Here’s how you deal with detailing a Porsche 964 Turbo when it has very thin paint

Preserving the shine on cars like this beautiful 964 is a job that not just anyone can do. This old Porsche needed a rehab, but it also needed protection from itself. Thankfully, our friend Larry Kosilla is just the kind of guy to make sure the paintwork and interior materials are kept as nice as possible. The black nineties supercar had extremely thin and delicate paint, an old and cracked rear fender rock guard, ancient clearbra stone protection, some mold in the front trunk, and a used but not particularly dirty interior. This presents several different sets of difficulties, but caring for the paint is easily the worst of them. A car like this, you want it to shine bright like a diamond, but working with thin paint can be a serious challenge, and it is far more important to preserve the car than it is to polish out the imperfections at the risk of burning through the paint.

I’m not a detailing genius myself, but I can’t get enough of watching AMMO’s detailing videos. The cars always come out looking phenomenal, even if a project like this demands a different level of attention. One of the key details that separates Larry from many others is his ability to know when to walk away. Knowing that the paint can’t be made perfect, due to its age, materials, condition, and reduced thickness, and deciding at just the right moment when something is “done” is a specialty that takes years of experience to master.

Next time you’re taking a buffing wheel and cutting compound to your Porsche, consider that the first step might be breaking out a paint depth gauge and determining if this project is even worth taking on. You could permanently damage the paint on your Porsche with too aggressive a cleaning and paint correction regimen. The first step is probably to watch this video to see how the pros do it. The second step, at least in my case, is probably to call one of those professionals and have them do the thing they’ve trained to do. When it comes to detailing, I’m barely a level above a trained monkey. Be better than me.