Wanted to give a little bit of an update, and again if I haven't said it in the thread (memory issues) many, many thanks to all those who chimed in here or by pm. Drop in for a drink on me of you find yourselves wandering the atlanta area...
Back to the update. Yesterday the appraiser for Amica visited, documented what could be seen, and "valued" the car. Good news is they designated it as 'repairable', not that that was ever really in doubt. Haven't seen or gotten ahold of his report yet though.
Meantime, spoke to several more shops that were actually interested in doing the work. I *think* I've settled on one. It's family owned & operated, BUT, it's also ford factory certified, i-car gold certified, and has a wall filled with other various certifications.
They:
- lifetime warranty workmanship
- only use oem parts
- have certifications for alum work and keep separate tools for the aluminum panel work
- use water based paint like my oem
- keep the car stored indoors overnight
- use an oven to help cure the paint
After my phone call to them the service advisor talked to their paint guy about the car/color. The paint guy has something like 20 years experience, and back when he worked for a ford dealer for a decade actually used to do warranty and insurance work on the dealerships early 2000s mustangs that came through with that factory purple paint that had the chameleon pearl in them... if he got those to match decent and come out good, he can probably handle mine a-ok. Their plan would be to make ""8 or 10" of the laydown panels trying to get the base coat and pearl density right for matching in the sun. We went over all those things and more for a good 45 minutes this morning over at their shop.
Many pieces on the car are damaged, but in better shape still than many of the parts we put on our gbodies. I asked, and they said everything coming off the car I can keep - they may even be able to help get around a core charge or two.