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I'm just in the throes of buying new-to-me (73-reg) car. The overall condition is great, only about 7200 miles on it, and of course the dealership is offering the option of a 'coating' on the paintwork and the interior. The selling point as ever with these things is supposed protection from bird-mess, roadgrime etc on the outside, and accidental spillages of various sorts on the inside. My natural reaction is "Nah, not worth several hundred more quid", but does anyone have any genuine experience of whether it's actually a good thing? Or just basically a scam? Ta.
It’s an up sale rather than a scam, they work not too bad but can be done cheaper by a local finisher. Do the usual, yeah well add that in and I’ll take the car. See what they say then.
This is what's known as "value-added."
Salesmen don't earn much commission from the primary sale. If someone walks into a car dealership then unless they're just kicking tyres they're there to buy a car. Where salespeople make their money is upselling extended warranties, roadside assistance, seat covers, boot liners, anti-glare coatings...
Is it worth it, only you can decide. Personally I'd be asking them to throw it in for free in order to close the sale. The salesman won't care - on paper they've upsold so box ticked cha-ching - and they will have "I'll just need to talk with my manager honest guv" wiggle room on sale price anyway.
I'm terrible at haggling, I hate it, but it's surprising how much mileage you can get out of going "bugger it then," standing up and walking away. I've had salesmen literally chase me to the door begging me to reconsider.
A body shop or detailer will probably do a better job for less money. The garage may get a detailer in to do it anyway.....so depends.
It may be more convenient for you get it done before you collect the car.
When we had it done by the dealer on a used car it was ok ,but not as good as one I had done by local expert.
Is it worth it? Well that depends on your trade in, deal for mats etc etc.
Read the paperwork it may have done from new by the previous owner anyway!
I guess the main question should be have you ever had a problem in other vehicles from all the things this protects you from?
My father had it done on a three year old Touran at a main dealer. It was really well done and the finish lasted for a few years. On that basis my partner had it done on her Polo at the same dealer a couple of years later.. it was no where near as good and didn’t last long.
TLDR: it seems to really depend on who does it
Yeah it's not <exactly> a scam, it's just not necessarily a good deal. TBH diy ceramics got pretty decent in recent years (so now we're in the modern age's glorious speciality, "You can buy 5000 different products, 100 of them are good, 2500 are crap and 2400 are just fake)
On the detailing subject locally it seems to be the latest start up business, almost seems like every day someone's advertising their services 🤔
I did my own, and yes it is good - water beads off it nicely and it’s lasted a couple of years - it could probably do with re doing now though.
Was it worth the circa £100 worth of the products themselves (with enough left over to do a second car) and a days work to apply? Yes I think so. Would I pay several hundred quid for it though - no.
You can DIY it using the spray on stuff. If you are into cleaning the car it's great. Autoglym Super resin to polish, followed by extra gloss sealer and a wipe with the ceramic spray. Fantastic finish. Needs re-doing every three months - you won't need to do the full super resin polish first.
If you aren't into washing/polishing the car etc, it might be OK.
Not too sure how they work/get maintained. My car came with a coating, diamondbrite, that was lovely and slick when new. As I like cleaning my car I decided to give it a good clean and a spray of autoglym ceramic wax to top up the coating after a few months. Bad move. After a week or so I noticed the paint was rough to touch, seems the coating I put on reacted in some way with the coating already on the car. I thought I had ruined the paint on my car! Thankfully it polished off but what a ball ache to polish the whole lot off. Has put me off getting any sort of coating on my car in future.
Interior one can be good if you use the car for mtb. I chucked a full camelback in the rear footwell once and didn’t realised it was squashing the bite valve. Emptied its contents over the course of the drive but water didn’t soak into carpet or mats and was easy soak up with a hastily bought roll of kitchen towel. Can also protect seats from mud/oil stains. Wouldn’t pay for it, as products to do it yourself are a lot cheaper than what they charge. You’ll also be a lot more particular than the trainee that they’ll get to do it.
My wife was offered a similar product when she bought a Mazda years ago.
Claimed to offer protection and some “warranty against paint problems” if used etc but it had to be renewed every year for£ so we didn’t bother.
