Amen!

Really, you can take a picture of a car and just draw a bunch of random lines on it that will determine your surface structure. It won't be efficient, but It'll show that there is no magic patch layout that you need to glean from some professional that will get the job done.
Experience with how your surfaces communicate between each other will make you more efficient - not copying somebody else, else you'll get stuck when modeling something different from your reference wire!