These cars never came with gel coat from the factory. All you need for a long lasting paint job is a super prepared surface with a couple coats of epoxy primer to seal in any potential bubble causing abnormalities in your filler or resins. Before that stuff was available we just made sure the normal primer was hard cured and checked for a month or so before shooting the color onto it. Let's see some pics of the finished product, or even the steps along the way. Thanks!