Eliminating Swirls & Scratches on Your New Car: How Can Paint Correction Help?

swirls, scratches and defects are often on new cars straight from the dealership lot

The day arrives where you decide to purchase a brand new car. Maybe you just graduated college and landed your first “grown up job,” or perhaps you are just a modern day gear head upgrading from a project car to a daily driver.

Most of us like to believe that a brand new car rolling off the lot has had meticulous attention to detail paid to every inch of it inside and out; unfortunately, this is rarely the case. The moment a Chevy Camaro or Mercedes S-Class finds its way out of the factory and into the dealership world, environmental factors both natural and man made are doing their best to damage or impair the finish in even the most miniscule ways.

This occurrence is commonplace with used cars as you can imagine: high mileage means it has seen its fair share of road grime, rocks, and carelessly opened doors thrown into a cart corral in the grocery store parking lot. But similar discrepancies are far less prevalent in a new car finish, though still pertinent, and statistically, contrary to what you would imagine, the more expensive a new car is, the more paint correcting it needs.

It is important to note that paint correction works to alter the surface of your vehicle’s finish in a way that allows for a clean, sharp reflection when light strikes it in any way. While there are several at-home detailers that believe the process of paint correction is easy, this perceived simplicity of correcting surface issues is as deceiving as the micro-scratches found in the finish of a new car; it is both a complex and delicate process.

Here at Exquisite Auto Spa, our process of paint correction starts with a deep wash to remove any free standing dirt and grime, followed by a decontamination process that removes bonded materials that have adhered to the finish by using an iron remover or a clay mitt.

What follows next is a tactile skill crafted over decades of experience by a professional detailer. There are several stages in polishing the clear coat, and no two cars are even slightly alike; therefore, we start with medium to heavier cutting compounds, depending on the trauma we are tending to, in order to remove large surface defects, haze, swirls and oxidation. The products we use do not implement fillers of any kind, so what you see is what you get.

Throughout the paint correction process, we use both an LED auto light to check our work, and a digital paint depth gauge to be certain of the evenness of our polish work so as to not create additional damage.

Keep in mind that after the correction work is complete, protection is a necessity! Consider having us here at Exquisite Auto Spa install a Paint Protection Film (PPF) or a Ceramic Coating application to preserve the integrity of our work.