Shane McGlaun
We talked about the stripes on the 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 back in late August when word first surfaced that the painted stripes would cost $10,000. The cost of the stripes was confirmed recently when the 2020 GT500 configurator went live. We all wondered why the stripes cost so much, and Ford has now offered an answer.
The reason the painted stripes cost $10,000, and the vinyl stripes cost $1,000 is pretty straight forward. Ford has said that the reason is that the painted stripes are done by hand. The stripe job is hand-prepped, painted, and then clear-coated. The “specialized nature” of the hand painting process means that Ford has a “very limited production capacity” to be able to paint these stripes on by hand.
Any Ford Mustang owner can tell you that vinyl stripes are hard to deal with. Having personally owned a 2012 Boss 302, the vinyl stripes make waxing the car a major pain, and the stripes often start to crack and peel over the years. Those $10,000 painted on stripes are under the clear coat and will look just as good down the road as they do on the delivery day for the 2020 GT500.
Being under the clearcoat also means as the car gets scratched from use, you can take it to a detailer and have it buffed back to like new. The painted-on stripes can be had in the same three colors as the vinyl stripes – black, white, and blue. We still want a Grabber Lime with painted on black stripes, but the $10,000 is hard to swallow even though we like the idea of ease of care and permanence over time.
Subscribe to Ford Authority for more GT500 news and around-the-clock Ford news coverage.
Source: Car & Driver
Instead of paying $10K To Ford, take the car to your neighborhood paint/body shop and have them do it.
Bet it would cost way less.
Dave, That’s what I did for my Velocity Blue Super Snake stripes. I couldn’t accept the downsides of vinyl (not to mention no vinyl the color I wanted).
But not just any body shop can or will do it. You’ll find many that could do it well won’t because it is not what they do. It took me months to convince the shop I used because they knew it would interrupt their normal workflow and could not be sure how much to quote because of all the unusual steps involved. This article doesn’t mention things like having to remove bumper covers as well as remove everything attached to any of the panels being striped; or things like taking down the headliner to remove the shark fin on the roof., etc..
Other shops aren’t good candidates because the skills of laying down stripes aren’t in many painters’ repertoire.
I don’t want to be that guy but come on man you are columnist. Your spelling should be on point and don’t you have spell check. Read the first couple sentences. Thanks and good day.
Rich people like me don’t want cheap copies