We just relied on washing & polishing it ourselves with Meguiers & Autoglym products.
Needs re-doing every three months
Screw that.
I like cars. Mine gets washed by the dealer when it's in for a service, whether it needs it or not.
Needs re-doing every three months
Screw that.
I like cars. Mine gets washed by the dealer when it's in for a service, whether it needs it or not.
Washed every week here. My van and MrsF's Qashqai. Easy when done often. If you don't wash cars, don't go for ceramic coating, won't look any different. Basically makes washing easy - you do still need to use a sponge.
Last 2 cars I have bought, the dealers have tried to offer the service at £1200 a pop.
I went to a local guy and got paint correction and ceramic coating for less than half of that ! Took around 2 days . I think it’s a massive markup for the dealers if you take them at face value
My sister has a local detailer do their two cars about twice a year. Costs a fortune. They look good for a few days, but they don't wash their cars much in between. (I remember doing a paint fix for them years ago after they left bird poo on the car for weeks). They usually do a social media post about how good the cars look, and I just go 'mine looks like that all the time' because I spend a little time washing it each week - it's then easy.
I've just spent a massive fortune (for me) on a 3 year old van (£30k in hard earned cash - one with posh seats) and I'm not about to let it get full of crap - it's lasting me out - my previous car I had over 20 years. I've just done a DIY Autoglym treatment mentioned earlier. The hard work is the super resin polish. The extra gloss and ceramic finishes are easy. It's in the prep. I'll be doing the chassis with a Buzz Weld treatment when I can get under it (because I am keeping it).
Most people lease, so why bother with paint treatments unless you are buying it to keep ?
Got it on my car and it does make a real difference. Makes it easier to clean, the dirt seems to slide off easier, water beads off really well and has a nice shine to it just by doing a basic wash, no fancy polishing or anything.
But it doesn’t magically keep your car clean you still have to wash it. So if you don’t clean your car often it’s not going to look any different to an uncoated car… they’re both going to look dirty.
The quality and performance of the coating is highly dependent on who does it. The car needs a really deep clean and decent polish first and then coating applied.
So really depends on how much you trust your dealer to do the job and if the folks there are properly trained in this area.
If they are going to throw it in for free I’d take it as there’s no down side for you. Otherwise I’d rather go to a local detailing specialist.
I've just bought a machine polisher and ceramic coating to do it myself. I got the impression that there are many ways to cut corners and get a bad job from a 'professional'. The car needs to have a good machine polish first, it would be easy for someone to rush it. Then any ceramic coating won't last well.
I recently got a bumper covered in ppf protection film. Despite the company having great reviews, the job was abit sub standard and they damaged paintwork in the process. I saw them doing bad practice detailing a car they had in. One of the guys accidentally let a cloth touch a dirty tyre, but still used it on paintwork. This backs up my impression it's a job best done yourself.
Is ceramic costing good? Yes,, it's excellent.
Is it good value getting the untrained valeter/sponge and bucket lad at the dealership to do it? Never.
Either get the cost knocked into the price of the car (and thus salesman gets his bonus) or pay a local detailing specialist to spend an afternoon on your new car with the same money.
you do still need to use a sponge.
Heretic 🙂 gotta be a wash mitt made of virgin wool and two buckets with grit guards in the bottom 🙂
I think the worst I’ve seen is when they allude that the ceramic finish will help with stone chips.
I’m in the polish car every 3-6 months and wash regularly camp as I enjoy it.
If people didn’t pay for it it would probably be being done to get the cars up to a good condition to sell.
As with everything it really depends on what product is being used and how the car is prepared and then how it is applied.
I had a proper job done on a previous car, it was with the chap for 48 hours, they did an excellent job and it looked amazing! It lasted for a good 4 years which is when I got rid of it and it still looked great then too.
Would I trust a dealer to do this? Absolutely not!
Find a local guy with a good reputation. Well worth the money in my experience.
I'd never get it from a dealership unless I could determine the reputation of the exact person/company that's doing it.
