Years ago (about 10 or more) the way to repaint a project car was to put as much paint on as possible to get the perception of depth, among other things. More than often 30 or more coats of paint were applied slowly reducing the amount of colour while increasing the clear for each coat until a few extra coats of pure clear went on just for luck. This left lots of room for dust and bugs to settle on the vehicle and show up in the final product. It also made it difficult to retouch a panel without making it stick out like dogs balls.
With modern paint technology all this has changed and less is better,

A major decision was what type and brand of paint to put on it. This is a big headache after all it is about the only thing that people look at apart from the styling of the car which you can't change unless you add on bits of fibreglass or bucket loads of plastic filler (blurgh).

^{Copyright © 1999 Bruce Cresswell}