Anyone thinking that the S's paint is "soft"? I get the impression that if you look at it too hard, you scratch it. Mine looks like a scatter bomb went off on the
front. Every time i wash her I keep thinking of a new paint job soon

 

Its not the paint its your lacquer. All cars will do this if you don

 

Yup does seem bad - especially on the front lip which is looking much worse than the bumper next to it!

 

Modern water based paints are a lot softer than the old oil based paint that they used to use.

Dosen't seem to matter which marque you buy, the paint is easily scratched or chipped.

You have to be careful even when polishing with what type of cloths you use, the wrong cloth will cover your car with swirl marks. Best get some good quality microfiber if you don't have already.

You could also consider buying a Porter Cable for polishing the swirls out.

 

You need to read Rahula's impressive site and you can remove those swirls no problem. mine was fairly bad too but a day spent with Megs, Poor Boys and P21S produced awirl free results like this -







6 months down the line and careful washing (two buckets) and still holding out.

Site link - http://www.rsharma.co.uk/cleaning.htm



John

Stone chips are still a headache though.

 

Wow- that looks good.

Thanks all for the advice and pointers.

Actually it is not so much the swirls I am talking about - it's the chipping and actual scratches. My car is garaged when home. But I have a whole bunch of chips in the area in front under the head lights. Also, I have some long scratches - not quite like I was keyed or something, but long and deep enough that those swirl removers have no effect. Every time I wash, it seems new ones have appeared.

Like its time for a bra or something.

 

the only time i had trouble was when it was resprayed after being hit, the paint they had used was so soft you could peel it off with your nail, drove 200 miles and my front end was like snow white.

honda had the car for a coupleof weeks and when it was all sorted you couldn't mark the paint with anything, very surprised you are having problems.

might be your climate/driving style, if you get up behind people fast dust and dirt will do all sorts of damage, what are your roads like ?

 

I do find it particularly bad - before my first S I had a '99 Saab 9-5 and the paint was solid.

The MCB S I bought thereafter did, as you say, seem to scrtach if you as much as looked at it. Lots of coats of polish (and it probably doesn't matter what kind) will give it protection to an extent.

 

Now that you mention it, there is evidence that this car was hot and fixed by the previous owner in the front. Maybe the respray job was not good. My previous car alos had a repsray job, but 5 years later it still looked practically brand new except for a few chips.

Our roads tend to be a bit dusty, so I would expect chips, but never noticed so many on a car beforfe. Maybe it is the large frontal area of the S that makes it so bad. Maybe I never fussed about previous cars as I do me S.

 

The front of the S does chip a lot, and MCB does show it up badly - you need to keep on top of the touch up to avoid rust, although fortunately much of it affects the plastic bumper.

The bumper does absorb a lot of the impact of a shunt, so any previous life frontal damage may not have been too bad.