I've a 2010 XFR, still a great looking car and holding up well. I've been decent with not beating the paint to death, and it only has 104,000 km on it, but, I haven't had time to deal with caring for the paint the way I always have and it could use some help.

I've messed with doing paint correction on the trunk, Griott's polisher, pads and pretty conservative compounds. The results made me feel like the clearcoat was hard or the compounds were uselessly soft.

I'm having a hard time buying into the ceramic coatings, they are extremely expensive and seem to come with as many complications as anything else. I'm not sure it isn't a waste of money over any reasonable timeframe. Looks great in the short term, but may suffer the same fate at any old polish.

Anyway, I'm looking for some advice on how to get the paint looking better, I'm a bit short on time, not incapable or unwilling to do the work myself as I have in the past. But, open to options.

 

it might be worth having a professional take care of the paint correction and then do a paint protection (PPF)

 

I have the Griot's polisher and their associated polishing compounds and pads. I have never been able do much with them except use the orbital polisher for to apply a machine wax. You can spend hours on a 2x2 section and never get out any swirls because it's designed to be idiot proof, so it's not aggressive.

When I need to really polish the paint, I pull out my big rotary polisher with a big wool pad and that does the job quickly, but you better know what you're doing or you'll be at the paint shop in no time, which is why I do it myself.

It's unbelievable how much damage the "professional" detailers cause. The guy you're talking to about the work is most likely not the guy that will be doing the work on your car. They hire minimum wage jockeys with no experience to learn on your car, and by the time they learn anything, they leave and start their own detailing business and hire minimum wage jockeys to learn on your car.

 

Mine is also a 2010. In black so it shows everything. I have looked after it carefully along the way so don't need to do paint correction. But I have done ceramic coatings twice now - once early on and another a year or so ago. I personally thought it looked amazing - almost new look and it lasted very well. 2 years it looked like new and another year or so still very good. Makes washing it much easier too
Highly recommend it. Apparently pretty easy to do it yourself but I had a detailer do it. Around 400 or so I think. Done in a day.