There are three primary factors that affect how difficult it will be to remove defects in your vehicle’s paintwork.
Paint workability – The hardness or softness of the paint. The only way to know if your paint is hard or soft or how workable is to try a test spot on your vehicle’s paintwork. Some may also know from experience. For example, a professional auto detailing facility or one who is an expert in paint correction.
Hard paint can be very difficult to polish and very time consuming. It can take up to 8 hours to a few days to correct hard paint depending on the size and condition of your vehicle. This includes prepping, decontamination, masking, paint correction and applying wax or sealant. Any reputable auto detailing facility should offer several stages of polishing. Be prepared to pay extra if your paint is hard and has many imperfections (scratches and swirl marks) as it can take up to a few hours just to polish your vehicle one time.
Soft paint typically is a bit easier to polish but can still require extra stages of polishing time depending on the severity of the imperfections. Hard or soft once your paint has been corrected it must be washed and maintained properly in order to minimize scratching and swirling the clear coat.
One who has personally polished thousands of vehicles would know from experience that manufacturers like Audi, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes typically have hard paint and Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus (most Japanese manufactures) have soft paints. Porsche tends to be sort of in the middle of the two categories. As for American manufacturers they’re all across the board from hard to soft and can vary from factory to factory even when dealing with the same vehicle.
