Can anyone tell me if my car had/does have a clearcoat?

[atomic]

Get yourself some rubbing compound, rub out a spot, if color shows up on the rag or what ever you use its single stage, if not it's clear coat.

This is the quickest and easiest way to determine if you have single stage paint or base/clear....

[atomic]

All metallics are clear coated. Clearcoat is near impossible to "bring" back in most rough forms. You have to reshoot it.

This is NOT true... Usually you can do a lite colorsand on the finish and buff/polish/wax and it will bring the shine back to the clearcoat. Usually the base/clear cars have a total of around 8mils of paint and roughly 5-6mils of that is the clear.... The same goes with singel stage as well having roughly 8mils of paint....

I took a e32 that was a new car(back in the day when I worked for the dealer) that had very severe acid rain spotting in the paint top paint surfaces. The paint was in such bad shape that it was dull... The car was dealer transfered in from another dealer. I tried the colorsand process on it before they GM of the dealership was going to attempt to paint the car again. When I started the colorsand process the car was reading on my mil gauge around 8 and in some case more like a 9 or 10. So I sanded for what seemed like days to remove the acid rain water spot etching in the paint. Once I removed all the etch marks in the paint I had around 4-5mils left over and once the paint had been compounded and polished back to its factory luster I had around 3mils left. This car was so dull before I started this process that it looked like it was cleared with a flat clear but after the car was finished it was put straight on the showroom floor


If anything base/clear cars are more forgiving in restoring the luster to the finish than the single stage cars, although BMW's single stage is very forgiving as well(toyota's & hondas are not).