[Feanor]

Meh to all that complicated stuff.

BMW tried to sell me a "seal and protect" extra for £500 that would've paid for them to apply a hard wax to protect the paint as well as protectants for the carpets and leather.

I told them where to stick it and bought exactly the same original BMW kit from eBay for £15.

As soon as I get the car home I'm going to give the car a gentle clean to get rid of any dust and muck it'll have picked up on the drive home and apply all the treatment products.

More than that I can't be bothered with. I spent far too many weekends in my late teens and early 20s hand cleaning my cars when I should've been out enjoying myself. Now I have much less spare time I have better things to do than spend a quarter of every other weekend doing this, so these days it goes through an automatic car wash. I just make sure it's a carwash that has soft bristles rather than the horrible scratchy nylon ones. It'll still pick up microscratches but IMO life's too short to worry about things like that. After a few months I'll take the car through the carwash, take it home, re-wash it by hand and re-apply the wax. That way the car will still look damn good, the paint will still last, and I'll have more time to use for other things.

Regarding claying the car on delivery - doesn't clay take a small layer of the lacquer off to take out any scratches? Surely, as others have said, that's not necessary for a new car - all it should need is a good wax? If I'm right about clay then wouldn't applying it too often shorten the paint's life?