What Brand is the Most Durable Paint and Clear Coat?

Hipster said:

It's kind of a loaded question. Almost every paint manufacture has tiered products for different budgets, none of it is cheap anymore, DuPont, PPG, Glassurit, Sikkens, BASF, waterborne, or solvent bases, the lists are almost endless. With top tier you can spend upwards of $5k on just basecoat and clearcoat nevermind all the ancilliary components like 2k primers, expoxy primer if you want the best of the best, etc. The best paint a painter can use is the one he's most familiar with for the best outcome. Nason tends to be my go for lower tier but is nnow an Axalta company and no longer DuPont. It's a decent product from a price/quality/longevity standpoint as compared to some of the other stuff I used in that price class, But a gollon of base is approaching or may have already exceeded the $700 mark depending on color, not including reducer or base activator. Some of the top tier clears are $1k a set-up +. Cheaper paint usually has less pigment per volume than the costlier products, so what you save in cost usually turns into having to buy more of it and put on more coats of it to get the job done. In the end not always tremedous savings.

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Hipster said:

It would be like sending you on a wild goose chase. There's tons of info out there and an endless number of opinions on whats good and what isn't. A great painter might trash talk a lower tier product for lack of experience with that particular product and a newbie might trash talk a superior top tier product for similar reasons and there are a few sites that concern auto painting that trash talk everything but some obscure paint brand that's a site sponsor. Better paint usually has more products within the product line so a painter can tailor the product to their painting style. I don't know of any singular site that covers multiple brand type reviews but there are a ton of guys on you tube that do. The Gun Man, Paint Society, there are quite a few. Top tier paint is generally speaking easier to apply.You'll hear the term "user friendly" If you have some experience you can usually manage a lower end paint with acceptable results. Everything I have tried has worked. Just some of it works and looks better than others or was easier to apply. Painted for about 10 years straight before going to the collision side of things. 1000's of cars later, I still occasionally paint one. Last thing I want to do is get in there with some low end paint I have to fight metallic control with or 5 coats later I still don't have coverage. The less you have to fight with getting those things done the more you can concentrate on making it nice.

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Hipster said:

no problem. I've used a ton of different stuff over the years so if you have a specific question I don't see in the threads hit me with a pm.

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