Well, after two weeks spent pretty much away from tarmac and on gravel roads at best (and frequently much worse), I get back home from touring the Victorian and NSW High Country to find this:

Car scratch by Mark-Farrell, on Flickr

Ironically, I’d not put and single dent or scratch in the thing through all the off-roading, yet some moron in a KFC car park (don’t ask – you try finding food in rural Victoria on New Year’s Day!) manages to scrape right down one door when it’s parked! Normally I’m not too bothered about scratches, but as this is probably the first car I’ve owed where I have an actual interest in its resale value, I have an inkling I should probably go about getting someone to repair it.

My question is this: Will it make any difference if I leave it and then get the whole car detailled / scratch repaired etc in a couple of years when we come to sell i.e. will it cause more damage by leaving it. Basically, as it’s a vehicle that gets used off road quite a lot, it’s pretty inevitable that it will collect more scrapes at some point, and it would probably be cheaper to get them all done when I come to sell.

Second question – what’s a ball park cost for this sort of repair?

Nightmare!

I can’t see from the photo – has it gone through to the bare metal or is it just white through the clearcoat? If it’s the latter, you might be alright polishing the crap out of it with ScratchX – even if it doesn’t entirely remove it, it will make it a lot less noticeable. Get yourself down Supercheap and give it a shot.

It won’t get worse if you leave it unless there is actually bare metal exposed.

It’ll be hundreds for a respray if that’s what’s needed imhe. 🙁 Panel beaters are in great demand at the moment.

I’d just get a bit more of that mud/dust on it and forget about it.

Hard to say from the picture but it looks like too much damage to polish out, even with wet sanding first and a fast rotary machine. (No chance at all of doing it by hand)

a machine polish would certainly reduce it, as it will remove some of the lighter damage that’s only in the clear coat, but more than likely its gone through to the colour coat in loads of places and if that’s the case it will need to be painted.

If it could be wet sanded and machine polished, for a spot repair I would normally charge £25/£55 per panel depending on the amount of damage.

I’d just get a bit more of that mud/dust on it and forget about it.

Any car until now and I’d agree, but as we bought new, and will probably want something with more carrying (and fuel!) capacity sooner or later if the trip we’ve just been on is anything to go by, it needs to be in reasonable nick to get a decent price to sell on. (It seems if you want to get anywhere round those parts and not have to rely on the kindness of strangers, carrying a chainsaw and associated paraphernalia is a minimum requirement as gum trees like to fall down, often).

A decent spot of jet washing and it’ll be back to its yuppymobile appearance apart from this. It actually looks like the dirt had made it much worse, as being quite abrasive stuff, it seems to have turned the other car’s bumper into a very effective sanding tool. I’ve sent the photo and details to a local company that comes to your work to do it, so I’ll see what they say. However, to my untrained eye it looks like it will need more than just polish 🙁