Best and Worst Paint/Clear Coats

R

RAG

New member
In your detailing experience, which car company has the best paint system? Who has the worst? Of course, justify your reasoning (i.e. too hard, orange peel common, too thin, lifeless colors, faulty clear coats...)



Personally, I think Lexus has the best paint/clear coat, as we have major rust contamination issues in my ocean community and Lexus is the only make that seems to have resistance to it...and for that alone it gets my thumbs-up.



For me, the worst would have to go to Audi for having clear coats tha are too hard, yet they seem to scratch just as easy as more "workable" coats.
 
honda clear is thin hard to work with when damaged

I find audi, bimmer, mini and vw of the best clear's to work on..
 
my toyota paint... ugh... When I first got my tC, I noticed that it had orange peel over the entire car. Thinking that I may have just gotten a bad spray, on my next visit to the dealership I looked at a couple other Scion's/Toyota's. Each one of them also had OP galore. The OP combined with a somewhat soft paint to begin with... I would really like a different paint.
 
Chevy and Ford have terrible paint jobs, orange peel says it all. The Dodge paint is much nicer. Hondas have an extremely thin CC, which makes failure inevitable if left uncared for, in ashort amount of time....I too, love the German paints.....
 
I kinda like the hard clear on the Audis. If I wash correctly I'll only get the occassional RIDS, never a lot of light marring like I can get on something soft like the Jag's lacquer. Nice and thick too. The OP is pretty awful on them though, let alone considering what they cost.



The clear on the Mazda MPV is nice- hard enough to not mar easily but soft enough that I can fix almost anything without needing the rotary. Doesn't seem as thick as that on the Audis though, more like the paint was on the WRX, which was also easy to work but seemed to mar too easily.
 
My last two Fords (both Focus) had good paint jobs, not too hard, and not too soft, and no OP. You have to wonder if some assembly plants do a better job than others. Within a giant company such as Ford, you would have to think that there might be a lack of consistency from plant to plant.
 
Accumulitar, I disliked the Audi paint because I was under the impression they still marred easily, but I have never actually had one myself so I didn't have any real experience to base it off of. Now I have owned several hondas and will agree that these are on the bottom of my list...thin and porous making them vunerable to contamination leading to complete failer as others have noted. I took like the workability of depth of the german paints. Thanks for all the responses.
 
I find the BMW paint is easy to work on -- but then again, I end up detailing the same two BMWs every other weekend.
 
Speaking of orange peel, here's what it looks like on the rear quarter panel of a white 2004 Mazda 3S:



orig.jpg
 
RAG said:
Accumulitar, I disliked the Audi paint because I was under the impression they still marred easily..
Click to expand...



Well, it's all relative since *all* auto paint is pretty easy to scratch. I can see why most people probably aren't well served by very hard clear since it'll still mar if treated, uhm, "normally" ;) But if you're extra-gentle with it the way I am it really can make a difference. I had to polish the Subaru more often than my wife's A8 to keep the same level of appearance, and they got similar treatment.
 
My Mazda6's paint is very soft. It will mar if you look at it wrong. But, it is very easy to polish out. Even with my extreme care when washing, I still get a little marring and cob-webbing. Also, there seems to be a lot of orange peel in the paint, as well. It's not horrible, but noticable (at least to me).
 
Honda paint is easy to correct as you don't have to get very aggressive with it at all. Keeping it corrected on the other hand is a pain in the .......
 
I'm not a professional detailer, but from paint experts I have talked to, Mercedes Benz--especially in the last five or six years--has the best paint system (basecoat & clearcoat) in the world. Very hard and good for the life of a car. This might make it hard to "work w/," however, so I'd be curious to know what you pros think.
 
TnM6i said:
My Mazda6's paint is very soft. It will mar if you look at it wrong. But, it is very easy to polish out. Even with my extreme care when washing, I still get a little marring and cob-webbing. Also, there seems to be a lot of orange peel in the paint, as well. It's not horrible, but noticable (at least to me).
Click to expand...



My 626 is the same way although the orange peel isn't too bad.



Lexus is the best, I can think of several that have orange peel problems, including Mercedes and BMW.
 
ramp said:
I'm not a professional detailer, but from paint experts I have talked to, Mercedes Benz--especially in the last five or six years--has the best paint system (basecoat & clearcoat) in the world. Very hard and good for the life of a car. This might make it hard to "work w/," however, so I'd be curious to know what you pros think.
Click to expand...



Good paint but I see too many with major orange peel problems.
 
Funny, with so many technological advances nowadays in vehicles, that often something like the vehicle's paint lags behind.



If we can have nav systems and paddle shifters, perhaps we could have nice paint? (lol)
 
Can someone describe what Orange Peel is ? A picture was previously posted in this thread but I could not tell what the Orange Peel looks like ....
 
Orange peel is a paint defect that has a mottled appearance like the skin of an orange (or if it's easier to think of it this way, like the dimpled surface of a golf ball, but less pronounced). Moe, the paint world lags because the VOC restrictions make it much more difficult than it used to be to get a good paint finish.
 
If you look at the picture that's posted you will see how the paint has hills and valley's (uneven like the peel of an orange) that takes away from the ideal clear reflection off the paint.
 
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