I've never had any of my own vehicles ceramic coated. Old skool approach with DIY DA machine polish (I've done a 'how to' course at a local detailing company...) and wax every so often. Keeping it waxed makes it much easier to keep on top of cleaning as dirt/crap blasts off with a pressure washer much easier.
We carefully chose a local (well, local-ish - worth travelling for a decent one) detailer with a great reputation for Mrs a11y's new-to-her car. Mainly because her car gets a harder life and far less TLC than mine, so anything that makes regular washing easier is win-win. Worth it in her case. Even after nearly 18 months the paint still has similar feeling to a freshly traditionally waxed paintwork.
The car needs to have a good machine polish first, it would be easy for someone to rush it. Then any ceramic coating won't last well.
And you will have any swirls and scratches sealed under the ceramic coating.
Needs re-doing every three months
LOL
Mind came back clean from the annual service, which was nice.
(I've no problem with people who enjoy cleaning their cars, it's their life/hobby/whatever and I admit a shiny car does look nice, just not nice enough to be worth the bother for me.)
TBH, having a well polished car makes washing really easy, the dirt just slides off. Little and often.
One thing to note - the spray on coatings are not the same as the proper stuff, hence needing re-doing every three months.
The proper stuff comes in a glass bottle and you need to get the car scrupulously clean then it wipes on. That's the stuff that you get charged more money to apply, and should last a few years, not a few months.
When I did mine I found that applying the ceramic coat itself was very quick and easy - but getting the car sufficiently clean etc before is what took a lot of time. I didn't polish as the car was brand new and also white which doesn't show up scratches/swirls much, but for a used car and a darker paint colour you would definitely want to.
Done well its great, Volvo main dealers did a poor job on ours though (it's black too so shows every mark/swirl) Know afew good valeters/detailers though so might pay for a proper job soon. I have no patience for polishing!
Its not a scam, whether its worth anything to you though is a different matter. My current car got "Life Shine"d by the dealer to sweeten the deal, I wouldn't have paid any extra for it. Yes you can tell during a wash that there is a decent seal / paint protection on the car but its not any better than what you could do yourself with a a bit of surface prep, a polish and then a consumer ceramic sealant like G-Techniq C3v2
I've been reading all your replies since yesterday afternoon with interest, thanks all.
The word 'scam' wasn't quite right, obviously I realise you do get something for your money, but the term 'upsell' is probably better all round. Given that the ask was just shy of £600 for what they're quoting, and taking into account all the much-appreciated advice here about only getting the work done by someone who knows what they're doing (as opposed to the workshop trainee) I'm going to swerve it at the dealership. They're also 150 miles away, so I've no easy method to challenge them if it all looked a bit shonky after the event, and I can't exactly supervise it while it's being done. So the option of finding a reputable local detailer sounds like a good plan. That said, I've had a company car in the same colour for the last 6 years, and realistically that doesn't actually look too shabby after 50K miles.
If everyone had said "Yes it's a great idea, always does the job" then I'd have gone for it. But getting everyone on STW to agree... ha-ha-ha!
Good choice. Especially when mentioning a cost of £600 - it could be good but equally it could be disastrous. For reference, we paid around £400 for Mrs a11y's mid-sized car for a full decontamination, paintwork prep, 1-stage machine polish (paint was in OK condition otherwise it'd have needed a 2-stage polish starting with more abrasive polishes, and be more expensive), and finally a ceramic coating with a 2-yr guarantee. Could've paid more for fancier ceramic coating with longer life expectancy. Took two folk a very long day to complete.
I've had good experiences with a local specialist on a second hand car and with a main dealer on a new car. FWIW, the main dealer sub-contracts this work to the same local specialist, so I feel confident of getting a proper job which takes around 2 days to allow the coating to cure.
A few hundred quid for the treatment and a bag of Autoglym/G-Technic car care products has been good value for me.
This stuff was promoted by STW in the Xmas draw thingy - https://gtechniq.com/ - on the back of it I bought some of the bike and car cleaning and ceramic coat stuff. Hell of a lot cheaper to DIY it.
Buy a dual action polisher,pads, compounds, clay bar, and a good sealer for say less than £200 and can do several cars.
Therapeutic also, sit in front of YouTube to learn.
Will be a better job than most dealers.