agreed to disagree. my ls460l had the softest paint among all my lexus. maybe s class paint sux now. i don't even maintain my gle350 paint and it is in better condition than my ls460l

 

Softness has nothing to do with paint quality. You can easily correct soft paint and ceramic coat it for max resistance but you can't polish out bad quality easily/at all depending on the base coat and panel prep.

The LS is wet sanded by hand at the factory, that's part of the reason they gave some of the very best paint.

If yours scratched a bunch then that's an owner issue not the paint. Treat it better or get it ceramic sealed after correction and stop using automated washes

 

Your LS460 was a lot older than mine were too, they very well could have improved the paint.

Paint on the S Class is plenty stout, the finish just has way more orange peel than a premium car should. My Chrysler has a better finish... I would MUCH rather have a finish I need to care for more yet looks much better vs one that looks crappy regardless of what I do to it...

 

i may have missed which vehicle you're talking about here (MB, pacifica or LS) and no doubt you're more discerning having been a detailer for a living, but i've not heard any regular person call a new car paint job 'crappy' in a while (except for maybe teslas!).

i would be thrilled to drive that '19 maybach with 'crappy' orange peel paint.

 

The MB. Paint finishes on the LS and the Pacifica are great. Look at all the comments in this thread about the orange peel on those Mercedes pictures, its a significant thing and MB should do a better job there...its not just me. Thats a $260,000 car...it should have a smoother paint finish than a Kia...or a Chrysler. Just something MB doesn't do well.

You would be thrilled in the abstract, but if you actually paid that for the car you wouldn't be so thrilled, trust me lol. I'm glad mine is white because it would really bug me if it was a dark color.

 

Hardly just me:

This came up in another thread here recently too and was commented on by lots of other people.

 

i don't need to trust you. different people have different hot buttons. i'm just not that concerned about orange peel.

yes, yes, i get that a lot of people feel strongly about it. i just don't happen to be one of them.

and regalrdless of paint finish, so many people, particularly with higher end cars get ceramic coating and paint protection film, often on the entire car, at which point paint orange peel is a bit moot.

 

Yeah I don't care about orange peel really. Much more concerned about its resistance to chips/scratches.

 

to be exact, while i was quoted to say that mb has a lot of orange peel, i am NOT against it. like Tango said, i'd rather have orange peel than to have paint that scratches easily which makes my car looks dull after 3 washes.

having soft paint that's easy to polish is great for those who is willing to spend considerable amount of time cleaning and caring about the exterior of the car. however i am pretty sure to majority of the people car is just a tool. they'd rather the cars look decently nice with minimal care

 

No it's not moot since it still doesn't reflect properly, a lot of the effect of a black car is from how smooth and uniform the paint is. A lot of peel distorts the "reflective void" effect.

 

Just seal it properly......it will take you so much less effort overall to correct and seal once since after that cleaning is so absurdly easy it takes 7 min with a foam cannon and blower to wash and dry. You literally don't even need to wipe it down, the water just falls off and the small amount that remains can be blown off.

 

yeah those maybach vehicles looked so dull, LOL

as i said, for some like you and steve, it's a hot button. for others, they don't care.

 

Park your LC next to a Mercedes S and tell me if you honestly can't see the difference. Bring detailer spray and clean the front pass/drivers fenders so that you can see both at the same time, there will be no contest in quality.

 

LOL, well that's not happening.

and with the s-class being far and away the best selling flagship sedan, perhaps what concerns you doesn't concern most s-class buyers.

 

Then don't belittle those of us that do care, that have actually bought these cars and are dissatisfied, simple. You aren't just saying you don't care like rominl did, which is fine, you tried to minimize the issue and insinuate that we are somehow odd for caring. $130,000 car, I am not petty for wanting it to have a paint finish as nice as my $48,000 Chrysler.

If people didn't care, Lexus wouldn't hand sand their finishes on their upper end cars...people do care.

Does ntohing for orange peel at all, my car has a ceramic coating and PPF and the orange peel is still there. The only thing you can do is wetsand the finish, which removes paint so thats not a great option.

I bought one and would buy another and I care. Don't confuse it not being a dealbreaker and people not caring. Every car is a tradeoff, and Mercedes cars have a lot of winning attributes, this isn't one of them. As a customer of the brand I complain about what I don't like same as I do for all my cars.

I chose between a metallic grey car and the white car, and I went with white which I don't love specifically because of the orange peel.

To be clear I didn't say that you were against it, just that you noticed it.

This is a fallacy, its just not true. I ran my Lexus cars through automatic carwashes weekly for years each, and the finish still looked great when they were traded. They were never polished. My Chrysler has a much nicer paint finish than my Mercedes, and it also still looks great after 2.5 years of hard use.Never polished, has had some spray sealing/coating sprayed on every 6 months or so. No PPF on the front and no paint chips either.

I have not found MB paint to be any more resistant to damage than cars with much smoother paint finishes, so theres no upside.

This is a $260,000 Maybach, its not a tool. Nothing wrong with wanting a great paint finish on a luxury car.

Am I in some kind of contrarian twilight zone here where we are unreasonable for wanting nice smooth paint on 6 figure cars?!