My CX-5 is coming up on 3 years old and it's lived all this time without any paint protection, no wax, no polish. It's been filthy dirty most of it's life as I've only washed it about 3-4 times and only one of those times was a real wash, the others were a coin-op high pressure sprayer. To make matters worse, I've done extensive exploring on poorly maintained Forest Service Roads, many of them abandoned and unused with alder saplings taking over. When I drive along they thwack the front chin spoiler, mirrors and scrape down the filthy sides of the vehicle. My paint is Pearl White and all this abuse has rubbed the road grime into the paint leaving scratches in the clear coat. Amazingly, the scratches don't show up much unless the lighting ii's good.
I finally decided it was time to get some wax on the paint because the road grime was getting harder to remove and bonding into the paint. So I used some rubbing and polishing compound on the front and sides of the vehicle, the scratches went all the way up to the roof runners. They buffed right out except for a couple of spots where I didn't spend enough time. The CX-5 clear coat is really tough/hard so it took more work to polish out the micro scratches than I'm accustomed to. And the paint post-polish looks better than new with excellent depth and gloss. But it really is a lot of work due to the extreme hardness/toughness of the CX-5 paint.
Rock chips. Hardly any and the only ones that really show up are in the lower painted plastic front dam because the plastic is soft/flexible to resist minor bump damage. So a rock with enough velocity can penetrate the paint and leave the black plastic showing through. The mirrors are made of a harder plastic and this doesn't happen. Although the front of the mirror fairings were really beat up, they cleaned up wonderfully and look better than new. The chips in the paint of the metal bodywork are much smaller and don't go as deep as I've seen on my other cars, they are barely visible unlike the craters that would appear on previous cars, all the way down to the primer or even the metal itself. And the very small number of rock chips tells me that most small rocks just deflect off without leaving a significant trace. This is super high quality paint.
I bring this up because some early detractors claimed the paint was too thin and prone to damage. My experience has been exactly the opposite. And my car has never been waxed until yesterday.
I finally decided it was time to get some wax on the paint because the road grime was getting harder to remove and bonding into the paint. So I used some rubbing and polishing compound on the front and sides of the vehicle, the scratches went all the way up to the roof runners. They buffed right out except for a couple of spots where I didn't spend enough time. The CX-5 clear coat is really tough/hard so it took more work to polish out the micro scratches than I'm accustomed to. And the paint post-polish looks better than new with excellent depth and gloss. But it really is a lot of work due to the extreme hardness/toughness of the CX-5 paint.
Rock chips. Hardly any and the only ones that really show up are in the lower painted plastic front dam because the plastic is soft/flexible to resist minor bump damage. So a rock with enough velocity can penetrate the paint and leave the black plastic showing through. The mirrors are made of a harder plastic and this doesn't happen. Although the front of the mirror fairings were really beat up, they cleaned up wonderfully and look better than new. The chips in the paint of the metal bodywork are much smaller and don't go as deep as I've seen on my other cars, they are barely visible unlike the craters that would appear on previous cars, all the way down to the primer or even the metal itself. And the very small number of rock chips tells me that most small rocks just deflect off without leaving a significant trace. This is super high quality paint.
I bring this up because some early detractors claimed the paint was too thin and prone to damage. My experience has been exactly the opposite. And my car has never been waxed until yesterday.
