Cleaning/paint care

Also a '90. Its ok if i keep it polished and waxed every month but its hard to keep up at times! Ive left it too long now and its not matte but its lost its lustre a bit! Fair few swirls too.

How much do you GAF? FWIW I compounded my bird's old car before she sold it, not a hard job, makes the paint look a hell of a lot better, and if you're agressive enough to take a fair amount of paint off, it should stay good for a while (bother in law's Ford did). If you burn through on an edge, touch it up with a bit of basecoat and lacquer (put the basecoat on with a fine paint brush, wet and dry it, lacquer it with a rattle can) and nobody should notice. The only other way to get a bling finish is to respray, and let me tell you that's an absolute pain in the arse.

Doki mumbled incoherently to the rest of uk.rec.cars.maintenance:

Unfortunately I GAF far too much lol. I've spent more than the value of the car on rebuilding and repairing the mechanicals so far in the 2 years I've owned it! I'm bordering on re-spraying it but I could never do it justice and cant afford to get someone else to do a decent job of it just yet (mainly because ive spent on mechanicals lol).