She's finally back.....

[southernstar]

My 2000 has 93,000 km (about 57,000 miles) and the original paint and I do not have a serious problem with either paint chips or road rash. The worst areas for road rash were the mirrors and the lower section of the front bumper by the air intakes, and Dr. Stone Chip did an incredible job of covering those. Apart from a couple of bad stone chips, you need to have your face about 3 feet away to see them now.

I will acknowledge having seen many Boxsters with much more damage to the paint, but surely this speaks to a lack of car for the vehicle. My car has never been driven in the winter and I make sure that I do not drive it in the spring until all left over salt and sand has been cleaned off the roads. I do not drive on gravel roads and, on the highways, I avoid driving behind trucks. The original owner claimed to have done the same (as well as avoiding parking lots, etc.) and the lack of door dings and chips and scratches certainly speaks to the same. When I do get a new stone chip, I immediately clean off the area with alcohol, apply Dr. Stone Chip and then, after a week, re-apply wax. Obviously if you let rust start on any stone chip, much more aggressive work will be required to effect a repair.

My car will be 14 years old in August and I must say I wonder how well the Paint Protection Film, if available in 1999, would have held up over the passing years. Will the areas of the body that are covered with it fade at a different rate than the rest of the body? Does the film itself expand and contract at the same rate as the paint in extreme cold/heat? Will it start to deteriorate over time?