Picus said:How did I miss this thread? Your car looks excellent, I say that because I've seen you describe it's paint condition as poor.
In the shade it looks perfect, in the direct sun you can still see a few areas that need work or are beyond help due to very little exterior care before I bought the car. Most of the stuff now, you only see at certain angles, some are only visible under certain lighting. It still looks better than probably 95% of the cars on road and better than 99% of other 6-year-old cars. It just isn't where I want it yet and short of a repaint, some of the problems can't be removed, only made less noticable. When I first got the car, the paint was beyond poor.
This is the first time I detailed it. I had already polished the rear fender but not the door. The whole car looked like the door when I got my hands on it. Looked grey in the sun, not black.

Here it is a year or so and several polishing sessions later in as close to the same lighting as I could get...in fact, you can see the sun pinpoints in the same spots in the seam between the body and the rear edge of the door!

If I shot from another angle, it might pick up some of the minor remaing problems.