BEFORE / AFTER.
Two real customer cars. Drag the slider on each. The first is a 2021 BMW M3 with two years of swirl marks. The second is a neglected 2014 Audi RS6 with heavy oxidation.
Three pads, three compounds, three passes per panel. We pull swirls, holograms, and oxidation out of your clearcoat with paint-thickness gauges in hand and 3500K inspection lamps overhead. The car you bought, the way it left the factory.
Every correction follows the same protocol. The cut, the polish, the finish. Each stage measured before we move to the next.
We start with the heaviest defects: deep swirls, scratches that catch a fingernail, water-spot etching. A wool or microfiber cutting pad on a 21mm orbital, paired with a medium-cut compound, removes the top mil of damaged clear. Paint depth gauge readings before and after every panel.
The cutting stage leaves micro-haze. Stage two erases it. Foam polishing pad, medium-cut polish, slower arm speed and longer dwell time. The clearcoat goes from corrected to clarified — the difference between a fixed surface and a wet-looking one. Inspected under 6000K daylight LEDs.
The finishing pad chases gloss and removes any residual haze the polish left behind. We then panel-wipe with isopropyl to strip every trace of polishing oil so the next product bonds clean. This is when the car is ready for ceramic — not a moment before. The QC walk happens here.
Two real customer cars. Drag the slider on each. The first is a 2021 BMW M3 with two years of swirl marks. The second is a neglected 2014 Audi RS6 with heavy oxidation.
200x macro shots from our QC bench. The defects you can't quite see in the driveway, magnified to where the cut becomes obvious.
Concentric circular scratches from automated tunnel washes. Universally hated by anyone who has ever held a microfiber towel correctly.
Linear buffer trails from a previous detailer using too aggressive a pad. Visible only at certain angles in direct sun. Pulled in stage two.
Mineral deposits from sprinkler hits and acid rain that have actually pitted the clearcoat. Heavy cases need a full mil of cut to flatten.
Random isolated deep scratches — the kind that catch a fingernail. We measure depth first; anything past the clearcoat needs touch-up before correction.
UV-baked clearcoat that has gone milky. Common on red and black single-stage paints. Stage one cuts hardest here, polish brings the color back.
The same panel under the same lamp after the three-stage process. Reflections sharp enough to read text in. Ready for ceramic lock-down.
9 Years On The Pad · Gtechniq Certified
Marco has put a polisher on roughly 1,400 cars across nine years. He started in the paint booth at a body shop, moved to high-end correction in 2019, and runs every multi-stage job in our shop personally. Every Track-package coating is laid by his hand. Every QC walk-through is signed by him.
Honest estimates by vehicle size and correction level. We never quote shorter to win the job — extra time costs nothing extra.
Honest scope. Paint correction is a body-paint discipline — interior, ceramic, and bodywork are separate trades.
Three correction tiers, sedan starting prices. SUV +20%, truck +30%, oversized priced on inspection.
6–8 hrs · sedan
One-pad pass to remove 70–80% of light defects. Best for newer cars with minor swirl marks from car-wash usage. Significant gloss boost without aggressive cut.
10–14 hrs · sedan
Cut + polish. Pulls 90%+ of moderate defects including holograms, deeper swirls, and light water spots. The standard correction for daily-driven enthusiast cars.
14–20 hrs · sedan
Full correction protocol — cut, refine, finish. Reserved for neglected paint, oxidized clears, or show-prep work. The car looks like the day it left the assembly line.
The questions that come up before every booking, answered before you have to ask.
Polishing usually means a one-pass gloss enhancement — pretty, but doesn't remove defects. Correction physically removes a measured amount of clearcoat to flatten swirl marks and scratches. The defect doesn't return because it's literally gone, not filled in.
No — when done correctly with depth measurements. Modern clearcoat is roughly 50–100 microns thick. We never remove more than 4 microns per session, and we measure before and after every panel. Most cars can tolerate two full corrections in their lifetime.
The correction itself is permanent — those defects are gone. Whether new defects appear depends on how the car gets washed afterward. Pair it with a ceramic coating and proper hand-washing technique and the gloss holds for years.
No — matte clearcoats and wraps cannot be cut. Compounding either surface destroys it. We can decon and seal matte finishes with the appropriate products, but mechanical correction is exclusive to gloss clears.
If a scratch catches your fingernail, it has likely passed through the clearcoat. We won't grind into the basecoat to chase it. We will minimize the visual impact, recommend touch-up, and disclose this in writing during the QC walk-through.
If you've invested in correction, a coating protects the finish. It's not strictly required — a 9-month polymer sealant works — but most customers who pay for two- or three-stage correction add a coating to lock in the work for years rather than months.