Mark gave you good advice. I do custom and classic car painting. I paint all of my own hotrods and restorations. Just some points from my experience:
Fieros have a plastic polymer body. You have to eliminate any oil or wax on the body completely with an appropriate cleaning product. Remove all trim, sail panels, and the rear lights. It is easier to rough up the plastic with 400grit sandpaper and then primer it than to try to sand it all smooth first. Go to your local automotive paint store and get high quality automotive paint. Be prepared to spend around $250-$400 because you have to buy reducer, color coat paint, clear coat, extenders, hardeners, paint filters, mixing buckets, inline water filters, tacky cloth, wet sand paper, gun cleaning solvent, and paint thinner for wash up. You can even use a sealer (a kind of paint product that increases adhesion of the color coat) after priming. Sealers come in colors and those colors can sometimes affect the perception of the color coat. Use a bright sealer under a light color.
I have used most every type of paint, and have stopped experimentation and only use DuPont paint now. It is very high quality, sprays well, covers well, is difficult to screw up and easy to overpaint more coats without orange peel. It has a high gloss and lasts a long time. It is a little more expensive but is well worth it. For example, I painted a 3D flame nose on a 1950 chevy. I used DuPont Chrome Illusion absolute purpleen prism, multicolor paint for a 9 color set of flames, and then covered it with 8 layers of DuPont clear coat. It looks absolutely fantastic. With each coats flashing (setting from liquid to solid) you can immediately spray the next coat.
If you are going to paint, have a really good air source with excellent water traps. I run three; one on the end of my spray gun that is disposable.
Don't ever spray primer through an expensive spraygun. Use an old gun for primer that still works well as the powder in primer is abrasive to the tip. I always use high build primer as the extra powder in the paint gives you a lot to sand down for a smoother prime.
You can spend a lot on a paint gun, but I have found that the best Harbor tool freight gravity gun is excellent for painting.
Dont buy cheap sand paper. Use the good stuff and clean it as you work with it as to unload the abrasive surfaces to continue its ability to sand. I buy 220, wet 400, wet 800, wet 1000, wet 1500 and wet 2000 grit paper.
Don't buy cheap masking tape. Also, get the stickiest you can find. The blue stuff will fall off and not stick well enough so you end up using more of it. Buy masking rolls of paper and use it intead of crummy newspapers. Your quality masking off IS the paint job. Concentrate as much as possible on masking as good as you can. I take three times as much time masking as I do painting.
Read up on painting technique. You have to know your gun, its adjustments and how much distance to overlap each stroke. I paint from the top down so I don't lean into any fresh paint accidently. Make sure you keep the gun straight toward the surface. Don't move the gun in a pendulum motion... just move your body so the gun smoothly moves across the surface. It is a very athletic activity, painting a car. I sometimes will completely wear myself out painting, and it gets tougher as you get lower on the vehicle. Keeping the gun straight and moving with a fluid motion is key to not running the paint.
I use 50% overpaint. I only move the next row of paint down 1/2 of the distance of the spray pattern. This fills a lot so you have to notice and be careful not to run your paint. In fact I err on the side of too little paint with each run and then paint more runs of paint after flashing. This ensures that I don't have to chase paint runs down with wet sanding later. The last paint job I did was a 1948 Chevy truck two-tone and it had no runs, drips or errors because of this gradual style.
Two stage paint is a color coat and then a clear coat. It is problem free. If you screw up the color, you can wet sand it and then spot paint the bad spot. If you screw up the clear coat you can wet sand it and then buff it to high gloss. Bug parts, hairs, and other stupid little stuff are left in the paint until it has hardened and then removed through wet sanding. If you have a bug land in the wet paint you can try to immediately lift it with a pointed toothpick. If you have a well lit paint booth you own or can rent it is great. I have painted in booths with great lighting and also in the outdoors. You can paint a car outdoors quite well on a nonwindy warm day although realize that bright paint attracts small bugs. The bright light outdoors is actually an advantage over a poorly lit indoor booth. Always wear breathing protection when painting even if outdoors.
When finished painting remove the masking tape holding down the masking paper carefully. If the paint is still tacky it may pull up so pull off tape straight up or away from the painted area. Some techniques like 3D flames use this to advantage and the painter uses a razor to cut the paint at the edge of the tape before it is removed. This is an advanced technique, but 3D flames are really cool.
Be sure to completely clean up your gun and wash out all of your buckets so you don't have to rebuy them.
Once you paint your first car, you will realize that you can do a better job than most shops that charge 20 times the cost of your paint. You will love the results and your friends will all want to hire you to do their cars too.
Gary
