Yesterday my father had a bit of a mishap. He rolled up onto the front of my Camaro when he was in a slight rush. He's got a rather large truck and my car was pretty much invisible behind his once you get into his cab.

The short of things, from what everybody is telling me, due to the location of the dent and the bracing underneath the hood, I'm going to need a new one. Anybody know how much a typical paintjob for such a thing would cost? I've already priced the hood online, and I know I'll be buying an aftermarket one seing that the factory GM part runs in the $1500 area.

I have, after a freak hail storm. There were 80 something dents & dings all over my car. It was going to cost quite a bit, but luckily I was insured for hail. There were so many dings on my hood that it was cheaper to buy a new one and sell the other one for scrap. So the body shop called up the nearest Nissan dealer and they just happened to have a hood in the correct color (the joys of having a super economic common car). So, basically I couldn't tell you from my experience. I can't imagine it would be a whole lot. It's one piece that is relatively straight and flat.

Instead of going online for it, you might want to check out a dump where they dispose of cars, and ask them if they've got any Camaros. You can get a new one real cheap that way.

As for the paint job, in addition to the paint (which you will be special ordering if you want it to actually match your car, and can cost from twenty bucks to a couple hundred per small can), the cost of labor will be the real determining factor. A lot of the garages around here charge between 80 and 150 per hour, with a hood probably taking between half an hour (if it's primed but not painted) to a couple hours (if it's painted and they need to sand it down first) to paint.

I realize that's a pretty big range, but the devil's in the details, as always.

Only problem with going the junkyard route is that, by a very large margin, the bulk of wrecked Camaros are disabled by way of front-end damage.