Ceramic coating is a layer of protection that bonds to your vehicle’s clear coat and provides an invisible shield against environmental contaminants that is designed to keep your vehicle looking its best for years.  It makes washing and drying quicker, it prevents the need for regular waxing, and it provides superior hydrophobics and gloss to other protection technologies.

PROS

  • Protects vehicle from day one to lock in the factory fresh look.

  • Can utilize touchless car washes without removing protection (super easy upkeep!).

  • UV protection against oxidation/fading.

  • Extreme temperature and chemical resistance.

  • Extreme hydrophobics.

  • Extreme gloss/shine.

CONS

  • Time consuming and tricky installation.

  • Semipermanent, it’s a commitment for years and possibly the life of the vehicle.

Compared with just hand-washing weekly

PROS

  • Will prevent some neglect damage.

CONS

  • 52 hand-washes per year is a lot of time and work for most people.

  • Repeated washing of unprotected paint will result in fine swirls known as spider-web scratches that are visible in sunlight on dark colored cars.  This is the result of fine dirt particles in repeated direct contact with your vehicle’s clear coat.

  • The vehicle’s paint will eventually dull/oxidize from the sun’s ultraviolet light due to lack of UV protection.

  • Dirt will stick to the paint and be more difficult to wash, increasing spider-webbing.

Bottom line: If you are the type of person who likes to take care of your own car, a ceramic coating from Prime Care is going to make your life extremely easy by reducing the frequency of washes, and reducing the time and effort of each wash because of the hydrophobic coating. You will also notice you can dry the vehicle in a fraction of the time because the water droplets can be blown or easily wiped off the surface.

Compared with wax

PROS

  • High-end waxes can look deep and wet, which can be a unique look.

  • Good for indoor car shows.

  • Will protect against some environmental damage for a short time.

CONS

  • Ancient technology in automotive paint protection.

  • Low temperature resistance (will flash off a dark car sitting in a parking lot in the summer).

  • Will not last nearly as long/requires more frequent application.

  • Less beading/hydrophobics.

  • Degreasers (strong car wash soaps at touchless washes) will remove wax.

Bottom line: If you are the type of person who likes to wax your own cars, ceramic coating is probably going to change your mind about that except for the rare indoor car show. Besides the fact that you won’t have to wax ever again, once you experience the hydrophobics, resilience, and ease of use of ceramic coating, you will notice that wax has become obsolete especially for daily driven vehicles.

Compared to other dealership protection accessories

We strongly believe that there is no such thing as a magic chemical that you can apply to your paint and never have to worry about it forever.

We have heard it phrased many different ways by many companies, and we have tested every single one that we can get our hands on.

We have worked with dealerships that sell these “paint warranty” type products and very frequently there’s no protection on the paint whatsoever when the customer comes in for an issue.

Of course, those companies can claim improper installation as they almost always do, but we have tested all these kinds of products in perfectly ideal scenarios on test panels to verify their claims. The truth is that some of them are no better than wax, but some of them do use quality sealants!

The real problem is that these customers are told that they don’t need to do anything to maintain the protection that they purchased.  That is because the “protection” they actually purchased is warranty protection that doesn’t kick in until the car is damaged.  The sealants they apply simply help this business model reduce the number of claims compared to applying nothing, but they are not magic and do not last forever without maintenance.  Every paint sealant, wax, ceramic coating, and any other type of paint protection will be constantly be working against the elements unless the vehicle is never used for its intended purpose.  Therefore, they all have a maintenance period that depends on their resilience and typical usage.  We typically recommend the average customers bring their ceramic coated cars back yearly for a professional inspection and maintenance to make sure that each panel of the vehicle is at full strength.