Originally Posted by msheredy
Been there, done that, about to do it again
! The clear must be really soft on these cars. My wife's Benz (although silver, mine is black) has a nice tough clear that does a damn good job at resisting those water spots.
To the contrary - from a buffing perspective the clear on every Crossfire I've ever worked on has been insanely hard. There is a big difference between scratch sensitivity, etch sensitivity and the ability to correct these issues. Plus, you never know what's in the water, and that's the biggest issue when it comes to dealing with water spots. We recently had a guy bring a black Subaru STI to our place and it was covered in the worst water spotting I've ever seen. Turns out they use reclaimed water in the sprinkler system at his apartment complex, and that is some nasty shyte right there.
If you've got something as nasty in the water as that Subie owner has, I don't care what kind of paint you've got, it's going to etch. How hard or soft your paint is, from a buffing perspective, will have everything to do with how easily those water spots (or scratches, etc) can be removed.
The C6 Corvette is notorious for having both scratch sensitive AND rock hard paint. It's sort of the worst of both worlds - it's really easy to put a mark in the paint on those cars, but a bugger to remove it.