It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, a bit windy. 
I went to the hardware store to get a steel brush and some
paint to cover the repairs of the rusty parts.
I found a calm parking lot near my apartment.

I brushed, sanded and applied zink protection.

Afterwards I spray painted with the blue color.
I also repainted the door I had replaced earlier, which was black.

Anyhoo... It turned out not to be the same color.
It was close enough for the paint to cover well.  

This new paint gave the car a lustre I liked.
One thing led to another and I ended up painting the bottom part of the car. 
It didn't feel that difficult to repaint a car. I ran out of paint.
My first mistake. I wanted to paint the entire car!

Back to the hardware store.
My second mistake. I considered changing color.
Using my computer I had found that dark metallic red was a nice color. 

I bought 7 cans of dark red, 2 cans of "clear lacker" and 2 cans of
silver for a possible decor.


Back to the parkinglot.
When I had parked, the owner of the warehouse came by.
I opened my car door and 3 cans of spray paint fell out onto the tarmac. 
He was nice and just asked me to move away from the building.
I guess he was afraid that the rust would spread like wild fire.



I started applying can after can with the dark red paint.
The big problem was that this paint didn't cover as well.
I got ugly lines and a very uneven surface. Scary!
It looked horrible! The hood was a surface that just wouldn't look good.
I lept around the car... trying to make it work. But no.


The blue base color shone through and the stronger wind
made it more difficult to get an even surface.

I started to run out of cans. My thumbs were aching and the car looked
like shit. The value of this car was now significantly lowered. 
(If that is possible for a 16 year old Citroën)
 

The car looked ugly. The roof was untouched.
The spray paint was used up. The warehouse was closed.
 
I started planning to set the car on fire just to get rid of it. 
I squeezed out the last of all the seven cans.
I added a can of clear lacker to make some improvement.

The clear lacker made it look acceptable from some angles,
but up close it was a truly tacky experience. 
Not even I, would like to sit in this car in daylight.
I was really disapponted in the result.
I did make discreet shadow effect on the fenderskirt.

I saw this as a hopeless endeveour and didn't care anymore.
I still had silver paint and masked the air intake in the back.
As I was spraying, small flakes of silver glittered in the air and
struck down on the unmasked area. I cursed.
 

Then I realized. COOL! Flakes!

I discreetly started to add silver sparkles along the bottom of the car.
Then of course it went too far and I bathed the car in sparkles.
 


The sparkles reduced the uneven effect and looks kind of cool. 




Ok. The windows have to be cleaned not to sparkle along with the rest of the car. 
...but the car got a new look.... and became different.
That was the point all along.  No longer grey, rusty and boring.

So... what to do, to make the car even more vulgar?


Ta-daa!

Striiipes!
Last year I bought gold spray paint.
This paint covers really well and the attraction of having stripes was too big.
I added a Viper stripe from bumper to bumper. That's humor!

It looks hot in the backlight. Chrome hubcaps, flakes and stripes. Picture
 


The roof was still unpainted (except for the stripe), but I didn't care.
It looks black up close and with some flakes it was ok and got a hard top look.
The hook in the back got some gold paint aswell.

This is a car I wouldn't mind sliding into.

Race look - 4 hours of hard work.
My dad probably sighs deeply when looking at his former car.
My uncles with the same car model are probably both laughing.  



Before the transition. A grey and dull car, among its dull friends.
 

Now it crowns the parking lot.
My car is an eye catcher. It makes me smile when I see it.  

----
Added later:

The roof is now also painted, the windows cleaned.
The hood was repainted with somewhat worse results.

The total cost of this transition was 70 USD. It took about 10 cans
of dark red, 1 silver and 3 cans of clear lacker.

If I get tired of this style in a few months, I can redo the
process in 4 hours or less, getting a brand new look.

This is the main advantage of having a car which is so old that you can play with it.
 

---

It is fun to be 28, having the money you wish you had when you were 18.
I think all 18 year olds should get 150.000 USD from the state to
pay for car, education and apartment. But that is it. Then there will be
NO more contributions for a life time.
I also believe that all Swedish universities should be located on the French riviera.
I should run for prime minister of Sweden. I know I'd win.

Have a nice day
/Fredrik

I added a blue neon light last weekend which made it look grim.

Closeups fender