surface possible, right?

So you have this completely prepped panel. You're in the booth

You're going to want to spray a sealer coat down first, you know

Sealer is going to give you

Kind of like your base color, you know, if you're spraying a dark color

You want to have a dark sealer on there if you're spraying a light silver, you know

You want to have a light sealer on there, but that's a sprayed surface. It's going to lay flat

It's going to give you an awesome smooth substrate and now you can lay

You know any type of paint on there and it's going to look great on there

Um, then you get to like your metallics, you know

You can now that you got this super smooth surface

You can spray your metallics on there your metallics have no problem

Laying a certain way laying right laying even laying together, you know

Um having that sealer surface down there. You're not going to have any stripes. You're not going to have any

You know weird, you know differences in the surface. It's all even and the same

Um, but then it gets tricky after, um, you know metallics, you know, it's typically your normal silver paint job

Yeah, you're putting clear coat on after it, but then let's talk about like your candy coats, right?

You just sprayed this metallic silver surface down

Um, and then you're going to have you know, you could have like a candy coat sprayed on top

At which you have like a transparent red, you know, and you're spraying it over top of this silver

So now your silver flake is going to poke through

Your transparent red and now you're going to have like this candy looking coat, you know

Where the metallics that you just sprayed are actually turning red, you know, or they're turning yellow or they're turning

You know blue you got candy blues candy greens candy yellows candy reds any of those and it gives it this depth to it because you

Yeah, yeah, yeah

You have your silver coat

Then you know your next layer is your candy coat, you know, you're red and then you're going to put your your clear coat down on top of that

And it just makes this paint job look so deep like you can just walk in it, you know what I mean like you oh, absolutely

Like you can stick your finger in it, you know, so um, so then you're talking about layering up different things and and that's how you get it, you know

Um, and then it's like how many coats of clear do you want to put on it? You know typically our, um

higher end paint jobs, you know, like I have a, um,

365 ferrari, you know 69 ferrari 365 two by two sitting over there

We had to put on this. Um, he's got like this dark blue look to it. He wanted it as deep as possible

So we did four to five coats of clear coat on there. You know, we're trying to

Each level of coat we just want to have some depth in there, you know, so you can look like you can actually like swim in it

You know, um

So anyways, so yeah, whenever you talk about that, so I get pumped

Um, because that's like you know, I'm pumped. I'm excited about yeah

Great questions. Well, thank you

It's always interesting to go go go past a car that's got a paint job like you're describing and you use the word depth

And that is such a great word

Texture like this third dimension like you can reach into it

That's so interesting the way you said it because I feel the same and it's just very it's a very distinctive

Look, so thank you for taking some time to explain all this to us

And I tell you what if anybody is anywhere near

Okay, I gotta say it right hamstead mariland

You've got to check out top coat garage dot com for all your body needs

paint needs automotive needs

You know and and matt was saying earlier. I can't remember if it was on

If we got this on on tape or not, but it's all kind of he will take everything. It's all kind of stuff

It's for the collector with something exotic

It's for somebody that just had a had a fender bender and annie's annie knows the trades

So if it's something he can't do he's got the right people. Let's say it's engine work, right?

You can be that central guy, right right matt. Yeah, yeah, I mean it happens to us all the time

You know some guys will want like

You know an exhaust put on their car. I have no problem putting exhausts on their car

But then whenever they want to like really crack inside that motor

And they want to do some like, you know internal stuff for more performance

You know, we have shops for that, you know a really good friend of mine

He opened up his own shop too earlier than I did

And um, he's doing great with performance work, you know, and we have interior guys. Um, I eventually want to have interior in house

Um, but right now we're just trying to you know, perfect the flow of the shop at the moment

I want to add another step to it

But you know, I got interior guys next door, you know, you guys won't cost them interior or whatever man

They'll take they'll take your seat cover off. They'll mimic it. They'll change up the colors whatever

So you back together a new one and they'll fit right over like it was done at the factory

You know, so um, we've done that before. Um, if you look on the instagram there, there's a bronco that we did

Um, we had, you know, we had an entire interior shop pretty much just remake us everything

Refit everything and then we put it all together for them, you know, so

We love that

Love that. Well, thank you for educating us and spending a little time with us. This this was just wonderful. Thank you

Good

All right. So so top coat garage dot com instagram top coat

garage

Lots of fun stuff there. So any other announcements as we slide the podcast to the off-ramp there partner?

Or did we did we get it all? I think we I think

Only thing you didn't mention is folks if you

If you know somebody who would be great for the show

As a guest, please let us know if you want to be on the get be a guest

Let us know and we're always looking for duos. We've had

We've had father son. We've got some father daughter coming up

um, love to have some mother son mother daughter, but

um, grandparents

You name it. We even yeah, we even had a twist, uh, the last interview that dropped before he put this down was

Us interviewing my son about his about his first car and driving around humvees and in the army

So good stuff and that's how we got matt was a friend of a friend

So please keep the referrals coming

And you have just heard the high revving low mileage late model heard around the world authoritative podcast

On automotive nostalgia. He's dug reach him at dug at carslove.com. I'm christian reach me at christian at carslove.com

He was matt and you know where to find him. So please follow tell a friend check out our link tree

I'm sure we'll see you at the next local car show show room race strip or concourse

So keep the rubber side down keep listening. We will see you next week

0:00

47:07

From Honda Civic Dreams to Custom Paint Empire: The NSX Hunt and Color Secrets

Tiptronic

Delorean DMC-12

Mitsubishi Mirage

automobile painter

Porsche 911

wide body

Honda Civic

Honda 2000 Honda

Spoon

carbon fiber wing

carbon fiber hood

horsepower

Toyota Corolla

Ford Mustang

road race car

roll cage

individual throttle bodies

final drive

rpm

Acura Nsx

Honda Integra Type R

Honda NSX

V6 engine

Laguna Blue

DeLorean

Cybertruck

metallic paint

flake

aluminum

Geo Prism

chameleon paint jobs

Ferrari 365 Ferrari

Ford Bronco

About this episode

Original notes