1999 Panoz Roadster

[OCDetails]

Have you ever gone to a client's house to detail something and then when they open the garage you see something that blows your mind? That's what happened the other day when I went to a warehouse to detail a motorcycle. The door opens and there are several cars I have wanted to detail my whole life. What looked like a 40's Buick, a Ferarri 308 track car, 57 Fairlane, 67 Vette (I think), 90 Testerossa... I love detailing classics! They've got such great body lines and curves! I can't wait to get my hands on a couple of these. However, front and center was a '99 Panoz Roadster. It hasn't even been registered since 2007 so I figured it would be an easy job. The owner told me if I did a good job on this then he would think about letting me do the others. Challenge accepted!!

I don't have a FLEX swirl finder, but I do have a 13W 1400 Lumen CREE light that is more than capable. (I do want that FLEX one after reading the review though...) Anyway, the downside of this light is that it doesn't run on normal batteries and I forgot my spare. Do'h! So I've got great pictures from before, but I couldn't get pictures of the correction after.









I inspected the paint the other day when I was doing the motorcycle and felt the swirls were light enough (mostly from sliding the car cover on and off was my guess) that it wouldn't take a whole lot of cut to clear it up. It was painted in North Carolina I believe, so I was expecting typical late 90s American paint. So I brought one of everything and hoped I could use this car to be my first test of Wolfgang Uber. Uhm... yeah, no.

The owner said this car was from the factory and had never been repainted, but I have to cry foul on that one. There were OBVIOUS signs of repaint. Overspray under the clear, fish eyes on the hood, large crazy bird $h!t looking painted over damage on the bubble on top of the hood, and a really poorly done touch up job on a fender. He swears he has never had anything painted and even admitted he felt the fender touch up was odd. He bought this '99 in 2001 and what I'm guessing is that it got damaged on a test drive or some other disaster that the dealership didn't disclose to him. He got it for quite a bit of a discount, so it isn't beyond the realm of possibility. Either way, the paint was not what I expected and Uber didn't make much of a dent. Dammit... No worries though. On with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound.

It took a couple different pads to find the right one that worked. I'm not kidding when I say there isn't a flat surface on this car. Everything is round. The flattest part was the bubble on the hood, and even that was curved. This made polishing it absolutely clear a challenge because the pad was never really flat on the surface. I moved between a few pads before I settled on a blue pad that was getting the best results. Then I went to town on it.

I really labored over what to top it with. This is a car that hasn't really been driven since 2007 and probably isn't going to be driven anytime soon, so durability was a question mark. Life under a car cover is no life at all for a car like this. So after considering my options (I had Uber, Wolfgang Paint Sealant, Liquid Souveran, Paste Souveran, XMT 360 and Turtle Wax Black Box with me) I chose the Turtle Wax. Now before I get banned or anything, I just want to say that this is actually a very good looking product. I don't really have a lot to say for the durability, but it does do a great job of filling in some little chips or scratches that won't polish away. There were some marks like that on this car and I just wanted to make sure it looked as good as it could whenever he took the cover off. If it was going to be out in the sun then I probably would have gone for something else, but for now I think this was the ticket. I feel a little guilty using it instead of something else, but for this shape of car I really do feel like it was the best choice for this shape based on what I wanted out of it.

So even though I'm cheating with light and product, this was the end result of the paint correction. He didn't want anything on the tires, so sadly those aren't wet and black looking. That would have been a good match for this. Oh well... Maybe when he gets it registered and decides to enjoy it on the street I can go over it again and get something better on the paint to really make it pop outside.













The only reason the lights look like that in the reflection is because I'm serious about nothing being flat on this car. It is like a well shaped bubble. I do feel good about the correction and the black wax was just to fill in some of the gouges in the paint caused by belt buckles and other damage. It wasn't to fill swirls or anything like that. The correction part was easy. The LSP was the hard part. Anyway, I hope you don't give me too much crap for that. I don't know why I feel bad about it, but I know you'll hear my confession and forgive me.

[AZ Mike]

The pictures look good. That is an unusual vehicle. I have not seen one until now. I hope the owner is happy so you can some on some of his other treasures.

[Shark Politur]

5L engine, aluminum body, 225km/h is very impressive for this little monster. It's always a pleasure to detail something like this & you made it look like new.

[cmichael258]

Beautiful

[ronkh57]

Nice work !