2 Coats of Ceramic Coating. Got a heated blower to help dry her off. Overall Happy with Ceramic Coating but it's way over-priced and you need to immediately wipe her down if caught in the rain. (Else semi-permanent water spots.)

 

I’m a fan of ceramic coating. I use the Armor Shield IX. Takes all day to do it right, what with washing, clay bar, and hand polishing, but it looks great and lasts a long time. It’s a little pricey, but if you wait for a sale you can get it for half price.

 

I had my 23 professionally ceramic coated. it was done within 2 weeks of purchase with no use of the car in that time other than bringing it home and getting the windows tinted. They used the Gtechniq product, and although it looks great when it is clean, I do have to say that I am no impressed. I had it done with the belief that it was supposed to keep it cleaner and make it much easier to clean when I did wash it. Along with the cost of the initial coating, it included an initial wash so that he could show me the products to use and how to do it. When he got done with the wash it looked great, I was concerned at first because he did it in my driveway and it looked like the soap was starting to dry on the car. Anyway, it looked great when he was done....the following day it rained just enough to get the car wet (yes, sadly it is parked outside) and I used a blower to blow the water off of it. I was extremely disappointed to see that everywhere that had soap suds sitting on it now had the appearance of soap drying on the car again. It took quite a bit of effort with the Gtechniq detail spray to get it back to looking good. After doing that it still looks decent after a rain or a wash. Given the choice, I would not do it again, it was an expensive lesson to learn. Maybe it was the product, maybe it was the detailer that did a poor job or a combo of both, I just know it wasn't worth the money and I think a good regular waxing would produce the same results. Here's a photo of the dried spots after the rain. The entire car looked like this, I could only get a decent photo of the roof.

Here's a photo of the car.

 

My Preowned looks like they took it through automated brush type car washes. Lots of fine scratching especially on the front fenders. My choices are, go an get a fresh clear coat, live with it, or maybe another solution I can find here. Don't like that ceramic will cause water spots.

 

What is in the middle of the lower air grill?

 

It is the sensor for the adaptive cruise control.