I am building a coupe and the only original sheetmetal on the entire car is the window posts. Every single panel is goodmark except the door skins, which are NOS GM. Also, the Goodmark stuff had the GM certified sticker on them, which from what I can tell, only means that GM got some royalty money, as they sure as hell didn't verify that the panels were even close to GM's specs for the original sheetmetal. I understand that the original GM stuff back in 67-69 did not fit all that good to begin with, but the repro stuff is still not as good as NOS. How is it 40 years later, with all of our technology and advancements, we can not duplicate the original crappy quality and went backwards on the fitment? On my 68, I went through several fenders before I got a pair that were the same size. I learned the hard way after installing all of my front end sheetmetal on my 68 that the length of the fenders were over a 1/4" different. It all looked good until I tried to install the hood. I had a rombus opening for a square hood. Thankfully, the guy I bought my stuff from was close by and I did not have to deal with expensive shipping to get a matching pair. He even took my one fender back after I had already primed and painted the jambs. He then let me sift through his inventory of fenders until I got one that was workable. For that I will give an A+ for service to Danny at Muscle Express in Jupiter Florida. As for my newer project, my 69 is, like I said, all new sheetmetal. With a little (okay...a lot) or work shoving, moving, shimming, and using a big ass sledge, I got everything to line up pretty darn good. I even had to beat the firewall in at the top corner to get the passenger fender to go back another 1/8'. The only major problem I have to deal with is the rockers do not line up with the fenders very well. The curve of the door and fender are in line but as soon as I get to the rocker, the curves no longer match. A skim coat of bondo will fix it well enough. If you are prepared to do a lot of finessing you can make the newer repro stuff fit well enough for any car show. Of course, if you are going for the concours level, than NOS is the way to go. But to be honest, I have seen some supposedly all original unrestored sheetmetal cars and cars supposedly redone with all NOS stuff and installed by "experts" and I have seen some pretty bad fitment issues and gaps. When I go to the high end car shows or when I went to Barrett Jackson and checked out the 6 figure first gens, I was surprised to see panels lined up no better or even worse than what I have done with my own hands in my garage.
