One of 1,963 — and the paint had stopped showing it
Porsche built exactly 1,963 of these worldwide — the number chosen to mark 1963, the year the 911 arrived. This one came to our Hilperton studio in Graphite Grey Metallic, on the wide Carrera S body with the polished Fuchs-style wheels and the chrome 911 50 script on the engine lid. It was booked in for an Enhancement Plus detail: a two-stage machine polish, XPEL film in place of the factory stone guards, and Gyeon Q² ceramic coatings over the lot.
Two-stage machine polish, Level 2 minor correction
Graphite Grey is a metallic that flatters paint in daylight and hides very little under a lamp. Once the car was under the inspection lighting, the picture was the familiar one on a cherished car that has been washed a lot: fine circular marring across the horizontal panels, heavier around the fuel flap and the rear quarters where hands and cloths pass most often. The before-and-after frames in the gallery are the same panel a few minutes apart.
The correction was a Level 2 minor correction, done as a two-stage machine polish — a cutting stage to take out the marring, then a refining stage to put the gloss back. Two stages rather than one matters on a car like this: a single aggressive pass can flatten swirls and leave its own haze behind, which on a metallic grey shows as a dullness you only notice in the sun. There is more on how we approach this on our paint correction page.
Factory stone guards out, XPEL film in
The factory-fitted stone guards came off and were replaced with XPEL paint protection film. It is the better material in the same places — thicker, self-healing, and cut to the panel it is going on rather than to a standard shape. Doing it during a correction is also the sensible order: the paint underneath had just been polished, so the film went down over a finish that was right rather than sealing in what was there before.
Gyeon Q² DuraFlex over the top
Polishing removes paint. Whatever comes off is not coming back, so the point of coating afterwards is to make sure it does not need doing again. The car was sealed with Gyeon Q² DuraFlex — a two-part system, Base first and Flexi over it, carrying a five-year warranty. From then on the car releases dirt instead of holding it, and a wash stops being the thing that puts the marks back in. Our ceramic coating page explains how the coatings we use differ.
Trim, glass, wheels and calipers
The black trim came in for its own treatment — Gyeon Q² Trim on the engine lid grille and Q² Preserve on the rubber and plastic, which is what keeps those parts looking deliberate rather than grey and tired a year later. The wheels came off so the barrels and the red calipers could be cleaned and sealed properly, and the glass was treated so the wipers have less to do. Small jobs individually; together they are the difference between a polished car and a finished one.
