Making a Phaeton worthy.......

[SpoiledMan]

The owner of this car contacted me wanting his car detailed. He's a member here at Autopia and while has has great pride in his car(rightfully so) he just doesn't have the time to keep it looking like it should.

To start, VW Phaeton's are more rare than RR Phantom's here in L.A. and I was excited to see it and even more excited to work on it. The owner too the time to go over the entire car with me and is a real car guy himself. Truly, he and his girlfriend are the kind of people that make you feel really good at the end of the day!

The subject car was in pretty tough shape as the pictures will show. Menzerna IP (SIP used by my helper) with wool cutting pads on the rotary were used to cut away all the heavy swirling on this rather hard paint. It was finished on the rotary with 106ff and green LC pads. Who said green LC pads don't finish well??

Enough already. Here are the pictures.

Before:





And just to think, that was on the sides! The horizontal panels were worse.

After compounding:



Finished with Ultima Paint Sealant:






Cool reflection shot with the owner:



While difficult to do this car was a joy to work on. The paint is the flattest that I've ever worked on and polished up almost flawless. It's a shame that I lost the sun before I could get it finished for some shots. There's a pretty good chance that I'll see it again and I'm SURE that it wont be as bad as it was.

Thanks you to "G" and his girlfriend. Thanks a lot George as I'd still be there now without you!

[lambostealth]

I've never even seen one in person, have seen a couple of Phantoms trotting down the freeway though, LOL.......nice work!!

[ZoranC]

Great work as always!

[awahl63]

Great job...didn't you like the 0 orange peel. Looks fantastic!

[SpoiledMan]

It's interesting how rare something like this can be when a car costing 4 times as much is more common.

Thanks Z!

Andrew, yes. It's amazing how flat the paint is. I wish there could have been some sun shots though.

[gbackus]

Well, this is one case where I can definately assure everyone the car looks better in person

The pictures absolutely do not do justice to the finish of the car, it looked amazing when we were finished.

[Mikeyc]

Originally Posted by SpoiledMan

It's interesting how rare something like this can be when a car costing 4 times as much is more common.

I've seen a few of these around. They're pretty rare though as you already mentioned. I think the general public just had a problem mentally justifying paying that high a price for a car that had a VW on the front. So, the car is no longer imported to the USA. I believe it shares it's underpinnings with the Audi A8 which is a pretty nice car too.

My friend actually worked for the advertising company (Arnold Worldwide here in Boston) on the VW team when they were developing this car. He worked on a lot of the initial VW new Beetle advertising when the model was first revived. According to what he told me VW felt they were losing too many buyers as their income increased. So, they tried to recapture/retain these buyers by developing a higher end car. Unfortunately, I don't think VW's brand had enough cache for the plan to work.

Anyway, great job on the detail. It looks really great. It's a big sedan and I know you guys put in a lot of hard work.

[SpoiledMan]

Thanks Mike! It was a hard day made easier by the owner who made sure that we wanted for nothing! Great hospitality!

[Charisma]

I absolutely love these cars!

Nice detail, I'm sure that owner was ecstatic!

[BlueZero]

Great job!

One of my clients has one I've seen it a few times in person. Beautiful cars. He doesn't like it so he doesn't drive it anymore.

[zoomzoom mazda5]

SpoiledMan, it's so wet, it looks like someone has a hose over it and was running water on the Phaeton! I been using the Menzerna also and love this polish (works wonders). Awesome job!

[Dylan@Adams]

Awesome turn around... those befores were pretty scary.