It’s safe to say that modern matte paint definitely isn’t a fad. Initially popularized by a handful of unique applications in the 2000s, its popularity has ballooned to the point where it’s not just reserved for limited-run Lamborghinis and special-order AMGs. Beyond the German big three of luxury, you can find satin or matte finishes being offered on everything from a Hyundai Santa Fe all the way up to a Bentley Flying Spur, and some applications look pretty great.
I won’t lie, I catch myself staring whenever I see a Spectral Blue Magno Mercedes-Benz, or an Earthy Brass Matte Hyundai Santa Fe, but before you sign on the dotted line, there’s something you should know: Caring for these less-reflective finishes is still a giant pain. In case you’ve been curious, here’s a quick run through the stuff you shouldn’t do to matte paint, and the stuff you just straight-up can’t do.
Let’s start with going through certain automatic car washes, a fairly normal thing to do in areas with water use restrictions. While you can generally take a glossy car through any automatic car wash, guidance is all over the board for matte paint. Hyundai gives the instruction “Do not go through an automatic car wash with rotating brushes,” and BMW has previously stated that “No mechanical means of cleaning the surface, such as a buffing wheel should be used.” Translation: Touchless car washes only, and even then, you might not be in the clear.
When it comes to protecting the finish of cars with traditional glossy paintwork, you generally don’t have to worry much about the composition of whatever coating you’re using. Sure, a ceramic coating will typically outperform a synthetic sealant, which will typically outperform a carnauba wax, but they all make paint look shiny while providing a hydrophobic coating. In contrast, matte paints are far more picky because the components in most waxes that make typical paint look shiny will also make matte paint shiny. Think glazing compounds that fill in little imperfections in clearcoat. As it stands, protecting matte paint really does require compatible products, and there are tons of warnings out there around this.
BMW states in the owner’s handbook for the current M4 to “Only use cleaning and care products suitable for vehicles with matte paintwork,” while Hyundai goes a step further, stating “If wax is applied, remove the wax immediately using a silicone remover.” Unsurprisingly, Mercedes-Benz is in a similar boat, with the handbook for the CLE coupe stating the following as two of many bullets under the matte paint care section:
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Do not use a car wash program with a final hot wax treatment.
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Do not use paint cleaners, buffing or polishing products, gloss preservers, e.g. wax.
Oh yeah, buffing. That’s the next annoying thing about matte paint. Let’s say you’ve done your best to park away from everyone, yet some inconsiderate oaf has still found a way to lightly scuff just the clearcoat of your bumper. Normally, this is the sort of damage that would literally buff out, but not with low-gloss finishes. Instead, polishing matte paint turns it glossy, as Larry Kosilla of AMMO NYC fame demonstrated:
It’s often a similar story with minor damage that would normally be repaired with touch-up paint, like stone chips. Because a spot repair to matte paint can’t be blended in the same way a spot repair to glossy paint can, several automakers quietly warn drivers of the repair challenges in the fine print of owner’s manuals. Indeed, if you flip to page 633 of the handbook for the new Hyundai Santa Fe, you’ll see this special care warning for this unique finish:
It is impossible to modify only repaint the damaged area. The whole part must be repainted as necessary. If the vehicle is damaged and painting is required, contact an authorized HYUNDAI dealer.
Yep, standard operating procedure is a full-panel respray at the minimum, which can get quite expensive if the part you need paint repair on is, say, a quarter panel. While a traditional touch-up paint application might run you a few hundred dollars, respraying a panel or two in a matte finish will easily cost four figures.
Alright, so what if you like matte paint but find all the matte paint care ridiculous? Well, you have two options: Either wrap your car with matte-finish vinyl, or have it covered in matte or satin paint protection film. Both will yield the desired finish, but while vinyl wrapping is used for color changes, matte paint protection film puts a removable translucent matte coating over the paint that’s already on your car. Granted, covering a whole car in paint protection film is typically more expensive than vinyl wrapping it, but thermoplastic urethane is typically more resilient to damage than thin vinyl film. Regardless, before you tick the box for matte paint on that new car, think about whether you actually want to maintain it. This unique finish comes with a whole list of gremlin-like conditions, some of which really can be aggravating.
Top graphic image: Hyundai
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I spray painted my 84 Cutlass Cierra coupe matte black way back in 1995. Combined with 89 Celebrity Eurosport wheels and a Pacesetter resonator on the 3.0V6, fucker was bitchin.
Always been a bad idea. See those late first gen special edition Velosters that had matte paint running around looking ROUGH these days.
Car with shiny paint are enough of a pain in the ass to keep looking decent. I do NOT get the appeal of this nonsense.
The only vehicles that look good in matt paint are those in military camouflage colors. And the muddier the better.
