NorthWest Auto Salon

Last week, a brand new example of Ferrari’s latest and greatest, the 458 Italia, came into the shop for a detail. “Why would a brand new car already need a detail?” you may ask. That is because most new cars do not receive the finish work at the manufacturer or at the dealer before the owner takes delivery. More often then not, glaze products (a product which fills in imperfections) are used due to time constraints and owners wanting to take delivery. Glaze often tends to wash off, leaving your vehicle looking like it did before the detail several washes later, which results in most people thinking the car needs to be detailed again. While these may make the car look clean and shiny for a while, the paint is never really corrected nor protected with the glaze, and the wax too ultimately washes off. To answer the question above, I believe every new car does need a proper detail to ensure your car is brand new and perfect, and so you know of any flaws there prior to you taking ownership etc. At NWAS, we only use products and methods that result in true paint correction and leveling of the clear, there are no glazes in our lineup. Whether it’s a Ford or a Ferrari, brand new or old, we hope you’ll recognize that all cars could benefit from a professional detailer’s eye.

Trying to decide how to protect the matte grey front wings and ultimately deciding on a matte clear bra to retain the matte finish

During the pre-detail inspection, Blake noticed that the car had more imperfections in the paint then they had originally thought. From buffer swirls, to wet sanding marks, the front passenger fender and bumper were riddled with imperfections as well as a handful of other areas in which had D/A sanding scratches, which stands for Dual Action or Random Orbital a finishing process used after paint prior to buffing and polishing (each piece for green tape serves as a marker for each individual imperfection).

A bit of paint correction and wetsanding would be necessary for this area, to even out the clearcoat:

Fish eye along with some wetsanding scratches done by hand, as you can see the stroke direction of the scratches:

A noteable difference in orange peel texturing, which was later corrected by wetsanding:

Small bit of overspray around the corner marker:

Heavy Isolated Scratches central to this area:

A very clear tape line from where something was masked off:

Sanding haze which was never polished fully out:

A comparison of the left and right sides to show how out of alignment the bumper is

Scratches left from a dual action sander assuming from the factory

After our concerns were voiced to the owner, it was time to remedy these defects.

If you look down in a straight line from Blake’s finger, you will notice a distinct line separating the polished from the unpolished part of the car. As well as a heavier isolated scratch on the polished side which is later corrected (picture below)

Another 50/50

Swirl free, fully polished panel

After the detail, the entire front end was wrapped in clear bra while the front aero pieces were wrapped with a matte clear. Upon delivery, the owner was nice enough to let us take the car out to the docks for a proper after shoot!

Here you can see the leading edge of the front wing with the matte clear wrap

Check out our Flickr gallery for full res after shots from this write up