Trend of wrapping cars and maintaining them

Can we all agree that wrapping your car in matte is mainstream these days? Every day, I see at least one matte-wrapped car. Is it that cheap? Or our nation just goes with the flow?

No doubt some cars look extraordinary when they are properly wrapped but there are some cars which are just a turn off.

There are vendors who provide wrap papers and also apply them. You all know who’s taking the lead in wrapping cars though.

Is it easy to maintain wrapped cars? Is it easy to clean them? Well according to the shopkeeper who does the wrapping work,“Bhai ap bus kara lou gari ko wrap, safai tou normal gari ki tarah he hoti hai.” (Just get your car wrapped because a matte car and a car with normal paintjob is detailed in the same manner).

Well I fully disagree to his statement. It is not so easy to clean your matte car especially if its satin black, murdered out, flat black or whatever you call matte black. I have a friend who got his Civic Reborn matte black and when the car got some bird’s fecal material, I know how he felt. His face expressions said it all. It is very difficult to clean matte black especially.

After some research and interviews I found out what not to do with your matte cars:

1. Avoid allowing scratches or damages to the paint surface.
2. If the car gets scratched, don’t try to fix it on your own because that might peel off the matte paper.
3. At the time of washing, liquid or car waxes should be avoided because they contain cleaning agents which might change the color tone.

How to wash and clean

1. First of all avoid creating swirls and scratches.
2. Buy high quality microfiber towels and soft wash mitts, wash them thoroughly after each car wash.
3. If you want to use any cleaning liquids make sure you use it properly but I would suggest avoid using them.
4. Use two buckets, one with soapy suds and the other one with just plain water.
5. After applying soapy to the car, soak the wash mitt in the plain water and then clean off the soapy water.

Both Mercedes and BMW stressed that anything which sticks to the paint surface like dead bugs, tree sap, or bird droppings should be removed immediately.

With that said, many avid PakWheelers such Cylestene and others have a great experience in wrapping cars and one should search the PakWheels forums to get more in-depth details about what type of paper to use, how to maintain it and so on before going to a dealer and getting one’s car wrapped.