I can’t get past how undersized that wheel/tire combo looks in the topshot to even consider the matte paint.
And the sad part is that those are inevitably 19s or 20s on that Canyonero. But I assume that those are actually some sort of black plastic wheel well trims that make the wheels look tiny.
Only the tires are undersized. The wheels are oversized.
I think we are getting to the point where vehicle design is such and OEMs so cheap that they don’t want to provide the necessary suspension to support the weight of a wheel/tire combo that matches the vast size heaviness of the designs they are putting out. Hopefully design comes back around to making cars that don’t need ridiculously oversize wheels to look normal.
I think it looks cheap and dreadful, but if one likes the look, the maintenance requirements make it an insane choice or for garage queens only. I had a partial flat black hood and trunk once and that was a PITA to keep looking acceptable even on a POS, never mind some overpriced German wankerwagen. And people get this finish on Hyukias make no sense at all or have no conception of what they’re in for. I’ll say that one of the most badass cars I’ve seen was a ’69 Charger 440 that was semigloss, but that was the effect of age rather than intent and I happen to think those cars look best just a little bit scruffy looking.
You want a car with a matte finish? Buy a white car and get it wrapped. When it looks awful, get it re-wrapped.
Man is this true. Matte finish really shouldn’t be offered on anything but enthusiast vehicles, as folks who view cars as appliances will do nothing to care for the matte paint. I have a good friend with a new Santa Fe with the matte finish and it looked great at first and looks rough today after getting tree sap dripped on it, oils from fresh asphalt, and whatever was on the brushes at the car wash they occasionally go to over the last year since they bought it.
I feel like matte finishes come from the time before plastidip figured out how to do gloss.
It wasn’t a choice. If you wanted to change the color of your car cheaply, you went plastidip and did not have the option of a gloss finish. The expensive cars today are just emulating the civics and very beat 3rd owner BMWs of 2007.
Pastel Car paints are the way to go. Not shiny metallic, not matte.
(look at 50s cars, even when their clear coat wears through they still look great.
That’s because they have no clear coat.
I hate clear coat paint, especially on cars that didn’t have it originally.
*The More You Know Intensifies*
That’s why you could bring old paint back to life (if there was enough thickness left to it) with abrasive polish that would kill a fussier modern finish.
Counterpoint: Matte paint, in fact, looks like arse.
It was slightly interesting a decade and a half ago for almost as long as ‘vader’ style body kits for Mitsubishi Eclipses were cool (they were never cool for Civics).
Ducati offered a flat black paintjob on its most basic models on the “Dark” trim of some of their motorcycles. It is pretty durable. You can wash it, you can wax it (but it won’t get shiny), and it hides most imperfections.
It seems to be everything the matte paint, above, should be but isn’t.
Original Monster and then lower trims of su sequent Monsters come to mind.
Perhaps this discussion should include Adrian. Do car designers consider that the car may have a matte finish? How might that change the design? Personally, I’ve never seen a matte finish vehicle, other than military, that appealed to me.
Matte finishes are very try hard.
“matte paint looks great…”
Does it, though?
I would never want to take care of a matte finish vehicle, but that Santa Fe bronze looks nice to me, as did some car I saw with a medium dark green matte. Ironically, the matte finishes I dislike most are black and white, which I’ve only seen on Lambos.
And for extra, extra terrible points – matt finish with completely blacked out trim and wheels. Yuck.
Cars need jewelry.
Always thought matte paint looked cool, but the first time I heard about all the care issues I decided it wasn’t something I would ever do.
When I was a kid, everyone who owned a car that was more than a few years old and parked outside had matte paint…
No extra charge.
Near where I live there’s a current-ish generation C43 AMG with matte paint that parks itself under a fruit tree. As in berries the size of grapes just drop all over the thing, or are left all over it as the birds eat them and leave the remains everywhere.
The wheels have been curbed up as well. It’s maybe 3 years old and looks like a pile. An $80,000+ out the door pile. I… I don’t even…
Given the W204 C63 I’m meticulously restoring I think this is just the circle of life for a lot of AMG Mercs. They immediately or after a few owners end up in the hands of someone who can’t be bothered and they get used up like Kleenex. Whenever I see an older BMW M car or AMG Merc with matte paint it’s a complete dumpster fire.
I simply cannot imagine spending $85K+ for a grey over black C Class.
What powers a recent “C63?” A 1.3 liter 4 cylinder running 48 pounds of boost?
So C43, not 63. Apparently a 2.0L turbo 4-popper with 48V mild hybrid.
Yeah, I dunno either. Perhaps that’s why they park it under a tree for birds to wreak havoc on it? I have the higher-spec (507HP) 6.2L M156 V8.
I never thought I would live to see the Germans ignore the significance and universality of numbers.
