This is all about overspray and dust. We took the Cabriolet to what we thought was a good but economical body shop. Huge mistake. The shop got primer over spray all over the inside of the car. It was horrible.

Go to a good shop. Get references. Ask to see work in progress and completed work. If you really want to be carefull, make sure their business license is also up to date.

That's the leather steering wheel of our 1991 Volkswagen Cabriolet with primer (paint) spots. Click any image to enlarge. This was a huge (and amazingly stupid) mistake from the body shop. If you live in Charlottesville Virginia, use my email contact form, and I'll recommend a shop (and if you really want to know, I'll tell you the name of this shop).

Paint spots on the leather steering wheel of the Cabriolet. The spots are easy to see on the larger image. What a mess.

More photos of the spots.

The shop used some kind of solvent to remove the spots, but that ruined the leather on the steering wheel. On top of everything else, the shop owner was nasty.

More paint spots.

There was paint on the seats also. That's cloth upholstry.

In addition to the paint, they didn't cover the inside of the car when they were sanding, so there was a layer of dust all over the inside of the car. It was really horrible.

The back seat. I had parts back there because I had the dashboard apart. Everything covered in dust.

That's the floor next to the seat. What a mess.

Paint overspray on the door handle. This was basically a disaster.

Dust.

More dust. The un-dusty spot is where something was laying on the seat and cast a dust-shadow.

Dust in the seats and on the carpet.

Dust in the rear seat.

Paint on the door trim and handle.

Yes, that is paint on the leather steering wheel.

The shop must have realized that they had a problem because they wiped the door trim. It made things worse. The door doesn't look this bad now because I took it back and made the owner clean it up again. It still doesn't look like it did when we brought it in to the shop.