I will never attempt to sell my car if it is looking terrible on the exterior. That is unless the engine is worth the price I am asking for the car. If the exterior is in terrible condition it is not the end of the world though. You still have a lot of other useful parts that someone may need on the car. If I want to
sell my car and I know the exterior is going to require some work then I will try and find a way to spice it up a little. If panels are damaged or a door is in bad shape I will generally have a look to see if the panel is something I can just change by using a spanner "" if so then I will go and try and find a new panel to replace it. You will be surprised at what you can find in an auto wrecking yard. I have managed to find panels that are exactly the same factory colour as the panel I need to replace.
It is not hard to replace a panel if you know where all of the bolts are. Have a quick look to make sure you don't have to disassemble half of the car to get to the bolts you need to undo to change the panel. If you don't, then you are in luck. I have managed to sell my car with panels that are a different colour. That is because it isn't terribly expensive to get a single panel painted professionally. If a discoloured panel is all that is holding back the potential of the car then the reduction in the asking price is sometimes too good to walk away from if the buyer is savvy.
I have attempted to do my own spray jobs with paint that was supposed to be the same colour as the factory paint. It never seems to come out very well though. This is because the rest of the paint on the vehicle ages. It is just better to get the panel sprayed professionally. Professional spray painters and panel beaters have a bevy of tricks at their disposal to match the paint perfectly. When I have tried to sell my car with a different coloured panel I get a quote to give to the buyer to get the panel painted.
