I spent a lot of time on the phone with Ed, and visited his shop before deciding to have him do the work on my car. They have a huge paint booth, and several folks working there that have tons of experience building and painting Hot-Rods. The work he does is of the highest quality, period.
After I gave him the "go" Ed even went to the extra effort to go pick up my Viper from the person who had done the frame work in Tennessee, and stop by my house in Arkansas on the way back from a Texas event to pick up my Viper's hood.
He will be doing a lot more than just "paint" my Viper, he will be carving a few holes in the hood and installing oval louvers. He will also be fabbing some custom exhaust sills which will expose the side pipes in a fashion similar to that of the original '89 Viper show car (but look even better!). The final piece of custom bodywork will be modifications in the passenger rear fender to fit a billet aluminum style fuel filler lid.
The car is going to be painted Light Pewter Metallic, with Black Light Metallic Stripes. We are using a unique brand of paint called Matrix Systems. They are the "other guy" when it comes to paint, and have been excellent to work with. They are custom mixing the paint right now, and it is schedule to ship to Ed this week.
The reason I chose Classics by Elite was their extensive experience with prepping and painting fiberglass. They have built top-notch show winning Cobra's for years, and the experience they have working with materials and techniques compatible to fiberglass is critical to a good long-lasting paint job.
Another reason I choose Ed and crew was their mechanical capabilities. Since they build Cobras as well as paint them, they will be able to handle a lot of side projects on my Viper.... installation of roll up window doors and windshield surround (my car is a '94 RT/10), Snake-Oyl power mirrors,
header installation and custom side pipe fab work, harnesses, swap to a black interior, and more. I really liked the idea of working with a shop that not only could do all these things, but a shop that does them all the time when they build Cobras.
When I visited in June, there were three Cobra's in process, and they were "making a space" for my Viper to move from its spot in the queue tot he active work area. Over the next few weeks, start looking for regular "progress images" to appear elsewhere on the site. We expect the entire project to take a number of months to complete due to all the custom work.
Other shops to consider are "Fat Alberts" in Phoenix, AZ and Autoform in Holland, MI. Autoforms web site is:
http://www.autoformgroup.com/ Autoform is a full service shop like Classics by Elite, where Fat Alberts is primarily a (big) paint and body shop. Both do lots of Viper work and I have never heard a bad word about either one. As a side note, I purchased an Autoform vented cowl to put on my car, it's a nice piece.