I always wonder what would’ve happened if we lived in some parallel universe and in that timeline forced induction never existed, and we also never progressed past lead-acid batteries.
Would performance sport sedans just be powered by some oversized weedwhacker engine hooked up to a KERS flywheel?
Mazda already has or is working on a rotary hybrid, though it’s a CUV, of course.
Carmakers’ Hills to Die On
Mazda : This time the Rotary will work!
Subaru: Our shoppers don’t want 20% more power. Give that 4 banger twice as many cams and make a sad commercial about putting a dog down.
Chevy: But you liked it when Ford did it four years ago!
Dodge: Spring Break! WOOOO!
Friggin’ Mazda! Of all the things for a relatively small company to waste money on. There’s a reason everyone else gave up on the rotary [thinks for a moment] holy shit, like, 50 years ago! All to satisfy a small number of weirdos who geek out on smoothness and buy new cars in the dozens. Bedsides, they have EVs for the smoothness fetishists now.
Most of Subaru’s engines don’t even rev high enough to make best use of DOHC and don’t seem to make much use of variable valve timing or take advantage of better valve angles looking at their N/A power numbers. It really just serves to make the plugs a PITA to change. The one engine that does run decently high rpm shouldn’t—I’d gladly knock 1k off the redline and whatever that costs in hp to have the FA24D tuned for more usable torque and eliminate the dip, plus it could probably rock a taller gear and get better mileage (though I average 30+mpg, which I don’t think is that bad considering). With how damn slow the 2.0 Crosstreks are, they might as well go back to bulletproof OHV and gear-driven cam.
In defense of Mazda, based on what’s happening with EREVs in China, rotary engines would be a great solution if the emissions could work. Basically all EREV engines are four cylinders mostly with a displacement of 1.5 liters which breaks the 0.5L/cylinder golden rule. This is partially due to displacement tax thresholds, but consumers complained a ton about the poor NVH of 3-cylinders when they were tried earlier. Rotary engines are a great way to get excellent NVH at smaller displacements while also making it easier to put an ICE into an EV-based platform. The theoretical optimal 4-cylinder for this application seems to be a 2.5L N/A in Atkinson cycle making around 155hp/115kW; this can be scaled down to 2.0 liters at ~125hp/92kW. If you want to hit around 75kW, a low displacement I4 is suboptimal for efficiency and packaging while an I3 or 2 cylinder will need significant NVH work; a rotary could hit that power point at a tiny displacement for great packaging while being smoother than the I4, minimizing NVH related costs.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion. Packaging has definitely got to be easier in terms of size and form, but they generate a lot of heat, which can make for a packaging challenge all its own. Maybe with low duty cycles (though that’s not a traditional rotary strength from what I understand) and ideal rpm and load matched to the generator and battery, but where they use more fuel with more fuel-burning events per rotation and oil due to design, I would still think emissions or efficiency would be a challenge. A 4-cycle as a generator running Atkinson wouldn’t be a high rpm engine, so besides some small loss, I would think it would be an easier solution to make better use of balance shafts and isolating mounts to mitigate NVH issues. Or The Man could make displacement tax exemptions for hybrids or even just ICE used exclusively as range extenders and solve that issue. The main thing, though, is continuing R&D on the rotary just seems like a poor use of resources for someone like Mazda, particularly where they’re lagging in hybrids and EVs and are not leading sales in any class I know of. I have kind of mixed feelings about Mazda, but I do like them overall and hope to see them succeed and these kinds of continuing pursuit of a dead end technology is like watching that friend who keeps dating the same kind of idiot without seeming to learn their lesson. Toyota could afford to throw money at something like a rotary (or the hydrogen that they don’t seem to want to give up on) as they sit on piles of money, but I don’t think Mazda is in that comfortable of a position (though I’d be happy to be wrong).
Yeah, but the Germans would’ve done German things.
Porsche did do the KERS flywheel in the GT3 R (plus the Audi R18 e-tron), and BMW may have also been apt to use it given Williams’ attempts with it.
Spinning dorito failure modes have nothing on a sawblade of doom failure modes. Flywheel failures are spooky.
I’ve got a matte paint car and matte ppf is what I went with.
Harley Davidson rolled out “denim” finishes a while back. They wear in places where they’re touched frequently (like the sides of the fuel tank). Harley owners call this patina . . . I call it a non-starter.
Jay Leno calls it perfection
If that takes off, they can follow the lead of guitar makers and start selling pre-worn- and -damaged new product at an additional premium.
I painted a guitar with matte paint, then buffed it so that it had a nice sheen where you would expect it to rub. It looked great.
Sounds like any custom shop could have ‘distressed’ the finish in these ways and protected it with clearcoat. Hey, if you want to be crazy, go with satin or matte clear coat.