appearances appearances !!!
Wouldn't it be nice....
You have a $20,000 152, into which you have just put a zero'd engine for $18,000, but it's not worth $36,000. Who wants to spend $12,000 on paint, $5,000 on interior, and $5,000 on radios, to get you to a $58,000 152, to have the students whine about the cost to rent it? It seems much too common to see on here, people looking for the "cheapest" rental aircraft, not the one with the "appearance" money spent on it.
The flying club where I learned to fly had a Cardinal RG as the advanced single in the fleet. Goofy doodle put it in with the wheels up. So they invested the big bucks on completely redoing its appearance while it was repaired. A month after return to service, another goofy doodle did the same thing. Much of that appearance investment lost, so why bother? The students might as well ruin ugly airworthy aircraft, as opposed to much more expensive pretty ones...