Your emails: Will matte paint jobs get damaged at the car wash?

Hey folks. Brian Cooley for OnCars, taking another one of your emails about high tech cars and modern driving. This one comes in from Christine in New South Wales, Australia. It says, I have a 2013 Hyundai Veloster Turbo. Cool little car, by the way. And I shelled out, she says, the extra $1000 for matte paint, specifically a charcoal color called Young Gun. My local car wash. she says, assured me that this car could be taken through the automatic wash with it matte paint, and not have any damage. But no one at Hyundai seems willing to hazard a guess as to whether that's okay on that paint. Yeah, I'd get nervous at that point, too. So her question is, what's our opinion, here at On Cars, about this car wash saying you can run a matte car through an automatic brush? System. The big turning brushes and all that without damage to the finish. Okay, I'm glad you asked, Christine, and I hope you haven't taken your car to the automatic car wash yet, that's basically a bad idea. Because here's the thing, that paint job's look really cool, it looks really great on your car I think, a very sporty, very urban kind of a look. But they are actually a pain in the **** to live with. Not that the car wash will make a different damage to it, all car wash do micro tractions, those automatic ones. You almost never see them. It's not a big deal. But with a matte finish, if there's any damage at all, the problem is you can't do much about it. Now normally if you get some scratches in your gloss finish, you can often buff it out. Whether it's a scuff, which means you get something rubbed onto the paint, like a black mark or something, or whether it's a scratch, which usually is into the clearcoat. Either way, you can often heal that with a buffing compound, some kind of a polish. You buff it out. That takes that scuff off the clear coat or it blends down those white edges of the scratch, so you barely notice them. But not on a matte finish car. You can't buff it out usually, because that will make that area shinier, and it will never look right against the rest of the matte car. So these are touchy vehicles. Matte paint jobs are only right once And the key is to be extremely careful of your car's finish. I would say that means no automatic car washes. Get the more expensive hand car wash by the same car wash crew. Park way far out in the parking lot. You don't wanna get any dings or little scratches, things like that. You have to live with them at that point. So there's a price beyond the cost you paid fo matte paint, and that is real vigilance. But the car looks great, so hopefully it's worth it. [MUSIC]