Should I Paint This?

Buff it.

In addition to buffing it (that should make a heads and tails difference) you should ask your local paintless dent repair guy for a quote. Even from small pics that spot on the driver's door and fenders stand out. And those kinds of dents are pretty easy to pop back out without hurting the paint.

When that's all done crop in on the pictures as much as you can (and still keep the car in frame) to show the car off and kneel down to shoot. If you can wait for a cloudy/overcast day, the that blue will look 10x more appealing.

looks good like it is

I already buffed it. The pictures are of it after I buffed it & burned through the paint in some spots.

Honestly, I think that a good (not calling you bad, just that you very much so want to avoid a hack) detailer would be able to bring back quite a bit of life to that paint, so long as it's not too thin. If you burnt through it though, it may be.

Years ago, GRM ran a story where they polished an old Mopar they had in their fleet. At least I think it was an old Mopar. I am sure one of the other anoraks here will know the issue.

My dad had the exact color Super Beetle. After my twin sisters drove it into the ground; we begged a guy to give us at least $500 for it.

I had a beige one like that.. I would just get a professional to throw a mop over it

If you're on the fence about it, why not do a vinyl wrap? You can get enough for a DIY job for about $200 I think. If you don't like it, or a buyer wants the original paint, you can just peel it off.

You won't recover the cost of a paint job. If you are buying cars to re-sell and make a profit, you need to buy cars that do not require labour; yours or contracted. YOUR labour input must be to put in the time to find buyers for the car. Your JOB description is salesman at this point, not mechanic or bodyman.

I also want to say good on you for taking the risk and dipping a toe in the entreprenurial waters. As a person who is many years down this road, I will advise you not to judge your first effort too harshly. If you do not make money at this, do not just quit. Examine WHY you did not make money and try to apply the lesson. If you enjoyed the experience it might be worth pursuing.

Xceler8x wrote: I don't think CA is the place to go for vintage cars. I would bet going to desert states like Arizona, parts of Texas, etc would be the ticket. I think CA has too much of a car culture as well as higher cost of living. Go to an area with dry air, low cost of living, and very little car culture. That should be the ticket for low rust, relatively inexpensive cars. It may be harder to find interesting old cars in those areas though.

I think you're absolutely right. The cars were really not that cheap in CA. The ones that were, were hammered or modified to death.

I got lucky in that I found a movie-car company in Riverside that was going out of business and liquidating. Their primary business was supplying background vehicles for movies. They had 39 cars, most of which were 50s and 60s four door sedans. I bought the only two-door car they had, a 1955 Chrysler New Yorker that was in really decent shape. It was sold before it got back to Massachusetts.

The tempting stuff, for me, was the non-running and rust-free old VW Rabbits (didn't see a Scirocco), Datsun 510s and, basically all the fun cars that were cheap and plentiful here about 15 years ago. The trouble is that transporting cars that don't run is almost twice as expensive as cars that drive on and off the truck under their own power.

In reply to NOHOME:

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I buy and sell cars for a living. I wish I were good enough at it to only have to be the salesman, but it seems that the only 'bargains' I get are the ones that require a whole bunch of my labor, factored at $0/hr.