Wheel decontamination

There was some nasty tar-like build up on one of the rear wheels which a few rounds of tar remover and plastic razor were needed for

Slowly shifting it

Foam Wash

If you weren't aware, Lotus, along with many other high-end car manufacturers, sand their paint at the factory in order to flatten it out and minimise/remove orange peel that occurs as part of the painting process. They use hand-held sanders to do this. As you'd expect, those sanders leave their own marks in the paint, which should then subsequently be removed during the polishing process, again at the factory. Some manufacturers do this part better than others but nearly all of them tend to miss small sections that the dealership then should pick up on and polish out before the new owner takes the keys. This didn't happen with this car. This car, unfortunately, had massive sections of sanding marks that simply were somehow completely overlooked by the factory AND the dealership. we're not talking about little 50c sized tick marks here and there. Some areas were larger than an A4 piece of paper and in blatantly obvious top surfaces of the car. Not the thing you'd want or expect from a ~$150k car. The car itself had rock hard paint and required 14hrs on paint correction alone Here are some Befores and Afters. Roof

Sanding marks

Rear Quarters Swirling

Moving closer to the door we see biblical levels of sanding marks

Door sills These are quite wide and partially stick out from under the doors and feature prominently in the side-on look of the car. They were quite badly swirled and scuffed

Rear Spoiler Uniform sanding marks across the entire length of the wing

Bonnet and Front Quarters

More sanding marks

Even more

Other damage

Some polishing obviously took place at some stage as there was residue on the black plastics

The engine bay also got a tidy up

Final Pics

Those prominent door sills

Proper levels of gloss and clarity