Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Wax On, Wax Off!

Remember the scene in The Karate Kid where the young kid learns self-discipline and builds up his upper body strength?



I only did two cars, but I am not young.  Did I feel it later!

Still, the results were stunning:


I am still impressed how well the Corvette's paint is handling rocks--and how poorly the Jaguar's paint is not.  When we bought it, the dealer tried to sell us a plastic coat for the front of the car to protect it from rock chips.  Since these sales jobs are always sprung on at the last minute, I know that they have a huge profit margin in them--and I declined to pay for it.  But then again, I have spent most of my life driving GM and Japanese cars, which have generally pretty tough paint.  Not the Jag.  I do think, in retrospect, buying this would have been a good deal.

This picture taken on the back driveway looks like the sort of advertising Chevrolet used to do:

2 comments:

  1. Ah, "the sort of advertising Chevrolet used to do"...

    Have you EVER seen a realistic TV motor vehicle commercial? Invariably the "sporty" models are zoom-zooming down a pristine 2-lane ribbon of asphalt, tucked into breathtaking scenery. Or blasting across salt flats, 500 miles from nowhere. And the pickups are delivering their passengers to Vacation Paradise... or hauling a trailer with 3 competitor pickups loaded on, up Independence Pass or some equally implausible feat of fossil-fuel brawn.

    How's about a commercial with both pickup and sportscar, sitting in stop-and-go commuter traffic?

    (I doubt the plastic aftermarket coating would've added much protection for the Jag. You'd probably need to go with one of those unsightly vinyl "bras" for meaningful rock-chip protection.)

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  2. The sort of advertising Chevrolet used to do. Like this one: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.adspast.com/store/skin1/images/pics5/chev7172dcapyose.jpg&imgrefurl=http://cgi.ebay.com/71-1972-Chevy-Caprice-Sedan-Yosemite-Park-Dbl-Pg-Ad-/150578954519&usg=__GJ6cvAMHPCuu9bXUeBQ0WpaRusc=&h=381&w=521&sz=54&hl=en&start=2&sig2=Fj94RokcIbSZZ-4qV4gHtQ&zoom=1&tbnid=geqRIuQJ2Sks6M:&tbnh=96&tbnw=131&ei=zo4LTt6dBMPeiALS5_jhAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3DChevrolet%2BCaprice%2BYosemite%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1385%26bih%3D906%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1

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