Swirl Marks

I went to buy a brand new 2019 golf r - deep black pearl and notice swirl marks on the paint. The salesperson said this is normal and unavoidable. Is this true? Shouldn’t new cars should be delivered to the customer free of chips, scratches or swirl marks?

For a resolution, I asked the dealership to ceramic coat the car (free of charge) and they refused, indicating that “swirl marks are not defects”.

Looking for some opinions from the members of this forum. Are swirl marks normal on a brand new car? How should I proceed to ensure the Golf I purchase has the best possible paint?

It’s not uncommon for a new car to have swirl marks once the dealerships ‘detailers’ have prepped the car, all you can do is have it professionally paint corrected/detailed, some buyers go the extra mile and have the car delivered straight to their usual detailer with all of the protective plastic still in place, thus avoiding the monkeys at the dealer damaging the paint.

About all you can do is argue for a discount sufficient to cover the cost of paint correction. One of my friends did this when buying an F-type. I've seen $100K+ BMWs with badly swirled paint in the showroom. My VW salesman added swirls to mine by being "helpful" and dry-wiping a couple of blemishes just after I signed. Oh well.

My dealer swirled the fuck outta my paint while it was on the lot, I brought it back and they had a 3rd party detailer “buff them out” he did a great job till I used a wax remover before I went to ceramic coat the car and found out he used a filler type glaze and didn’t really get them all out.


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Swirl marks happen after your very first wash no matter how careful you are. Only way to avoid this in my opinion is to take it from the dealer directly to a detailing specialist who can shine it up professionally and ceramic coat it or apply PPF before you touch it yourself.

Unless you are very good at it and have practiced a lot, it's not easy to keep paint shiny smooth.

well, it's not "unavoidable", but it's certainly common. My deep black pearl Alltrack was swirled to hell when I got it. I simply polished it after the purchase. You can ask for a discount to cover some of the cost of paint correction, but I wouldn't count on it.

When I purchased my R, I just told them not to do any detailing (and not to drill the front plate...). There were absolutely no swirls or micromarring that were visible to the naked eye. I cleaned it (carefully), did paint protection film on the full front clip and then did Opticoat on it--didn't even need to polish it prior to coating.

Best thing is just to keep the dealer lot guys away from your car. Too late for that obviously, but a light polish will remove the scratches.

Lots of horror stories on various forums of customer’s new cars getting the swirled paintwork treatment by the dealer prior to collection by the customer - inevitable when they use a dirty sponge and wash leather rather than a safe wash method.

As others have said, minor swirl marks are inevitable over time, even if a safe wash method is always used, but a safe wash technique will minimise them. Dark colours - especially black - will show the swirls much more than light colours, but for the dealer to tell the OP that paintwork swirls are unavoidable isn’t correct IMO - yes, it’s probably a true statement, based on the methods used by most dealers in prepping a new car, but if they changed their current washing / cleaning method to a safe washing / drying technique and allocated more time to this task, then the risk of inflicting swirls in minimal.

It’d be interesting to hear the dealer’s response if the OP asked them what washing and drying method they use on new cars, and how they remove embedded contaminants in the paintwork. There’s a fair chance they wouldn’t have even heard of the decontamination stage, so embedded contaminants will be left in the paintwork, leaving it feeling rough to the touch and even appearing as small rust brown coloured spots on light coloured cars when the contaminants are industrial fall out such as iron particles.

Black paint is just going to show swirl marks unless you spend money for a ceramic coat or paint film. Simple as that. No matter how careful you are, or what you use, unprotected black paint will show swirls. You just can't see it as much in other colors.

At (almost) all dealerships, the personnel assigned to prep new cars for delivery (wash, wax, etc.) are the youngest, least-experienced, lowest-paid folks on the payroll. They simply haven't been trained and thus don't know how to properly wash and polish a new paint job.
My Deep Black Pearl R came with plenty of swirls and a couple of nasty clear-coat scratches, courtesy of the pre-delivery "detail" job at the dealer. I was able to correct things once I took delivery.
I've never had a new car delivered that didn't have some paint-work problems.

JWTS said:

When I purchased my R, I just told them not to do any detailing (and not to drill the front plate...). There were absolutely no swirls or micromarring that were visible to the naked eye. I cleaned it (carefully), did paint protection film on the full front clip and then did Opticoat on it--didn't even need to polish it prior to coating.

Best thing is just to keep the dealer lot guys away from your car. Too late for that obviously, but a light polish will remove the scratches.

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Same for me - I told them not to touch any paintwork. They left it alone and so delivered a scratch and swirl-free car. It was dirty as hell, but didn't need any paint correction. I washed it (carefully) and passed it on to my detailer to enhance the gloss (without removing too much clear coat) and coat the paint.

The end result was a car with shiny, swirl-free paint. Still some orange peel, but a bit less than when it left the VW factory.

I was happy, and the dealer was happy because they had to do a bit less work for the PDI.

Leader said:

At (almost) all dealerships, the personnel assigned to prep new cars for delivery (wash, wax, etc.) are the youngest, least-experienced, lowest-paid folks on the payroll. They simply haven't been trained and thus don't know how to properly wash and polish a new paint job.

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Not only aren't they (mostly) not trained properly, but the dealer won't spend the money for decent cleaning kit & materials, and wouldn't allow the time needed for a proper wash anyway.

And because most customers wouldn't notice the difference, they will keep "washing" the cheap'n'nasty way as it maximises their profit.

Avoid dealer washes/detailing at all costs! When I had my 2017 WRX, the dealer swirled the FK out of the paint after a service visit. So I complained and they said they would fix it. They gave the car back to the inexperienced wash guy(s) who originally swirled the paint and said 'try to fix it'. Luckily the guy(s) refused because they didn't know how to do that, but his bosses expected them to just go ahead and try anyhow. This is what the service manager told me when I went to pick the car up and nothing was done to it.

I have a 2018 Golf R now. So much more refined than the WRX was. That thing had the worst POS radio too...

Rob

Rob_G said:

Avoid dealer washes/detailing at all costs! When I had my 2017 WRX, the dealer swirled the FK out of the paint after a service visit. So I complained and they said they would fix it. They gave the car back to the inexperienced wash guy(s) who originally swirled the paint and said 'try to fix it'. Luckily the guy(s) refused because they didn't know how to do that, but his bosses expected them to just go ahead and try anyhow. This is what the service manager told me when I went to pick the car up and nothing was done to it.

I have a 2018 Golf R now. So much more refined than the WRX was. That thing had the worst POS radio too...

Rob

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Subaru paint is awful to work with. Thin and swirls/scratches if you look at it the wrong way

Ceramic coat will not prevent swirl marks.
To truly avoid them, you must get PPF. I only did ceramic.

Some colors are just much harder to care for than others. I bet if that car was silver, grey, white you wouldn’t even notice. Blue, black, red ... gonna take more effort to keep it looking good.