Well, I have an 03 Accord ex v6 coupe. Its Nighthawk Black Pearl. The car has 21000 highway miles on it, and I am noticing that this paint is VERY susceptible to chips and scratches. Im very anal about keeping all my wash mitts, and towels clean so as to not contaminate them, but even drying the car I can scratch the heck out of it. Also, behind the wheels on the bottom of the body panels it looks like its getting sandblasted from debris. I have the splash guards on there and it just doesnt seem to help. Once the weather breaks, im going to buy a random orbit polisher and see if I can rub it out. Does anyone else notice this paints susceptibility to scratches and chips like I do?

That's why we opted for Zaino. We don't have the swirl marks on either '03. The blue is dark too. Using NO polyester also helps. Stay with cotton mitts. We use animal skin shammys.

If using any wax be careful with the applicator, most have gone to non cotton pads.

Even in the Winter, we are washing every 2 or 3 weeks.

Although they outlawed salt here, when we went to the snow in the Pilot we washed her underneath too! We figured so many years of salt can't disappear....

Here's some tips on car wax and buffing from a 4Runner owner.

http://pnw4runners.com/tando/wax/wax.htm

Of course there is a lot of stuff on the net. I saw a site somewhere that was completely devoted to detailing cars, don't remember the location. I can look around if you can't find what you are looking for.

What is Zaino?

It's a polymer. Look up Zaino.com They can explain much better than me. It's a multistep process. Not hard, but the first round is time consuming. It's sort of like adding another clear coat to protect your paint. The shine is awesome! We have only used zaino on our '03's. We switched on the '02 after stripping the wax off. Now you couldn't pay me enough to use wax again. We always bought high quality waxes & were happy. BUT the Pilot is the first dark color we've owned from brand new & wanted to never have swirl marks. One study lead to another & we found this zaino stuff. We actaully find the applications easier than any wax we've ever used!