Finding your way around the Guide

You want to know whether your car needs ceramic coating or film, and you land on a page with sixty-odd texts. The answer is in there somewhere, but you don't know what to look under — and service names won't help you, because you don't yet know which service you want.

That is why the Guide is ordered differently: by the situation the car is in, not by what the work is called. With a new car you aren't looking for "PPF film". You're looking for what to do with a new car before you start using it.

How the texts are grouped

There are ten tracks and each one matches a situation:

• Starting out and not sure where — texts for the point where you don't yet know what the car needs. How to tell a short-term state from a long-term one, and when protection is worth it at all.
• A new car — what to do with a car you have just taken delivery of, and what can wait.
• Film on the paint — what PPF does and doesn't do, how the films differ, what is normal after installation.
• Ceramic protection — how to read a quote, how long it lasts, what you are paying for.
• Washing and drying — where paint gets damaged most often, and it is surprisingly often during drying.
• Interior: stains and smells — why a stain comes back, where the smell from the vents comes from, what leather will take and what it won't.
• Wheels, plastics, tyres — the parts that go grey or brown long before the paint does.
• Changing the look — matte, a different colour, window tint, chrome.
• Layers, structure, limits — what sits under what, and how much paint a car actually has. This is where it is explained why some things cannot be done.
• Fleet cars — cars that have no owner of their own, and what happens to them.

What to expect from the texts

We write them ourselves and they hold to three things. Short and without marketing padding — no "premium solutions for demanding clients". When to act and when to wait, because for half of these the right answer is to wait. And what to expect from the result in practice, including what a given technology will not do.

That last one is why these read differently from a price list. Film doesn't repair scratches already in the paint. Ceramic doesn't stop a stone. Polishing takes paint away. You won't find sentences like that in a quote, and yet they decide whether you end up happy with the result.

Why there are no prices in the texts

The price of the same job varies with what the car has been through — the same ceramic coating costs one thing on a garaged car and another on one that stood outside for three winters. If we put figures in the texts, we would have to attach so many conditions to them that the point would be lost. Prices are therefore in the price list, where they can be compared side by side, and the exact quote comes after we have seen the car.

If you don't know which track to start with

Start with Not sure where to begin?. It goes through what you can tell by looking at your own car, and takes you on from there. If you are after a specific term, there is an index of all the texts at the end of the page, and the common questions beside it.

And if you would rather talk it through with a person than read, start with paint diagnostics. We'll look at the car and tell you what is worth doing now and what can easily wait a year.