Paint fade

I used to buy old cars off of my customers during the 70's and 80's and keep them to fix up when regular business got slow. Being in sunny SoCal, they were often faded and had "powdery" paint jobs I never painted a single one: I used a fine polishing compound or a "cleaner wax" depending on how ugly it was. It took a lot of elbow grease, but they mostly looked real nice afterwards. A word of caution: Power buffers can be too aggressive and wear through damaged paint before you know it. Do this by hand...

I couldn't agree more with this post. Use a good wash/cleaner/polisher/wax combination and you may be amazed at how well your car may look. I personally use Meguiars brand of car cleaning supplies. Use a good car wash solution first of all, do not, I repeat DO NOT use dishsoap, use something designed for cars. Then there are some "Cleaner" type solutions that work well for getting waterspots, embedded grime and other imperfections out of the paint. Next use a good polish, this is what will really make your car shine to its fullest potential. Then apply a good wax that has Carnauba in it to protect the paint. As was discussed in the previous post use your hand to apply and remove these products, an orbital buffer may work ok as it doesn't really have the speed to burn through your paint. The problem with buffers is that they really only work well for spreading the wax, elbow grease will do a much better job of actually shining up the car.