thanks rudeone! i think it looks pretty good, but i'm not sure about the wheels with it ...
Farbeit from me to tell you what to do with your money, but if you were able to invest the money for a mild rate of return for a year or so, you could probably spend the earnings on the paint job. All, essentially for free because you saved the cash to begin with.
Just my $0.02.
since you seem to be interested in my finances, please allow me to elaborate a little.
35 years ago, my in-laws bought a lot in bethany, delaware not far from the beach. i put a house on that lot about 10 years ago. that house (and lot) is now worth $600,000, and we own that outright (on mortgage on it). my in-laws also owned their house outright and they inherited the house we lived in until a year ago. we sold both houses and bought a $950,000 house together, where we live now. i had a $150,000 mortgage on it, but we had accumulated a debt of about $50,000 in credit cards and a 401-k loan. we were what you might call, "house poor".
real estate in bethesda, maryland is ridiculously expensive, especially in the area in which i live.
so basically we had 1.5 million dollars equity in houses, but i could not pay my bills. go figure.
a few months ago, i refinanced my loan to the tune of a 5 5/8% 30 year fixed rate loan on $400,000 and paid off all my debt. so i now have about $175,000 cash in my accounts. i bought 1-year cds at 5% with $50,000 of it, i have the rest of it in a money market account that makes an apy of 5% also. i haven't decided if i am going to invest some of it, because i really am not interested in taking any chances on losing any of it. i will probably buy more cds, or maybe some "safe" mutual funds.
now add on top of that $250,000 in retirement accounts.
now add on top of that my stock options that are going to ge paid off because the company i work for just got bought. that will total about $20,000 after taxes.
now add on top of that the fact that i make $135,000 per year.
i think i have the "invest it" part covered.
i have allocated $15,000 to fixing my car and making it like new. the 410ci engine is a big part of that. the paint job is the other big part of that. smaller parts include new leather for the seats, new carpeting, and a new stereo. i am at about $10,000 right now.
.... if you would I wouldn't have to sell the 
